Day: February 13, 2023

Expensive military hardware like a new tank undergoes rigorous testing before heading to the battlefield. A startup called Istari, backed by Eric Schmidt, the former CEO of Google and chair of Alphabet, reckons some of that work can be done more effectively in the metaverse.

Ishtari uses machine learning to virtually assemble and test war machines from computer models of individual components, such as the chassis and engines, that are usually marooned on separate digital drawing boards. It may sound dull, but Schmidt says it can bring a dose of tech industry innovation to US military engineering. “The Istari team is bringing internet-type usability to models and simulations,” he says. “This unlocks the possibility of software-like agility for future physical systems—it is very exciting.”

The company reflects Schmidt’s unique position as a link between the tech industry and the Pentagon. Virtual replicas known as digital twins are common in manufacturing and could help the Pentagon develop hardware more quickly. And Istari is a building block in a wider project in which Schmidt is attempting to bring Silicon Valley technology and thinking to the US military.

That quest has roots in the shock Schmidt experienced in 2016 when he first glimpsed the state of Pentagon technology up close. He was still chair of Alphabet but accepted an invitation from President Obama’s defense secretary Ashton Carter to chair a new Defense Innovation Board trying to modernize the DOD. Schmidt’s new post began with an eye-opening tour of US labs and bases.

“Imagine we’re going to build a better war-fighting system,” Schmidt says. “We would just create a tech company.”

Photograph: Alex Wong/Getty Images

“I got to run around with Eric and look at how the department was engaging on commercial technology,” says Will Roper, who was then an assistant secretary of the Air Force focused on technology and is the founder and CEO of Istari. “It was evident that the entire Department of Defense was developing software the same way it was done in the 1970s and ’80s,” Roper says. He was one of many Pentagon leaders who were impressed by Schmidt‘s diagnosis of the department’s problems and willingness to try to solve them. 

A satellite system designed to track hurricanes can reveal where damaging microplastics accumulate in the ocean. A new study now reveals why. 

In 2021, researchers from the University of Michigan and Southwest Research Institute found that spacecraft from the Cyclone Global Navigation Satellite System can distinguish areas in the ocean with higher concentrations of microplastics. 

From their orbit some 333 miles (536 kilometers) above Earth, these satellites are able to see odd patches in the ocean with smaller and fewer waves, which were found to be areas with high concentrations of microplastics on the surface. In the new study, the researchers have now revealed what exactly is happening in the microplastics-laden water, and they hope the results will make this new satellite monitoring method more reliable. 

Related: Watery graves: Should we be ditching big spacecraft over Earth’s oceans?

Microplastics are a huge environmental problem. Less than 5 millimeters across, these minuscule fragments of plastic waste are polluting the entire planet, including the bodies of humans and animals on all continents and in the oceans. Microplastics have been found in drinking water as well as in the food we eat. In the world’s oceans, microplastics are particularly harmful. According to the University of Plymouth (opens in new tab) in the U.K., there are trillions of microplastic particles polluting the marine environments and they are being swallowed up by all kinds of marine creatures from the tiniest plankton to giant whales. These tiny pieces of rubbish are particularly hard to clean up due to their small size, and up until recently were also hard to track, as scientists had to rely on patchy eye-witness accounts.

The new satellite tracking method could improve microplastics monitoring, which in turn could make clean-up efforts easier.

In the new study, researchers from the University of Michigan wanted to test why exactly it is that water thickly polluted with microplastics forms smaller waves. They experimented in a laboratory, creating artificial waves in a small pool. They found that the reason for this reduced wave size in the polluted water is not due to the microplastics alone, and instead is also caused by the presence of surfactants, oily chemicals that these plastics are frequently infused with to alter their properties. 

“We can see the relationship between surface roughness and the presence of microplastics and surfactants,” Yulin Pan, a naval architecture and marine engineering assistant professor at the University of Michigan and corresponding author on the paper, said in a statement (opens in new tab). “The goal now is to understand the precise relationship between the three variables.”

The researchers want to develop a model that would allow them to not only monitor microplastics from space but also to predict the motion of plastic-polluted water in the ocean. 

