© Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
A Bengaluru startup called Vimag Labs just secured its fifth Indian patent for an electric motor that runs without any rare-earth magnets, using software and power electronics to generate its magnetic field instead.
It’s a small, $5-million company taking a swing at a problem that has stumped Tesla, GM, and every major automaker for years: how to build a competitive EV motor that doesn’t depend on China.
Archaeologists argue the bells were ritually “deactivated” after peace made their original purpose obsolete.HELSINKI — China confirmed a methalox Long March 10C as its commercial workhorse following its first successful booster recovery, while injecting fresh capital into commercial rocket ventures. The China Academy […]
The post China lines up methalox Long March 10C as commercial workhorse after first booster recovery appeared first on SpaceNews.
China's sprawling state-owned rocket developer, maker of the country's Long March rocket family, announced it recovered a reusable orbital-class booster for the first time Friday in the South China Sea.
The milestone mission began with the liftoff of a Long March 10B rocket from the Wenchang Commercial Space Launch Site on Hainan Island, China's southernmost province. Powered by seven kerosene-fueled engines, the approximately 209-foot-tall (63.6-meter) rocket took off at 12:15 am EDT (04:15 UTC), or 12:15 pm local time at the seaside spaceport at Wenchang.
About 10 minutes later, the Long March 10B booster descended from space and guided itself into a four-legged frame affixed to an offshore vessel. Tensioned cables stretched over the ship in a grid pattern captured the rocket as it shut down its landing engines, leaving the smoldering booster hanging in midair. The rocket's upper stage continued into orbit and deployed a payload known only as CX-26. Chinese officials hailed the flight as a "complete success."
© Chinese Foreign Ministry via X
On July 10, 2026, China’s new Long March 10B rocket lifted off from the Wenchang Space Launch Site on Hainan Island. Its upper stage successfully delivered a satellite into the planned orbit, while the first stage returned to Earth just six minutes after separation – not by landing on deployable legs like the Falcon 9, and not […]
The post All About Long March 10B: A Falcon 9 Competitor? appeared first on AERONAUT.media.
Australia just posted its biggest month ever for electric car sales, and for the first time seven different EVs each cleared 1,000 units in a single month.
Every one of them is either Chinese-owned or Chinese-built — and that includes the Tesla Model Y that topped the chart, which rolls off the line in Shanghai.
China Three Gorges Corporation (CTG) has put the world’s largest solar PV-plus-concentrated-solar hybrid into commercial trial operation in the Gobi Desert — and its headline trick is delivering power after sunset without a single lithium battery.
The 1-gigawatt Hami project in Xinjiang stores the sun’s energy as heat in molten salt, letting it keep generating for up to eight hours after dark.
Xiaomi has answered the biggest open question about Sky Nomad: it’s a second product series under Xiaomi EV, not the standalone sub-brand that had been rumored for months.
The company also revealed the first clear look at the lineup’s debut model — a rugged, boxy extended-range SUV — in a set of official teaser posters.
Xiaomi officially confirmed “Sky Nomad,” the name of its new extended-range electric vehicle (EREV) effort, after months of rumors. The first model is a full-size SUV expected to deliver over 1,500 km (932 miles) of combined range.
The announcement puts China’s hottest EV newcomer on a collision course with Li Auto and Huawei-backed Aito, which dominate the country’s lucrative family SUV segment.
A 2,600-year-old discovery in China has revealed an archaeological enigma: why were dozens of bronze artifacts within an ancient tomb scattered and broken at the time of their placement?
The discoveries, made within the Zaoshulin Cemetery, a major archaeological site in Suizhou City, Hubei province, China, included several bronze bells that were dispersed throughout the lord’s final resting place, following the destruction of their wooden hanging components.
Now archaeologists think the unusual discovery wasn’t an accident, but instead could be evidence of the “deactivation” of these ancient objects as part of a widespread ritual phenomenon from the ancient world.
