Goooood morning. There are a few sciencey things around this morning that we wanted to bring to your attention, so queue 5 Things: The Science Edition.
1. Australia’s first hydrogen refuelling station opens
Starting in Port Kembla and the ABC is reporting that Australia’s largest supplier of industrial gas, Coregas, has opened Australia’s first commercial hydrogen refuelling station for heavy vehicles at Port Kembla. Coregas reckons up to 10 trucks a day could be refilling at the station, that a typical 400-kilowatt vehicle would be able to refuel in 15 minutes from empty at the station and travel 650 kilometres on a tank of hydrogen. Are hydrogen vehicles better than electric?
2. Commercial-scale green hydrogen project scrapped
Over to Renew Economy and it’s reporting that Canadian gas giant Atco has scrapped plans for one of the first commercial-scale green hydrogen projects in Australia. Atco had planned to build a 10MW green hydrogen electrolyser next to Bright Energy’s 180MW Warradarge wind farm in Western Australia, fuelling the plant with renewable energy and producing 4.3 tonnes of green hydrogen a year. Per the report, it was one of three green hydrogen projects chosen by the Australian Renewable Energy Agency in 2021 to share in a total of more than $103 million in grants.
3. CSIRO touts HEPA filters for combatting bushfire season
CSIRO reckons portable air purifiers fitted with high-efficiency particulate air (HEPA) filters can substantially improve indoor air quality during bushfire events, citing new research that found HEPA filters have the potential, (when used appropriately), to substantially improve indoor air quality by 30–74 per cent during smoke episodes caused by prescribed burns. The findings are good news for the 2.7 million Aussies currently affected by asthma. Dyson Zone, anyone?
4. Mudcrab does it
Over the weekend, a team of engineers performed quite a strange world record attempt – the longest and deepest underwater drive. They were victorious. The team did it with a heavily modified electric 1978 Landcruiser, dubbed the ‘Mudcrab’. Per NT News, the team left Mandorah at 9am and arrived on Mindil Beach about 12 hours later.
5. Fruit flies don’t need no man
The Guardian is reporting that researchers in the UK have found a way to induce female fruit flies to produce offspring when there are no males around. Per the report, scientists said they identified the genes that enable one species of fruit fly to produce young without their eggs being fertilised by sperm. They then genetically tweaked another species that normally reproduces sexually to do the same. The research, published in the journal Current Biology, was conducted over six years and used 220,000 flies.
BONUS ITEM: I cannot begin to explain how utterly useless the ‘trending’ tab on Twitter cum X is – everything apparently trending is a few days old. Anyway, I couldn’t have said it better:
Anyway. See you tomorrow when your tech news briefing returns to tech news.