"Eye On The World"
Energy
Engergy – How It Slips Away
Feb 23rd
The red glow of warm adapter plugs shows they keep using power even when the appliances they’re connected to are turned off —as much in a year, in some cases, as the appliances themselves.
Today’s internal combustion engines are inefficient at converting fuel to motion. Cars waste up to 85 percent of the energy from the fuel in their tanks, losing a big chunk as heat.
Blue signifies the cool air escaping as a four-year-old dawdles at the fridge.
photos via: National Geographic
I am not a “sky is falling” global warming alarmist, however I do believe we could use less energy by making energy conservation More >
Lithium Batteries to Store 8X More
Nov 13th
South Korean Professor Cho Jae-Phil of Hanyang University and his team have developed lithium batteries that are 90% more efficient than current models. You will be able to do stuff 8 times longer – cell phones, notebook computers, cameras, etc. They replaced the graphite in the batteries with three-dimensional porous silicon particles. Professor Jae-Phil has hinted at merging this technology with solar panels. For More Info: Hallyutech.net
Solar Balloon – 400X Energy
Nov 12th
Cool Earth Solar has announced their Solar Balloon technology – an inflatable plastic thin-film balloon (solar concentrator) that focuses sunlight onto a photovoltaic cell held at it’s focal point. This design produces 400 times the electricity as would be possible without the “solar concentrator”.
Cool Earth is constructing a power plant in Livermore, CA using this new technology. This plant is modest in size, 1.4 Megawatts, but if works as expected, Cool Earth will launch a full sized power plant next summer. The plastic for this concentrator only costs $2.00.
Cool Earth Solar eyes rural power with balloons – Cnet.com Cool Earth Solar experiment with solar More >
Gas – How to Conserve It
Oct 23rd
Bruce McIntire over at It’s Car Stuff has a great post on something we are all thinking about these days – Gas and how to make it go furrrrrther.
His tips include:
- Your feet – don’t use the pedals as a foot rest and walk rather than drive when you can.
- Plan and combine – Plan and group your trips.
- Slow down a little – Drive at the average speed with the stoplight in mind, you’re more likely to get more green lights.
- Keep up with maintenance – Maintain your car to keep it in top shape
- Lighten the load – Remove excess weight from your car.
- Pump More >
World’s Largest LED Screen – 33 Stories
Oct 6th
US $4.00 per gallon gas and now the United Arab Emirates, a tiny country with the 5th largest GDP per capita in the world, will build an LED screen that can be seen from over a mile!
Don’t get me wrong – I don’t blame the Arabs for our predicament. I blame us and our Government. Had we taken action starting back in 1973 to work towards energy independence, we would not now be dependent on foreign countries for a large portion of our energy supply.
Way back in the 60’s we put a man on the moon in less than ten More >
CERN Black Hole – The Big Rewind
Sep 16th
View this FULL SCREEN for best effect!
CERN’s massive particle collider (Large Hadron Collider or LHC) is a 17 mile ring of supercooled magnets buried 330 feet underground on the Swiss/French border. LHC’s computational and data infrastructure is made up of tens of thousands of computers around the world. The first particle collisions will occur in October 2008. The collisions will be recorded on LHC’s detectors – huge digital cameras that weigh thousands of tons and capable of taking millions of snapshots per second. The LHC experiments could reveal more about dark matter/anti-matter and hidden dimensions of time and space.
from Discovery News:
Particle Smasher’s More >
Your XR3 Hybrid
Aug 7th
Get your XR3 Hybrid Plans from Robert G. Riley Enterprises, do a little project in your garage and get from 125 to 225 mpg with this cool two seater plug-in/deisel hybrid:
The times are a changing – the high cost of gasoline/diesel will drive the change to sleeker, smaller and more fuel efficient automobiles and other modes of transportation. According to the LA Times Business Section – the plug-in hybrid‘s time is here. The plug-in hybrid uses lithium-ion batteries that are recharged from a standard home electric outlet. These vehicles can go about 40 miles on electricity from one charge before they More >
Finally – the Solar Energy Revolution has Arrived
Aug 2nd
Ma as-salaamah
(Goodbye & Good Riddance) to Foreign Oil
Scientists mimic essence of plants’ energy storage system ‘Major discovery’ from MIT primed to unleash solar revolution – MIT News Office.“Requiring nothing but abundant, non-toxic natural materials, this discovery could unlock the most potent, carbon-free energy source of all: the sun. “This is the nirvana of what we’ve been talking about for years,” said MIT’s Daniel Nocera, the Henry Dreyfus Professor of Energy at MIT and senior author of a paper describing the work in the July 31 issue of Science. “Solar power has always been a limited, far-off solution. Now More >
