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A technique for creating a new molecule that structurally and chemically replicates the active part of the widely used industrial catalyst molybdenite has been developed by researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab).
link:http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/02/120209152810.htmA technique for creating a new molecule that structurally and chemically replicates... more
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Project Icarus is a 21st century theoretical study of a mission to another star. Icarus aims to build on the work of the celebrated Daedalus project. Between the period 1973-1978 members of the BIS undertook a theoretical study of a flyby mission to Barnard's star 5.9 light years away. This was Project Daedalus and remains one of the most complete studies of an interstellar probe to date. The 54,000 ton two-stage vehicle was powered by inertial confinement fusion using electron beams to compress the D/He3 fusion capsules to ignition. It would obtain an eventual cruise velocity of 36,000km/s or 12% of light speed from over 700kN of thrust, burning at a specific impulse of 1 million seconds, reaching its destination in approximately 50 years. http://www.makeahistory.com/index.php/submit-an-article/42972-project-icarusProject Icarus is a 21st century theoretical study of a mission to another star.... more
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PART ONE..........
Nuclear threat level raised
Crisis rates in most severe category
Japan nuclear agency raises threat level
By Matt Smith, CNN
April 11, 2011 11:11 p.m. EDT
Click on picture to play Video
Anatomy of a ghost town
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
NEW: The agency raises the level from 5 to 7
7 is the highest possible level and is on par with Chernobyl
Japan's government has called for further evacuations
Cities covered by Monday's orders should evacuate in about a month, Edano says
Tokyo (CNN) -- Japanese authorities Tuesday "provisionally" declared the country's nuclear accident a level-7 event on the international scale for nuclear disasters -- the highest level -- putting it on par with the 1986 Chernobyl disaster.
Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency announced the new level Tuesday morning. It had previously been at 5.
Regulators have determined the amount of radioactive iodine released by the damaged reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant was at least 15 times the volume needed to reach the top of the International Nuclear Event Scale, the agency said. That figure is still about 10 percent of the amount released at Chernobyl, they said.
The amount of radioactive Cesium-137, which has a half-life of 30 years, is about one-seventh the amount released at Chernobyl, according to the agency.
Japan's nuclear concerns explained
Hidehiko Nishiyama, the safety agency's chief spokesman, explained the final level won't be set until the disaster is over and a more detailed investigation has been conducted.
Tetsunari Iida, a former nuclear engineer-turned-industry critic, told CNN the declaration has no immediate practical impact on the crisis. It is a sign, however, that Japanese regulators have rethought their earlier assessments of the disaster, said Iida, who now runs an alternative energy think-tank in Tokyo.
According to the scale, a level 5 equates to the likelihood of a release of radioactive material, several deaths from radiation and severe damage to a reactor core.
The 1979 incident at Pennsylvania's Three Mile Island was a 5. The partial meltdown of a reactor core there was deemed the worst nuclear accident in U.S. history.
The Chernobyl accident in the former Soviet Union rated a 7 on the scale, which equates to a "major release of radioactive material with widespread health and environmental effects requiring implementation of planned and extended countermeasures."
Japan's government called for evacuations Monday from several towns beyond the danger zone already declared around Fukushima Daiichi, warning that residents could receive high doses of radiation over the coming months.
Japan to evacuate more towns
Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said the municipalities are likely to see long-term radiation levels that exceed international safety standards, and he warned that the month-old crisis at Fukushima Daiichi is not yet over.
"Things are relatively more stable, and things are stabilizing," he said. "However, we need to be ready for the possibility that things may turn for the worse."
And about an hour after he spoke, a fresh earthquake rattled the country, forcing workers to evacuate the plant and knocking out power to the three damaged reactors for about 40 minutes, the plant's owner, the Tokyo Electric Power Company, reported. The magnitude 6.6 tremor came a month to the day after the magnitude 9 quake and tsunami that knocked out the plant's cooling systems, and followed a magnitude 7.1 aftershock Thursday night.
Neither the 6.6 quake nor any of the smaller ones that rippled across the region in its wake inflicted any more damage to the plant, Tokyo Electric officials told reporters.
At least six killed in latest Japan quake
Tuesday morning, a fire broke out in a battery storage building in a water discharge area of reactors 1-4 at Fukushima Daiichi, Tokyo Electric said. The fire was out a few hours later and the company said it caused no radiation emissions and no effect on cooling systems.
Japan's government said it did not know how many people would be displaced by the new evacuation orders. Evacuation orders have so far covered about 85,000 people inside the 20-kilometer (12.4-mile) zone, while another 62,000 within 30 kilometers have been told to stay inside, Fukushima prefecture officials told CNN.