The study (opens in new tab) was published on Feb. 8 in the journal Scientific Reports.

Follow Tereza Pultarova on Twitter @TerezaPultarova. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook. 

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Tesla CEO Elon Musk has often talked about opening his Supercharging network to competitors, but has never actually done so in the United States, where the company dominates the electric vehicle market.

Now, the brash CEO may have 7.5 billion reasons to accelerate those plans.

The Department of Transportation next week is expected to finalize a requirement that will pressure Tesla to expand beyond its proprietary charging equipment in the U.S. and add the charger used by its competitors, administration officials tell Reuters.

Otherwise, the carmaker will be left out of the $7.5 billion in subsidies flowing out of Washington, part of President Joe Biden’s plan to blanket the nation with 500,000 EV chargers in the coming years, up from 100,000 in 2021.

The network is a central part of Biden’s plan to tackle climate change by converting 50% of all new U.S. vehicle sales to electric by 2030. A dearth of chargers on U.S. roads has slowed the growth of EV sales and the positive environmental impact, advocates say.

As the U.S. pressure builds, there are plenty of signs that Tesla is on the brink of democratizing its network, even though Musk has denounced the federal government’s involvement before.

In January of last year, Tesla wrote the Federal Highway Administration, offering the Biden administration suggestions on how to shape the charging program. In Ohio, the company responded to a recent request that companies submit charging proposals, state officials told Reuters. In Arizona, the company told the state it was open to upgrading its chargers or building new ones to meet the federal requirements, although a final decision was not made.

Musk met with White House officials last month in Washington D.C. Among the items discussed was EV charging program, White House infrastructure czar Mitch Landrieu told reporters.

Musk, for his part, said in a July 2021 earnings call that the point of Tesla’s charging network was “not to create a walled garden and use that to bludgeon our competitors,” but has not publicly discussed plans for U.S. market changes. The company has opened up some Superchargers in Europe and Australia.

An email to Tesla and Musk was not returned.

State officials are optimistic.

“We do understand that Tesla is looking to tweak their system to be more open access. So, if they do reach that point and meet those eligibility requirements, they certainly will be eligible for funding,” said Stuart Anderson, the state of Iowa’s Transportation Development Division Director.

SUPERCHARGER DOMINANCE

Tesla’s U.S. Supercharger network is often held up as the gold standard: fast, reliable, and plentiful, with about 40,000 chargers worldwide.

But for years, the network has been exclusive to Tesla owners, thanks to a plug that connects only to Tesla cars, meaning someone driving a Volkswagen, Ford, or Chevy vehicle wouldn’t be able to use it.

Tesla drivers can purchase an adapter to connect with the U.S. standard “Combined Charging System” or CCS chargers but people who don’t own a Tesla can’t do the same with Superchargers.

Opening up its networks could grow a funding and revenue stream for Tesla, but could erode the brand’s exclusivity and make it challenging for the automaker to manage the network, analysts say.

“It’s definitely a balance for them: how much potential federal subsidies for expanding their network versus maintaining that competitive advantage on charging,” Chris Harto, a Senior Policy Analyst at Consumer Reports said.

The Department of Transportation next week will detail final requirements that all electric vehicle chargers must meet to be eligible for funding under the $7.5 billion effort to electrify highways and interstates across the nation. Those requirements will also touch on cybersecurity and how much and what parts of the charger must be made in America.

Chargers seeking to become part of the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) program must utilize a combined charging system, or CCS, the standard in the U.S. on nearly all charging stations except Tesla’s popular Superchargers.

The move to finalize so-called ‘minimum standards’ by the administration is expected to unlock the first wave of funding and set off fierce competition among companies like ChargePoint Holdings and (CHPT.N) and EVgo Inc (EVGO.O). For these small companies, it represents a generational opportunity.

Any charger that wants to be eligible for federal dollars will have to meet the CCS standard once the rules are finalized next week, administration officials told Reuters.

Last year, Tesla offered up another idea. In its letter to the FHA, the company proposed that its Superchargers should qualify for rebates if they are co-located with CCS chargers that work with competitors.

An administration official told Reuters that request was not seriously considered.