Global seed vault

The Global Seed Vault in Longyearbyen, Svalbard, Norway contains over 2 billion seeds.

The singing astronaut

An interview with Astronaut Chris Hadfield from Popular Mechanics

Quantum wells as a power source

In a story at Physics.org, a thermoelectric energy collector is described using quantum wells.

These little gadgets take heat from the air, turn it into electricity, and can power smaller electronics without any other outside input.

This would be interesting anyway, but the similarity to John Galt’s machine in Atlas Shrugged is really intriguing. Galt’s machine somehow extracts static electricity from the atmosphere in quantities large enough to power a household–Ayn Rand never explains the physics, of course.

Quantum well or quantum dot devices may never generate that amount of power, but the application to electronics may be profound. Imagine the heat from the processor and circuits being converted back into electricity to power the device, and cooling the device at the same time.

This artistic drawing of the proposed quantum well energy harvester shows the central hot region in red, the quantum wells in green, and the cold electrodes in blue. Credit: Bjӧrn Sothmann, et al.
Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2013-10-scientists-quantum-wells-high-power-easy-to-make.html#jCp

Fracking for geothermal energy

Technology Review has an article today about using fracking techniques to increase the efficiency of geothermal wells to produce electricity. The amount of energy available is almost endless, but with current technology we are unable to get a lot of power for the buck.

I remember learning in Earth Science class, in the ninth grade, that there was a lot of oil and gas in shale formations. At that time we did not know how to get it out, but there was faith in American technological advances, and free enterprise, that we would eventually learn to tap this energy source. That day has arrived, of course, through horizontal drilling combined with fracking. I have faith that this will happen with geothermal energy as well.

I am sure the anti-fracking folks will object. Science and engineering will provide the answers for our energy needs in the future, and I do not think it will be 12th century technology.

Once again…

From Science is Awesome

Has our weather been extreme?

According to Climate Depot:

New Study: ’2013 ranks as one of the least extreme U.S. weather years ever’– Many bad weather events at ‘historically low levels’

‘Whether you’re talking about tornadoes, wildfires, extreme heat or hurricanes, the good news is that weather-related disasters in the US are all way down this year compared to recent years and, in some cases, down to historically low levels.’
Tornadoes: ‘lowest total in several decades’
Number of wildfires: ‘On pace to be the lowest it has been in the past ten years’
Extreme Heat: The number of 100 degree days may ‘turn out to be the lowest in about 100 years of records’
Hurricanes: ‘We are currently in the longest period (8 years) since the Civil War Era without a major hurricane strike in the US (i.e., category 3, 4 or 5)’ ( last major hurricane to strike the US was Hurricane Wilma in 2005)

Al Gore, on the other hand says that the fingerprints of man-made climate change are now increasingly visible in extreme weather events, fueled by a warmer atmosphere that retains more moisture. He pointed to Hurricane Sandy, which caused insured losses of about $25 billion when it hit the U.S. East Coast last year, as well as drought that cut U.S. crop yields.

“The most powerful voice is that of Mother Nature, the increasing storms, floods, droughts and other extreme events,” Gore said. “We’re paying the cost of carbon every day and we should put a price on carbon in markets and put a price on denial in the political system.”

I consider myself a conservationist, and I am all about preserving the beauty and bounty of the earth that God gave us. I do not, however, believe that we should ruin the world economy by depriving ourselves of the least expensive energy available to us. Solar and wind energy are nice, but have their own drawbacks.The biggest negative is they are prohibitively expensive; when so-called “green” energy is cheap enough to compete with fossil fuels, the market will shift in that direction. Until then, it is ludicrous to expect the world to forego development for those whose religion is Gaia worship.

Are Oreos addictive?

Of course they are.

In a study at Connecticut College, researchers compared the brain activity of rats given Oreos vs. that of rats given IV cocaine. According to the researchers, “rats formed an equally strong association between the pleasurable effects of eating Oreos and a specific environment as they did between cocaine or morphine and a specific environment. [The Researchers] also found that eating cookies activated more neurons in the brain’s ‘pleasure center’ than exposure to drugs of abuse.”

I guess we should not be surprised. Everybody knows if you give a mouse a cookie…

Grasshopper

The SpaceX Grasshopper rocket–Takeoff and landing?

Interesting

From krulwich wonders