The decision announced Monday does not create a wider radius around the plant, said Masanori Shinano, an official with Japan's Nuclear Safety Commission.
Instead, "if there are areas in the northwestern parts where there is a risk of exceeding 20 millisieverts as a cumulative dose over a one-year period, the area will be designated an evacuation area even if it is beyond the 30-kilometer area," Shinano told reporters Monday night.
That dose is a tiny fraction of what would cause immediate radiation sickness, but it's more than seven times the amount a typical resident of a western industrialized country receives from background sources in a year. Long-term exposures to those levels of radiation could increase the risk of cancer -- and the presence of cesium isotopes that have half-lives of up to 30 years means that radioactivity could linger for some time.
CONTINUED.......PART ONE..........
Nuclear threat level raised
Crisis rates in most severe... more
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The Japanese company Genepax presents its eco-friendly car that runs on nothing but water. The car has an energy generator that extracts hydrogen from water that is poured into the car’s tank. The generator then releases electrons that produce electric power to run the car.The Japanese company Genepax presents its eco-friendly car that runs on nothing but... more
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Speaking at the National Meeting of the American Chemical Society in California, MIT professor Daniel Nocera claims to have created an artificial leaf made from stable and inexpensive materials that mimics nature’s photosynthesis process.
The device is an advanced solar cell, no bigger than a typical playing card, which is left floating in a pool of water. Then, much like a natural leaf, it uses sunlight to split the water into its two core components, oxygen and hydrogen, which are stored in a fuel cell to be used when producing electricity.
Nocera’s leaf is stable — operating continuously for at least 45 hours without a drop in activity in preliminary tests — and made of widely available, inexpensive materials — like silicon, electronics and chemical catalysts. It’s also powerful, as much as 10 times more efficient at carrying out photosynthesis than a natural leaf.
With a single gallon of water, Nocera says, the chip could produce enough electricity to power a house in a developing country for an entire day. Provide every house on the planet with an artificial leaf and we could satisfy our 14-terrawatt need with just one gallon of water a day.
Those are impressive claims, but they’re also not just pie-in-the-sky, conceptual thoughts. Nocera has already signed a contract with a global megafirm to commercialize his groundbreaking idea. The mammoth Indian conglomerate, Tata Group has forged a deal with the MIT professor to build a small power plant, the size of a refrigerator, in about a year and a half.
This isn’t the first ever artificial leaf, of course. The concept of emulating nature’s energy-generating process has been around for decades and many scientists have tried to create leaves in that time. The first, built more than 10 years ago by John Turner of the U.S. National Renewable Energy Laboratory, was efficient at faking photosynthesis but was made of rare and hugely expensive materials. It was also highly unstable, and had a lifespan of barely one day.
For now, Nocera is setting his sights on developing countries. “Our goal is to make each home its own power station,” he said. “One can envision villages in India and Africa not long from now purchasing an affordable basic power system based on this technology.”
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/03/artificial-leaf/Speaking at the National Meeting of the American Chemical Society in California, MIT... more
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Central Finding
The overarching finding of this study is that a zero-CO2 U.S. economy can
be achieved within the next thirty to fifty years without the use of nuclear
power and without acquiring carbon credits from other countries. In other
words, actual physical emissions of CO2 from the energy sector can be
eliminated with technologies that are now available or foreseeable. This
can be done at reasonable cost while creating a much more secure
energy supply than at present. Net U.S. oil imports can be eliminated in
about 25 years. All three insecurities – severe climate disruption, oil supply
and price insecurity, and nuclear proliferation via commercial nuclear
energy – will thereby be addressed. In addition, there will be large
ancillary health benefits from the elimination of most regional and local air
pollution, such as high ozone and particulate levels in cities, which is due
to fossil fuel combustion.
http://www.ieer.org/carbonfree/covercfnf.jpgCentral Finding
The overarching finding of this study is that a zero-CO2 U.S.... more
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The shower is well known as a source of good ideas. But the toilet? Equally promising, says Gerardine Botte, a professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at Ohio University who has developed a technology to generate hydrogen fuel from urine.
Botte recognized that urine contains two compounds that could be a source of hydrogen: ammonia and urea. Place an electrode in wastewater, apply a gentle current, and voila: hydrogen gas that can be used to power a fuel cell.
