There’s good news and bad news. The bad news is we are doing our darnedest to destroy the planet where we live. The good news is that astronomers think it’s just a matter of time before they find the Earth’s twin. Astronomers said that last week they found three super-Earths, bigger than our planet, rocky and orbiting a single star. Dozens of other masses were found around other stars.

“Being able to find three Earth-mass planets around a single star really makes the point that not only may many stars have one Earth, but they may very well have a couple of Earths,” said a planet formation theorist at the Carnegie Institution of Washington in Washington, D.C.

The key word there, of course, is theorist. As for me, since we are messing up this planet so badly, I can’t imagine why the Creator would give us another one to destroy. Still, the theorists are predicting they will find Earth’s twin in the next five years or so, give or take a millennium maybe?

“What is amazing to me is that for thousands of years humans have gazed at the stars, wondering if there might be another Earth out there somewhere,” Boss told SPACE.com. “Now we know enough to say that Earth-like planets are indeed orbiting many of those stars, unseen perhaps, but there nevertheless.”

Indeed they are orbiting though unseen? I don’t get it. Where is the proof? Still, like Jody Foster’s dad said in some movie, “If there is no life out there, it’s a terrible waste of space.” Do you think there is life out there? Why?

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Casio Computer has found a way to substitute fluorine gas for sulfur hexafluoride.  Sulfur hexafluoride is used in the processing of silicon thin films for LCD panels. As greenhouse gases go, sulfur hexafluoride is also 20,000 times worse than CO2. Casio thinks that if it eliminates this chemical the company will reduce its overall greenhouse gas emissions by about 205.

Casio Computer says  -

“Fluorine gas is difficult to handle because it is highly reactive and potentially explosive. The company solved this issue through careful management of hydrochloric acid and sulfuric acid levels. For the processing of silicon thin films, the company determined it could achieve the same quality as with sulfur hexafluoride by optimizing the volume of fluorine gas used and adjusting the voltage and other parameters.”

Evaluation of the use of fluorine gas will continue until the end of the year at such time a decision will be made. Does that line “highly reactive and potentially explosive” concern anybody else besides me? Casio also makes dandy wrist watches that can do all sorts of things, elevations, barometers, hail taxi cabs and such.

“Hey, Taro! Where’s you arm?”

“Ah, just another failed fluorine test for Casio. No big deal.”

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The world’s speed and nuclear power do not belong in the same sentence, but sure enough China is doing its darnedest to build as many nuclear power plants as it can, using OLD technology. Their target is 4 new generators each year, through 2015.

However, the nuclear plants are going to be just a partial answer for its mounting pollution, energy security problems and the fast growing electricity use, because they will not be able to provide more than 5 percent of its power. Is coal still an option for them? Did they never hear of wind or solar power?

China’s nuclear power companies want to export that ability and technology overseas and the biggest problem would be a huge push to expand the country’s reliance on nuclear power domestically.

Nuclear power is an alternative if it is managed correctly, and when it does go wrong, it goes seriously wrong. But, who manages it correctly?

Did you know that mountains grow at a relatively fast rate (a few mm each year) until the forces that form them are no longer active? Apparently that’s the case with the Andes Mountains which are one of the longest and highest mountain ranges in the world.

For millions of years the Andes grew slowly. Then all of a sudden, 10 - 6 million years ago things changed. Geologists at the University of Rochester in NY, led by professor Carmala Garzione, revealed that in the last 4 million years the Andes grew by as much as 2,500 meters. Furthermore, things are not about to stop.

Formed in the Jurassic period (150-200 milion years ago) as a result of plate tectonics processes which caused a large sheet of crust, the Nazca plate, they slid under the South American plate. What’s more,the Andes are still active.

This new discovery may suggest that the tectonic plates theory, which explains how mountains are formed (two tectonic plates pushing against each other), should be updated. The new “theory” was named delamination, and refers to denser rocks that can detach from the underside of the crust allowing the lighter crust to rise in sudden bursts.

Garzione and her colleagues are now trying to find out what were the effects of such a rapid growth of the Andes (and probably other mountains, too) on climate and the evolution of life on Earth.

Images by 1, 2, 3, 4

image by WYGD

Daniel Burd is an 11th grader from Canada, that wants to turn his school science project into a dream come true. The guy is certain that if a plastic bag takes 1,000 years to decompose it’s because of the microorganisms behind it, and Burd thinks he has a method that will cause them to decompose in just three months.

The young scientist searched for those “guilty” of decomposing plastic bags and found two strains of bacteria that work together; the primary bacteria is Sphingomonas while the other one is Pseudomonas. Creating an industrial solution for plastic bags that would only last for three month is extremely simple. “All you need is a fermenter . . . your growth medium, your microbes and your plastic bags,” Burd said.

Though it doesn’t solve the pollution in the Pacific, this guy’s idea is a simple enough that it might just work well enough to change the world (at least a bit). He deserves congratulations and some money to continue his research and make it a real solution, instead of a project.

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Naked Bike Riders Protest Car Pollution

Lycra-trimmed, ultra-mini Salmon-Skin Bikini. Are you serious?

Source: The Record

The Phoenix Mars Mission is a true partnership between the government, academia and the industry that was designed to study the history of water and the habitabillity potential on the Martian arctic’s ice-rich soil.

