Renewable energy continues to surge in the European Union (EU). The latest achievement is 100 GW of wind power, the equivalent of 62 coal power plants. The growth has been fast, “it took twenty years to get the first 10 GW grid connected…only 13 years to add 90 GW.” And half of that was added in …
Tag Archives: earth
Monitor global warming in real-time with new iPhone, Android app
Want to monitor the vital signs of planet Earth? View global warming trends, like ozone, CO2, and sea levels, on a 3D globe? Scan satellite data in real-time? There’s an app for that. It’s called Earth Now and is available on both iPhone and Android. Released by NASA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory “to drive up excitement for …
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Forests of the world
I always thought that forests were huge and covered large swaths of the planet…guess not. Makes sense then why climatologists say each one is so important. Pulled from a fascinating interactive – Changing Forests – from the N.Y. Times.
Crowdsource the launch of a nano-satellite into space – Kickstarter
We are developing a nano-satellite, and mobile apps to go with it, as the focus for a global education and public outreach campaign. The satellite, called SkyCube, is a 10x10x10 cm “1U” CubeSat intended for launch as a secondary payload on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket in 2013. Orbiting more than 300 miles up, on a …
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International Space Station has a Large Hadron Collider – and it’s collected 18 billion cosmic rays
The largest-ever experiment in space has reported the collection of some 18 billion “cosmic ray” events that may help unravel the Universe’s mysteries. Run from a centre at Cern, the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS) aims to spot dark matter and exotic antimatter. At the heart of the seven-tonne, $2bn machine is a giant, specially designed …
World scientists – we can’t raise the temperature by more than two degrees Celsius
The official position of planet Earth at the moment is that we can’t raise the temperature more than two degrees Celsius. Some context: So far, we’ve raised the average temperature of the planet just under 0.8 degrees Celsius, and that has caused far more damage than most scientists expected. (A third of summer sea ice …
Astronomers discover a close new planet – covered in oceans of magma
In a surprise find, astronomers have discovered a planet possibly covered with oceans of magma “right around the corner.” Thirty-three light years away, “we have a sub-Earth-sized planet that’s slightly larger than Mars and essentially right around the corner, at least on a cosmic scale,” said Kevin Stevenson, a planetary scientist now at the University of Chicago UCF-1.01 …
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High-tech archaeologist uses radar, thermal-imagery, & UAV’s to explore sacred sites
Many Mongolians consider the tomb (of Genghis Khan) an extremely sacred place and believe any desecration of it could trigger a curse that would end the world. “Using traditional archeological methods would be disrespectful to believers,” Albert Yu-Min Lin says. “The ability to explore in a noninvasive way lets us try to solve this ancient secret …
Researchers discover our twin solar system, GJ676A – where everything is 4x larger
Astronomers have detected our “grotesque” twin: A planetary system arranged much like our own solar system, a new study says. Dubbed GJ676A, the system has two rocky planets orbiting close to its host star, and two gas giants orbiting far away. This means the system is arranged like our system—though in GJ676A, everything is much …
The Millennium Development Goals – wiping out disease, famine, and poverty on Earth
By Bill Gates People sometimes say that the United Nations doesn’t do enough to solve the big problems of the world. I’ve never really agreed with that point of view, but if anyone is looking for evidence of the UN’s impact, a good place to start is the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). They were agreed to …