Her system operates similarly to the electrolysis of water, a process that can be used to produce hydrogen for fuel cells - except that ammonia and urea hold their hydrogen atoms less tightly than water does, so less energy is required to split them off. Botte isn't the only scientist with her mind in the sewer. A group of scientists in the UK, for example, is working on a fuel cell powered directly by urine.
Botte's technology has the greatest potential for power generation in settings where large numbers of people gather - airports and sports stadiums, for example. An office building with 200 to 300 workers could generate 2 kilowatts of power, Botte has calculated. Granted, that's not enough to power the building, but every drop in the bucket helps.
The approach could also address pollution associated with animal feedlots. The urine produced by 1,000 cows could generate 40 to 50 kilowatts of power, Botte estimates - getting rid of noxious ammonia in the process.
Earlier this year, E3 Clean Technologies was launched to commercialize "pee power," with Botte as chief technology officer. The company aims to have a "GreenBox" prototype ready by the end of next year and sees cities as its first potential customers. "You can clean the water in a municipal wastewater treatment plant with much less energy," Botte says.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/mar/09/pee-power-fuel-hydrogen-urineThe shower is well known as a source of good ideas. But the toilet? Equally promising,... more
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CCM News New York - The fourth edition of Eco-Trek - one of the first ever syndicated green online news magazines and presented by German actress Anita Anthonj- is now available for download and re-publishing for websites, newspapers, and magazine.
Eco Trek producers are traveling with the Mercedes F-Cell World Drive around the globe. After crossing Europe and driving more than 3700 kilometers or 2300 miles - emission free - the Mercedes F-CELL World Drive has completed its first leg on its ride around the world. In this weeks episode of Eco-Trek we catch up with the tour in its final location in Europe, Portugal. Join us as we discover some of many ways Portugal is redefining the concept of green design.
Poem Paved Bike Path:
The bike paths wind around the riverbank in Tejo River in Lisbon display the poetry of Portuguese writer Fernando Pessoa. The project was designed by the municipality of Lisbon to promote urban cycling.
Interview with Eco-Architect & Designer Pedro Campos Costa:
Cardboard is a resourceful material being used widely to make a clean green statement. Designer Pedro Campos Costa who is best known for his design of the extension of Lisbon's Ocenario has created an intricate installation within Lisbon's LOW Bar. The glue-free cardboard creation acts as a seating unit, a shelving unit and is a remarkable work of art.
Stone House in Portugal:
This eco-friendly getaway is wedged between four large boulders in the mountains of Fafe, Portugal and is a spectacle of green design.
Join us next week as Eco-Trek brings you more great green news stories from the path of the Mercedes F-Cell World Drive as the tour leaves Europe and continues on to the US from Miami, Florida.
For More Eco-Trek Episodes log on to: http://www.youtube.com/user/EcoTrek2011CCM News New York - The fourth edition of Eco-Trek - one of the first ever syndicated... more
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Researchers at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory have developed a biohybrid photoconversion system -- based on the interaction of photosynthetic plant proteins with synthetic polymers -- that can convert visible light into hydrogen fuel.
LINK : http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/02/110203152544.htmResearchers at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory have... more
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A New Planet — from Beyond the Galaxy
Read more: http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,2032054,00.html#ixzz15hGdcBa9
By Michael D. Lemonick Thursday, Nov. 18, 2010
Picture: This artist's impression shows HIP 13044 b, an exoplanet orbiting a star that entered our galaxy, the Milky Way, from another galaxy.
AFP / Getty Images
Read more: http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,2032054,00.html#ixzz15hH2S4xq
Billions of years before the Sun was born, the Milky Way galaxy flicked out its gravitational tongue and slurped down a tiny neighboring galaxy that had ventured too close. The evidence for that ancient act of cosmic cannibalism is the still-digesting remains of the meal: a handful of relatively nearby stars known as the Helmi Stream, whose weird orbits — above and below the plain of the galaxy — are a tipoff to their weird origin.
Now one of those stars has a second claim to fame. HIP 13044, as it's unglamorously known, has a planet whirling around it — the first planet ever found from outside the Milky Way. Aside from its extra-galactic origin, the planet itself, found with a medium-size telescope at the European Southern Observatory in Chile, and described in a new paper in Science, isn't especially remarkable. It's a bit bigger than Jupiter and orbits its parent star in about 16 days — a "year" so short it would once have been considered impossible for so giant a planet, until multiple discoveries of many similar worlds proved such a revolution rate to be pretty common. (See pictures of the labor of space exploration.)