If everything goes as planned, on Sunday - May 25th, the Phoenix space craft is going to land on Mars. It will enter the Martian atmosphere at 13,000 mph and after finishing a set of events it should land on three “feet” at 5mph. Let’s hope everything will go smoothly and we’ll be able to find out more about the red planet.

If you want to be informed, this is NASA’s landing blog.

via Courier-Journal

A volcano is the last place to be nearby when it erupts and after 9,000 years of slumber the awakening is obviously beyond words. Chile’s Chaitén Volcano went off, spewing lava and ash 12 miles high into the air. As if the whole image wasn’t terrible enough, the five-day eruption was accompanied by lightning and rain which carpeted the whole surroundings in 6-inch deep ash and mud.

More than 4,000 people were forced to leave their home town of Chaitén by boat, from May 2 when the volcano showed first signs of an explosion.

A thick column of ash was sent into the stratosphere, streaming across Patagonia to the Atlantic. Officials in Argentina reported they have noticed ash falling in the southern part of the country.

Though the amount of lava that is very small, very thick and moving slowly right now, Government vulcanologist Luis Lara warned that the dangers the eruption may have caused could last for months.

Radiocarbon dating suggests that the volcano last erupted around 7420 B.C., according to the Smithsonian Institution’s Global Volcanism Program.

© image copyright : National Geographic

During a research voyage to the Bering Sea in the summer of 2007 the guys at Greenpeace came out with an interesting discovery. A new species of sponge was found in the depths of the underwater canyons (Pribilof Canyon), a unique habitat that we don’t know much about except that fishing methods like bottom trawling may destroy it. They named the “new” sponge Aaptos kanuux from the Unungan word that means heart (kanuux).

Apart from the discovery, George Pletnikoff, Greenpeace USA’s Alaska Office Oceans Campaigner and a native of the Unungan communities on the Pribilof Islands warned that the deep waters are at risk because of overfishing and if these canyons won’t be able to pump the much needed nutrients such an ecosystem may fail and the life of people depending on these waters could be in jeopardy.

“We know so little about the seas around us and far less about the open oceans. This amazing discovery underscores the need for the UN to establish a global network of marine reserves and to stop the current free-for-all whereby habitats and species are being destroyed before scientists have even had a chance to give them names,” said Richard Page, an oceans campaigner for Greenpeace International.

There must be something we can do to protect marine life: “if we want fish tomorrow we need marine reserves now“.

It’s beautiful down there, check out this video.

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The results of the latest World Glacier Monitoring Service report, showed that 30 glaciers around the world lost a record amount of ice in 2006. These are the obvious repercussions of global warming and Professor Wilfried Haeberli, director of the monitoring service, told The Observer that “glaciers melt at fastest rate in past 5,000 years“.

Glacier melting into the sea near the southern tip of Greenland by Silversprite

Biggest concerns about melting glaciers are risen sea levels, floods, avalanches and drought that not only put people’s lives in jeopardy but are threatening eco-systems, too.

“We’re talking about something that happens in your and my lifespan. We’re not talking about something hypothetical, we’re talking about something dramatic in its consequences” said Achim Steiner, head of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP).

The problems are real and the melting glaciers are highly relevant to what we are about to face. Tony Blair an ambassador for action on climate change in the ‘Breaking the Climate Deadlock’ initiative, began a series of high-level environmental meetings in Japan, China and India.

“We have reached the critical moment of decision on climate change. Failure to act now would be deeply and unforgivably irresponsible. The scale of what is needed is so great that the purpose of any global action is not to ameliorate or to make better our carbon dependence, it is to transform the nature of economies and societies in terms of carbon consumption and emissions.

If the average person in the US is, say, to emit per capita, one-tenth of what they do today and those in the UK or Japan one-fifth, we’re not talking of adjustment, we’re talking about a revolution”, Tony Blair said yesterday in Chiba, Japan.

Will we do anything about it? Sure hope so.

A new technology patented by a new Turkish company, Solitem Group and Germans from MAN Ferrostaal should offer high efficiency solar thermal cooling systems. Yes you’re reading it right, these two companies claim they can cool your house by harnessing the heat of the sun. They tested their systems in several Southern Europe and used roof-top and ground systems, and it works.

The technology is based on 1.8-meter wide parabolic trough collectors made entirely out of aluminum, that are able to “boil” water up to 180 - 250 degrees Celsius and then through a two-stage absorption chiller, it turns heat into six degrees Celsius cold water. That water is then used to cooling the air or as steam for industrial processes. Also, the fact that they are made of aluminum this is a cheap light-weight solution that offers high stability.

“The secret lies in complex software that regulates the energy flows in the system and delivers a constant stream of water cooled to about six degrees, the perfect temperature for conventional air conditioning units,” said Solitem’s managing director Dr Ahmet Lokurlu.

The new solar thermal cooling system is a highly efficient alternative to air conditioning systems, that won’t take the usual course of cooling a house : fossil fuels into electricity and electricity into cooling.

MAN Ferrostal owns 20.1 percent stake in Solitem and will help them with sales and installation resources. They plan to bring this project across the Middle East, Africa, the US, Australia and the Mediterranean.

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