The Crescent Dunes Solar Energy Project in Nevada is set to come online in March. Once completed, it will use thousands of mirrors to focus sunlight on a tower, melting millions of pounds of salt contained inside. The molten salt will heat water into steam, which then turns turbines and generates electricity without any carbon byproducts. There's just one little problem: During a test run on January 14, the intense heat from the mirrors reportedly incinerated and/or vaporized more than 100 birds.
Propane, the gas that fuels your barbecue (and perhaps one day your car), may soon have a new, renewable source.
Imagine it: trillions of dollars worth of precious metals, fossil fuels, and fresh water, just lying around waiting to be claimed by anybody with a little know-how and an adventurer's spirit - any lucky person willing to travel a few million km into the great black unknown, latch on to a big hunk of funny-shaped rock, and claim 'em!
(The following is a post-US-election dispatch from the PopSci mothership in New York.) Dear President Obama, What a relief, many of us thought this morning. We re-elected a president who supports public funding for research (truthfully, public funding for anything). We re-elected a president who acknowledges the reality of climate change (at least you did in your victory speech if not during the campaign). We re-elected a president who so eloquently describes occupations like doctors, scientists and engineers as the definition of American aspiration.
We detect the faint spice of irony in the tale of a supercomputer whose day-job consists of both searching for new reservoirs of fossil fuels while also running modelling simulations on the impacts of climate change. And yet, that's the life of Franklin, the American supercomputer housed at theNational Energy Research Scientific Computing Centre in California.