It's the star itself that makes the discovery of a planet surprising, for a couple of reasons. For one thing, its age — perhaps 7 or 8 billion years — means that while HIP 13044 was once much like the Sun, it's gone through a dramatic change of life. As it burned through its supply of hydrogen, the star would have swelled to become a so-called red giant, tens, or even hundreds of times its original size. When that happens to our Sun billions of years from now, Earth will probably be destroyed. Indeed, there's some circumstantial evidence that HIP 13044 may have gulped down a few planets itself, says the paper's lead author Johny Setiawan, of Germany's Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, in Heidelberg. "The star is a fast rotator," he says, "and theory predicts that if a star swallows a planet its rotation rate should increase."
But the new planet, called HIP 13044b, survived the cataclysm. That's probably because the Jupiter-size world originally occupied a Jupiter-like orbit, much farther from its star than Earth is from the Sun. It spiraled in to its present orbit only after HIP 13044 shrank back to a more dignified size — another common stage of life for stars, which return to their original dimensions when they start burning the helium in their core. A tiny handful of planets have been seen orbiting stars that are currently red giants, but this is the first to be found in the next chapter of a star's life. (See pictures of Russia's cosmonaut training center.)
The other thing that makes the star unusual is its composition. The Sun is mostly hydrogen and helium, but it also has significant traces of heavier elements like oxygen, carbon and iron, a quality astronomers call "metallicity" despite the non–metallic nature of some of those elements.
"In the Milky Way," says Setiawan, "the more metals a star has, the more likely it is to have planets." The reason for that is simple: both stars and planets coalesce out of the same vast pool of dust and gas. The higher the metallicity, the bigger the supply of building material and the likelier that some will be left over to form planets.
Dwarf galaxies like the one in which HIP 13044 was born, however — and like the two dozen or so that still orbit the Milky Way — have stars that are notably metal-poor. It was unclear until now whether that meant they'd also be planet-poor. The fact that Setiawan and his colleague Rainer Klement, also of the Max Planck Institute, found one so easily suggests this isn't the case. "Either they were incredibly lucky," says Eric Ford, a planet-searcher at the University of Florida, "or planets aren't uncommon around stars like these."
Whatever the answer, HIP 13044b is clearly a very different world from any we've seen before, one that — without the aid of celestial metals — formed in a very different way. And that in turn suggests that the field of planetary science, which seemed so tidy and settled as recently as the 1990s, is still full of surprises.A New Planet — from Beyond the Galaxy
Read more:... more
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It may look like any average building but behind closed doors could lie the answer to safe renewable energy of the future. Here at the National Ignition Facility in Livermore California, scientists are aiming to build the world's first sustainable fusion reactor by 'creating a miniature star on Earth'. Following a series of key experiments over the last few weeks, the £2.2 billion project has inched a little closer to its goal of igniting a workable fusion reaction by 2012. http://www.makeahistory.com/index.php/your-details/11685-creating-a-miniature-star-on-earthIt may look like any average building but behind closed doors could lie the answer to... more
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Two more people with fully functional water-powered cars, and this time, they are both Americans:
A Middle Tennessee State University professor drove 500 miles on Monday in a Toyota Tercel converted to be powered by water and the sun.
Dr. Cliff Ricketts’ hydrogen-powered drove from Bristol to West Memphis, Ark., on Monday, the Knoxville News Sentinel reports. Hydrogen-power is not new. What made Ricketts’ trip unique is that the hydrogen was gathered using electrolysis — a process that separates the hydrogen and oxygen in water.
Ricketts said he got about 45 miles per gallon.
http://www.wsmv.com/news/25608611/detail.html
Steve Schappert of Connecticut converted a 72 Mustang to run on water in addition to gasoline- so it uses much less gasoline.
http://brookfield.patch.com/articles/brookfielder-looks-to-the-future-with-water-powered-car
These people need funding and support to perfect these technologies and start mass producing these cars!Two more people with fully functional water-powered cars, and this time, they are both... more
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Back in the summer of 1962, the U.S. blew up a hydrogen bomb in outer space, some 250 miles above the Pacific Ocean. It was a weapons test, but one that created a man-made light show that has never been equaled — and hopefully never will. http://www.makeahistory.com/index.php/submit-an-article/419-starfish-primeBack in the summer of 1962, the U.S. blew up a hydrogen bomb in outer space, some 250... more
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Every physicist is taught that information cannot be transmitted faster than the speed of light. Yet laboratory experiments done over the last 30 years clearly show that some things appear to break this speed limit without upturning Einstein's special theory of relativity. http://www.makeahistory.com/index.php/your-details/405-faster-than-lightEvery physicist is taught that information cannot be transmitted faster than the speed... more
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Lockheed Martin has been developing technology to save the world from fossil fuels since the 1970s, and are getting really close to finishing their work on Hydrogen. Yes, hydrogen, the stuff everyone associates with a burning Hindenburg mental image. For those who are in the know, Hydrogen will become our end-all-be-all energy source (see www.phoenixprojectfoundation.us/ for more info on the details about it). The video above is just a sample of what will be coming our way. I'm excited, and if you just watched that video, you're excited too. Water = energy!