Archaeologist Chinglong Tse, who is presently a Ph.D. candidate at the University College London’s Institute of Archaeology, says the bells found within the tomb were more than just instruments used to create sonorous ringing: they were the implements of a world filled with belief in spirits of our ancestors and other supernatural presences.
“If archaeologists treat objects as tools, they risk projecting the image of a modern, rational, secular man onto the past,” Tse recently said of the discoveries, which he details in a new study featured in the Cambridge Archaeological Journal.
The bells, according to Tse, were likely crafted sometime in the early to mid 600s B.C., when Lord Qiu of the Zeng state commissioned them as implements for summoning the strength of his ancestors in combating an enemy state in the region. During Qiu’s time, known as the Spring and Autumn period, rival states in China’s Zhou dynasty waged war for power over the region, and the period is recognized as one of early China’s most turbulent.
Before the ancient Chinese lord’s death, peace was achieved between the Zeng state and its enemies in the state of Chu. As an act of ritual to prepare Lord Qiu’s changing role in the afterlife, the dismantling of the bells was a means of “deactivating” them, as their purpose had already been fulfilled.
With their powerful supernatural effects disabled, Lord Qiu’s own path into the afterlife to join his ancestors was prepared for.
Qiu commissioned the crafting of these bronze bells as a charm to aid him during the period of unrest during which he reigned. The bells are magnificent artifacts, decorated in stylized dragons and featuring gemstones inlaid on their surfaces alongside inscriptions praising Qiu’s ancestors, all aimed at ensuring the protection of the Zeng territory.
According to history, Qiu would eventually wed the sister of the King of Chu, ending the rivalry between states, and thereby making these specially crafted bronze artifacts obsolete. Upon his death, the bells were intentionally “deactivated” with their wooden components removed, and the bells were scattered within Qiu’s tomb to prevent their intended function from carrying on into the afterlife.
Appearing nearby within the tomb were a newer set of simpler bronze bells, which were neatly stacked and facing toward the southeast, bearing inscriptions that indicate their intended role had been for the afterlife, rather than to aid during times of regional conflict during Qiu’s lifetime.
“We still know very little about how bronze bells were produced in the Zeng state,” says Tse, adding that archaeologists may be able to discern a significant amount of information about the beliefs and capabilities of the people who lived during Qiu’s time if deeper knowledge about the bronze bells they constructed could be gleaned.
Fundamentally, Tse argues that while it is tempting to project a materialist, utilitarian mindset onto such ancient artifacts, doing so risks misunderstanding their actual purpose and their relationship to the worldview and belief systems of their ancient creators.
In that sense, the curious collection of dragon bells within lord Qiu’s tomb is more than merely artifacts—they are part of an ancient story of conflict, peace, and traditional views on the afterlife in the world of ancient China.
Tse’s findings were recently published in a study, “The Bells Are Harmonious and Resonant’: Numinous Ancestors, Resonant Bells and the Personhood of Lord Qiu of Zeng in Tomb M190 at Zaoshulin, Hubei,” which appeared in the Cambridge Archaeological Journal.
Micah Hanks is the Editor-in-Chief and Co-Founder of The Debrief. A longtime reporter on science, defense, and technology with a focus on space and astronomy, he can be reached at micah@thedebrief.org. Follow him on X @MicahHanks, and at micahhanks.com.
As the United States of America celebrated its 250th birthday on terra firma with fireworks displays this weekend, two Asian countries made some splashes of their own farther from Earth.
On Sunday, an aging Japanese spacecraft named Hayabusa2, which completed its initial sample-return objective more than half a decade ago, found success with an extended mission that saw the vehicle fly by a peanut-shaped asteroid named Torifune.
Hours later, the Chinese space agency released images from a spacecraft, Tianwen-2, arriving at its target asteroid following a journey of 1 billion km. At this small asteroid, the Chinese spacecraft will attempt to retrieve samples and return them to Earth late next year.
© JAXA
Login