It's easy for Arizona residents to hope for widespread solar power usage - they don't have to think about the thousands of miles of new power lines on land that will be grabbed under eminent domain.
And you'd think hockey stick analogies regarding climate issues would be bad, since the most famous one turned out to be made up.
But University of Arizona postdoctoral electrochemist Erin Ratcliff can't resist. She says solar power is ready to take off. "We're right at the magic moment when the hockey stick starts to take off, when you go from flat to hockey stick. We're right there. It's exciting to read the literature and hope that, yes, we will take off. It will be exciting to look back and say 'I was there for that.'"
HD 87643, a member of the exotic class of B[e] stars, is in a very rich field of stars towards the Carina (the Keel) arm of the Milky Way. It recently became part of a set of observations that provide astronomers with the best ever picture of a B[e] star.
B[e] stars are stars of spectral type B, with emission lines in their spectra, hence the "e". They are surrounded by a large amount of dust.
Scientists at Imperial College London have created detailed 3D computer models of two fossilized specimens of ancient creatures called
Cryptomartus hindi and
Eophrynus prestvicii that lived around 300 million years ago and are closely related to modern-day spiders. The study reveals some of the physical traits that helped them to hunt for prey and evade predators.
The researchers created their images by using a CT scanning device, which enabled them to take 3,000 x-rays of each fossil. These x-rays were then compiled into precise 3D models, using custom-designed software.
Betelgeuse, the second brightest star in the constellation of Orion (the Hunter), is a red supergiant, one of the biggest stars known, and almost 1,000 times larger than our Sun.
To put that in perspective, if Betelgeuse were at the center of our Solar System it would extend out almost to the orbit of Jupiter, engulfing Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars and the main asteroid belt.
The world's environment ministers, government officials, diplomats and campaigners are preparing for the biggest poker game of their lives - the COP15 conference in Copenhagen in December 2009.
It's one of the most complicated political deals the world has ever seen but third world countries are holding the cards.
In Environmental Research Letters, the paper 'Tripping Points: Barriers and Bargaining Chips on the Road to Copenhagen' lays bare the main tripping points – those political barriers and bargaining chips – which need to be overcome for countries to reach a consensus on how to address global climate change.
CO2 reduction targets can be met with affordability. An EPRI report released this week concludes affordability requires a "full portfolio" of electricity sector technologies. Diverse generation "could simultaneously address the challenge of growing load demand while meeting carbon constraints and limiting increases in the cost of electricity."
Tangential Science: it's not necessarily science, but it's still funny.
Last month New York’s Attorney-General Andrew Cuomo criticized banks – including Citi, Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan Chase – for paying large (okay, huge) executive bonuses when the companies were losing money.
He called this an illicit transfer of shareholder wealth to the pockets of individual managers.
Cuomo’s report spurs me to tell you about a certain illicit transfer of taxpayer money to private pockets, one that’s been bothering me a lot...
What would you do with 3/4 of a kilogram of gear in space? For the price of a Harley-Davidson Sportster 883, you can now go to space.
InterOrbital Systems (IOS) has announced their
TubeSat Personal Satellite Kit. This is 'complete', giving you the basic interface bus for your payload and including the launch costs.
If I were a salesman, I'd point out that launches alone typically cost five times that price!
The previous low-access route to space was the CubeSat, which is still an active and viable program. TubeSat just adds competition, which can only be good. IOS even mentions "the new IOS TubeSat PS Kit is the low-cost alternative to the CubeSat."
Organic solar cells that can be produced easily and inexpensively are the perfect solution to future 'personalized' power generation.
Major obstacles remain, such as coaxing these carbon-based materials to reliably form the proper structure at the nanoscale level - tinier than 2-millionths of an inch - and be efficient in converting light to electricity, transforming at least 10 percent of the sunlight that they absorb into usable electricity.