The way it works is by exploiting the temperature difference in Tropical Oceans (top layer of water is warm, deeper waters are cold, got it?). The system uses a "working fluid"...which is a fluid that is gas in warm water temperatures and liquid at lower temperatures. The fluid is pumped between the two temperature levels, boils, turns a generator, then repeats. The generator LM is building/testing now is 10MW.
No big...BUT the technology is scalable to 100MW, which is enough to power small cities. Two or three (or a hella lot, since the things are pollution free and the ocean is big enough) and you've got inexhaustible energy on the majority of coastlines worldwide.
Boom, goodnight oil, coal, natural gas, nuclear.
Suck it BP, Big Oil, Mountain Killing Coal, Terrorists, Nuclear, 'cause you all just lost your bets to Hydrogen.
Check out this website, they're smart and thorough:
www.phoenixprojectfoundation.us/
Go Hydrogen.
CTJLockheed Martin has been developing technology to save the world from fossil fuels... more
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"After 53 years of investigation, I'm convinced we're dealing here with a cosmic Watergate," he told AOL News. "That means a few people within major governments have known since at least 1947 that some UFOs are alien spacecraft." .... "Now is probably the time to say, yes, we're part of a galactic neighborhood; unfortunately, we're not the big shots in the neighborhood." http://www.makeahistory.com/index.php/submit-an-article/400-vast-ufo-"After 53 years of investigation, I'm convinced we're dealing here with... more
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Ronn Motors Scorpion is a supercar that will jump from 0 to 60 mph in 3.5 seconds and achieve 40 mpg (5.9L/100km)Ronn Motors Scorpion is a supercar that will jump from 0 to 60 mph in 3.5 seconds and... more
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(PhysOrg.com) -- Water splitting is a clean way to generate hydrogen, which is seen by many as the fuel of the future. Scientists from the Energy Technology Research Institute, AIST in Tsukuba, Japan now report in ChemSusChem on a process that uses chemical energy to generate both hydrogen and electricity. The researchers, headed by Haoshen Zhou, foresee the use of this process in fuel cells for mobile applications.
Powering vehicles and devices with fossil-fuel-based energy is not sustainable, and hydrogen has often been proposed as a way out of the current energy gridlock. However, the production of hydrogen can itself result in large carbon dioxide emissions. One way to avoid this drawback is to make use of the energy of sunlight; first storing the energy in chemical entities, and then releasing the stored energy in straightforward reactions in fuel cells that provide mobile power.
Most people have seen their high-school chemistry teacher demonstrate the violent reaction between sodium and water, in which sodium is reduced. The metals that demonstrate this behavior are part of the alkali metals, which also includes potassium, cesium, and lithium. Dr. Zhou and his team report that by containing the reaction between lithium and water in a closed system two goals can be achieved simultaneously: the chemical reaction produces a current as well as hydrogen, in a controllable manner.
The closed fuel cell system has two compartments separated by a membrane: one compartment contains the lithium (anode) in an organic solvent, while the other contains an aqueous electrolyte solution with an electrode (cathode). Upon reaction a current is produced by electrons from the oxidation of lithium, flowing from the anode to the cathode. When the electrons arrive at the cathode, they reduce water to hydrogen.
Controlling the current also controls the rate of hydrogen generation. Another attractive aspect of this technology is that lithium metal can be produced from salt solutions (e.g., sea water) by using sunlight. In other words, energy from the sun can be "stored" in the metal, and then be used on demand by reacting the lithium in the fuel cell. Recharging the battery would be a matter of replacing the lithium metal cell.
According to Zhou, "Lithium, which is already widely used in various lithium ion batteries and will also be applied in the lithium-air fuel cell and this lithium-water/hydrogen/fuel cell system in the future, may lead humanity to enter a new sustainable lithium society, based on smart grid systems of lithium energy networks." The results demonstrated by the researchers from Tsukuba enable the use of sunlight to eventually produce electricity as well as hydrogen, and can contribute to the further development of a sustainable lifestyle through technology.(PhysOrg.com) -- Water splitting is a clean way to generate hydrogen, which is seen by... more
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