Lion Glass, mRNA Cancer treatment and the current surge in Sunspot Activity
July 13
This week we discover a new type of glass that is cheaper to make and 10 times more damage resistant. We investigate a mRNA treatment for cancer that generated proteins that are toxic to cancer cells in order to kill them. We consider the implications of the recent upsurge in sunspot activity and we take a tour through the solar system in order to find the edge. Finally we examine a new battery breakthrough that will half the weight, size and cost of electric vehicle batteries.
Lion Glass
Humans first made glass about 5000 years ago and it has become a critical part of our modern world. Glass is useful but it takes a lot of energy to create and it can break easily. A team at Penn State University have developed a new type of glass that requires significantly less energy to produce and is ten times more damage resistant than current soda lime silicate glass.
Soda lime silicate glass is made by melting three primary materials, quartz sand, soda ash and limestone. Soda ash is sodium carbonate and limestone is calcium carbonate. As the materials are melted the carbonates decompose into oxides and CO2, which is released into the atmosphere.
Lion glass is produced at 300 to 400 degrees below the production temperature of current glass. This reduces the energy required to produce the glass by roughly 30%. Lion glass is produced with carbon free materials so no CO2 is released during production.
Glass fails because of micro cracks that develop from stresses over time. These become weak points and the point of eventual failure. Lion glass is much more resistant to forming micro cracks and will therefore have a wide range of applications in industry. Automobiles, electronics, architecture and communications technology (fibre optics are made from glass). The team is expecting that the greater strength of Lion glass means that less is needed in many applications making the product lighter and thinner.
Patents for the glass have been filed as the first step in commercialization.
mRNA Cancer Treatment
A team at Tel Aviv University have developed a mRNA (messenger RNA) based treatment which tricks cancer cells into producing toxic proteins that will kill the tumor. Inside our cells there are ribosomes which are the tiny factories that produce proteins. Which proteins the ribosomes produce depends upon the instructions that they receive from the mRNA molecules sent in the body.
The mRNA technique that was used by the Covid 19 vaccines was to encourage our cells to produce benign spike proteins similar to the Covid virus. This would trigger an immune response that then trained our body to fight off subsequent infections. Other teams have used this technique to mimic the proteins made by tumors thus helping to launch an immune response
The Tel Aviv team created an mRNA that was encoded to create a toxin that bacteria make and then packaged it into lipid nanoparticles which were injected directly into a tumor. This causes the cells to start producing the toxin and thus poison themselves. The toxin does not harm healthy cells. Additionally the cancers can not develop a resistance to the technique as there are a range of toxic proteins that can be used. Some cancers can develop resistance to chemotherapy.
In tests in mice with melanoma between 44% and 60% of the cancer cells were destroyed after a single injection. It is important to note that the research is in its’ very early days and there is no guarantee that testing on animals will carry across to the same effectiveness in humans. More testing on animals is underway.
Battery Production Breakthrough
Toyota have announced a breakthrough in battery production that will allow them to halve the weight, size and cost of electric vehicle batteries. Toyota claims the battery will allow a car to travel 1,200 kilometers on each charge and a recharge will take 10 minutes.
Toyota said that they have simplified the production process for the materials that comprise solid state batteries and developed prototypes. Toyota made a change in strategic direction earlier this year when the CEO was replaced. Previously they were focused on hybrid vehicles whereas they are now fully focused on electric vehicles and expect to have fully electric vehicles with solid state batteries on the market in 2025.
Increasing Number of Sunspots
Sunspots are a regular occurrence. They are areas of high intensity magnetic field on the solar surface that result in a temporary halt of the convection process. A subsequent drop in temperature makes the spots appear darker than the surrounding region.
These regions are also associated with solar flares which are intense eruptions of electromagnetic radiation and coronal mass ejections which send plasma particles into space.
The sun has a 11 year solar cycle during which the poles flip completely. We entered the current solar cycle in December 2019. This is the 25th cycle that we have observed and measured. Like the previous cycle it is one of the weakest that we have observed.
Since September 2022 there has been an increasing number of sunspots. In June 2023 there were an average of 163 sunspots which matches the 2002 cycle that was one of the strongest that we have observed. In 2003 this caused some powerful solar flares.
Given the weaker solar cycle an average of 125 sunspots was expected. The increased activity might mean an earlier peak to the cycler or a much stronger cycle in on the way. This is important to our communication systems on earth. Last week (early July 2023) a solar flare and the resultant radiation caused a deep shortwave radio blackout over the Pacific Ocean and the western parts of the US. In 2003 there was significant disruption to mobile phone networks in parts of the world.
Extreme solar flares can also damage electrical grids and satellites. In 1859 the telegraph services were shut down in the US and Europe for serval days. We are much more dependent upon communications and power grids today. On the plus side a larger part of the world should be able to view auroras. No lights, no phone but a great show in the sky.
Where does the Solar System end?
The question is very much up for debate. Some astronomers believe it ends at the Heliopause while others include the Oort Cloud in the solar system. The following diagram shows us a logarithmic view of the solar system.
The moon is the closet object to earth. It is about 400,000 kilometers away and light takes a second to travel from the moon to the earth. The sun is 150 million kilometers away from earth and light takes 8 minutes to reach earth from the sun. This distance is know as 1 Astronomical Unit (hence the 1 below earth on the diagram). Saturn is 10 AU (Astronomical Units) away from the sun and the heliopause is roughly 100 AU from the sun. Neptune for example is 30 AU or 4,000,000,000 kilometers away from the sun.
The area of the solar system that is protected by the Sun’s magnetic field and that contains all the planets is known as the Heliosphere and the edge of that area is known as the Heliopause. The Voyager spacecraft that left earth in 1977 have both passed through the Heliopause.
Once we pass the Heliopause we enter the Kuiper Belt, a ring of icy rocks that encircles the solar system. Past this is the Oort Cloud. The inner edge of the Oort Cloud is 2,000 AU from Earth. We don’t know how far the Oort Cloud extends and some speculate that it reaches halfway to our nearest star neighbor, Alpha Centauri (which is 400,000 AU away). The Oort Cloud is birthplace of most of the solar system’s comets. We can not see the objects in the Oort Cloud with our current technology. This is where the mysterious Planet 9 is speculated to exist.
If we sent a probe towards the Oort Cloud from earth today with out current rockets (there are some being planned) it would take 140 years to reach 1000 AU from earth. Designing a probe to last that long and maintaining communications will be a massive challenge.
Paying it Forward
If you have a start-up or know of a start-up that has a product ready for market please let me know. I would be happy to have a look and feature the startup in this newsletter. Also if any startups need introductions please get in touch and I will help where I can.
If you have any questions or comments please comment below.
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Till next week.