In high-altitude areas, 85 octane fuel is offered because it’s less likely to cause engine knock since the air is far less dense — but this specific octane is still advised against in the owner’s manuals of newer vehicles (as in, basically, cars made within the last 30 years).
That’s because of the construction between older and newer vehicles. Older engines had mechanical control of fuel injection and ignition timing — and that depended heavily on your manifold pressure. In higher altitudes, you’re not going to get the pressure you need because the ambient pressure is low.
Newer engines, though, have electronic fuel injection and ignition timing — which enables those newer engines to compensate for any low ambient air pressure. You’ll still lose power, but the engine is able to compensate for any losses. So, the problem won’t be quite as obvious as it would be with a car from, say, 1962.
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Putting 85 octane in your car probably won’t kill your engine, but it does have the possibility to cause problems — and to void your warranty in some cases.
British manufacturer Riversimple’s hydrogen-powered car.Photo: GEOFF CADDICK/AFP (Getty Images)
Using hydrogen as a source of power for vehicles certainly has its drawbacks—among them the cost and the inefficient use of energy—but researchers are now warning against hydrogen for another reason, The Guardian reports: scarcity and a subsequent dependence on fossil fuels.
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Hydrogen-based fuels are already expensive, and while there’s also research to suggest that a growing demand could enable cheaper prices, even a large-scale swap isn’t going to create the infrastructure needed to distribute hydrogen on a large scale. Demand also isn’t going to immediately solve hydrogen’s other main issues: that you get less energy per unit volume than other fuels, that liquefaction (as in, the simple ability to easily refill a fuel tank at a pump) is challenging and costly, and hydrogen’s volatility. You’re going to face the same exact problems you currently have with the meager electric charging infrastructure, but things are amplified.
But perhaps the biggest issue is the fact that hydrogen could enable us to stick with the same fossil fuels that we’re trying to eradicate. In other words, if hydrogen turns out to be scarce and we still have a combustion engine in our car, we’re likely to just turn back to gasoline.
Here’s a little more from The Guardian:
“Hydrogen-based fuels can be a great clean energy carrier, yet their costs and associated risks are also great,” said Falko Ueckerdt, at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) in Germany, who led the research.
“If we cling to combustion technologies and hope to feed them with hydrogen-based fuels, and these turn out to be too costly and scarce, then we will end up burning further oil and gas,” he said. “We should therefore prioritise those precious hydrogen-based fuels for applications for which they are indispensable: long-distance aviation, feedstocks in chemical production and steel production.”
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Basically, the research found that it took six to 14 times more electricity to power in-home gas boilers with hydrogen-based fuels than with other fuels. I’ll let the experts explain:
The research, published in the journal Nature Climate Change, calculated that producing and burning hydrogen-based fuels in home gas boilers required six to 14 times more electricity than heat pumps providing the same warmth. This is because energy is wasted in creating the hydrogen, then the e-fuel, then in burning it. For cars, using e-fuels requires five times more electricity than is needed than for battery-powered cars.
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Basically, it’s massively inefficient to use hydrogen fuel when you could just be using electricity and getting the job done with much quicker.
As researcher Falko Ueckerdt noted, there are some industries where it’s much harder to utilize electric power as a more eco-friendly option: long-distance air travel, steel production, shipping, and other chemical manufacturing. In those instances, it’s not a problem to consider hydrogen-based fuels as a stepping stone to more efficient options, as going fully electric all at once will be a challenge. For cars or amenities in our homes, we should stick to straight electricity.
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What our sperm would see if we left it on the moon – the view of the Earth appears over the Lunar horizon as the Apollo 11 Command Module comes into view of the Moon before Astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin Jr. leave in the Lunar Module, Eagle, to become the first men to walk on the Moon’s surface. Photo: NASA/Newsmakers (Getty Images)
We’ve been writing so much about Mars lately that we almost forgot about another familiar friendly face in the sky: the moon. Our constant companion, the subject of poetry, music and whole religions throughout human history. In 2021, Scientists looked up at our sweet sister of the solar system and thought “Man, it could use some jizz.”
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Well, jizz and eggs, but eggs aren’t nearly as funny.
This is serious science so you know this is actually going to be equal parts amazing and depressing. Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) held its annual Aerospace Conference over the weekend. One of the presentations came from the University of Arizona and was titled: “Lunar Pits and Lava Tubes for a Modern Ark.” The presentation lays out that we’re willing to store a catalog of Earth’s plant seeds in a remote Arctic island. Shouldn’t our precious bodily fluids get similar treatment?
[…] the bottom line of their proposal is that they want to build a sperm bank under the dusty regolith of the lunar surface, for safekeeping.
This “insurance policy” for the future of humanity and all of Earth’s species would be a repository of reproductive cells, including sperm and eggs. They propose that the bank could act as an ark, like the seed vault in Svalbard now, in case of catastrophe.
[…]
The University of Arizona team’s plans for a celestial sperm and egg locker involves storing the cells inside of lunar pits. The moon is pock-marked with 200 of these pits, which are 80 to 100 meters deep, where lava used to flow on the moon. They can protect against dramatic temperature changes, asteroids, or radiation.
See? Sending sperm to the moon just makes good ecological sense. The team was unclear on who’s genetic material would make it to the moon, but I have something of a modest proposal.
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The team behind the Modern Ark concept are no slouches either. Jekan Thanga, who presented for the team, heads the Space and Terrestrial Robotic Exploration (SpaceTREx) Laboratory and the NASA-supported ASTEROIDS (Asteroid Science, Technology and Exploration Research Organized by Inclusive eDucation Systems) Laboratory at the University of Arizona. He reminded his audience that sending genetic material to the moon isn’t just funny to the immature bloggers of the world, it could be vital for biodiversity in the event of a major catastrophe or just plain old climate change.
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The entire reason we may need to consider sending human and animal sperm and eggs to the moon is that Earth is an increasingly risky place for life, thanks mainly to us humans. From the video description of the talk:
It would serve as a global insurance policy. Earth faces probability of peril from various natural disasters and human threats such as global nuclear war that could wipe out a large number of species in a short time. Lunar lava tubes were discovered in 2013 and are likely to have remained pristine for 3-4 billion years. They are only 4-5 days from Earth. They are an excellent shelter against lunar surface temperature swings, cosmic radiation and micro-meteorites.
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We humans might make the Earth so unlivable that life’s only hope would be to hide in underground tunnels on a the sterile moon. See? I knew we could turn something as rock n’ roll as a blog about jizz on the moon into something depressing. Science!
