A GenX Liberal Geek's Take on Science and Finance in the News: April 2011

Friday, April 29, 2011

Voyager set to enter interstellar space

what's going on with our great space probes from the 70s. here's a hint, they're still working, and giving us data!

Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Space Engine – Free Universe Simulator | Apples for Geeks

this is AWESOME!!! if you're a geek like me.

My Way News - Number of 100-year-olds is booming in US

There are 72,000 100+ year old people in the USA. That number, already the largest in any country in the WORLD, is expected to double by 2020; it already doubled in the last 20 years. Say what you will about the healthcare system here, it's obviously working on some level.

Sunday, April 24, 2011

Japan tsunami and earthquake: Road repaired SIX days after it was destroyed | Mail Online

this is damn impressive

NY case underscores Wi-Fi privacy dangers

to sum up. PASSWORD PROTECT YOUR INTERNET ROUTER. If you can't do it, then find a geek. It's easy, and it is necessary.

Holy $#!! Swearing can actually help you, study says

so remember, the next time you curse, it's a pain killer; you're not being rude!

Saturday, April 23, 2011

SpaceX aims to put man on Mars in 10-20 years

Sounds like pure bravado. I like that. Go SpaceX! Just try not to kill anyone in the process!

Sale Prices for California Homes with Solar Arrays Soar to the Top of the Market | Inhabitat - Green Design Will Save the World

This is interesting, and makes sense to me. The costs of installation are non-trivial. Having them, though, is a good thing. They do save you money if you don't have to pay for the installation! As you see in the article, though, the numbers don't make sense. They quote a cost of $5,000 for installation raising the value $17,000.

Friday, April 22, 2011

The Struggle to Spread the Minority Report Interface - Technology Review

Did you know the interface used in Minority Report was real? I didn't cool to know it is. It's still being made and improved upon, and it is still in use by rich clients; military, oil and gas companies, and of course financial companies.

Thursday, April 21, 2011

Introducing the Honeywell Wind Turbine from WindTronics

This is quite interesting. I've been following it for quite a while. Honeywell, the big name behind it, and parent company, I know from their avionics. That's interesting. They recommend 12mph average wind speed. See that link for a map of the USA; a lot of the USA has that speed. Lots more maps here.

Tuesday, April 19, 2011

The Death of Open Data? - Technology Review

Well, the goverment, as the article says, makes the data available. Perhaps, we concerning citizens, I fault myself here, should be willing to pay for a service to have a company process that data into reports. Currently, and to some degree, the government does in the form of the site Data.gov. That's likely to be mostly cut in the new budgets. I understand that; it's something that can and should be cut. Still, having that out there would be a good thing. Perhaps a line item could be added to our taxes to add a few bucks to support it; like they do for the "Presidental ReElection Fund?" I'd throw a few bucks at it. Perhaps some rich fiscal conservatives, regardless of political affiliation, could do it.

Another Dimension to Touch Screens - Technology Review

original touch screens, like the ones still used on ATMs, were resistive. This is good because they use less power than the more accurate and multi-touch capable capacitive ones used in all the cool mobile devices today. In this article, two different approaches to bring the best of both worlds is detailed. Both are ready for production; one already is appearing in simple devices.

What will you get:

- better battery life

- more durable screens

Friday, April 15, 2011

Yankees reward fans with free ticket offer | yankees.com: Official Info

Classy Yanks, Classy. Pop and I took advantage of this at least once, as I recall, when I was a kid.

Thursday, April 14, 2011

Solar power without solar cells: A hidden magnetic effect of light could make it possible

Okay this one is pretty friggen cool. It turns out, that under the right conditions, you can get a powerful magnetic field from light. It was thought that you could ignore the magnetic field from light in all cases because it is so weak compared to light's electric field. Putting light in glass at a very high intensity makes the right conditions.

To make this work, they can get 10% efficiency using a glass lens and a glass fiber optic cable. Now the trick is to make this effect work at lower light intensities so that you can use sunlight as a source. Glass is a lot cheaper than silicon, so hopefully, they can get this all to work.

Solar Junction claims cell efficiency record | Green Tech - CNET News

They are planning to sell this to utility scale installations; mainly in the dessert, where it makes sense. They are getting 43.5% efficiency, and the thing can work with concentrators from 400 to 1000 suns. That means, they can concentrate 1 sq foot, roughly, of sunlight with a lens onto a solar cell one centimeter square. The sun puts about 100 Watts of power on the surface of the Earth at any given moment; again rough average assuming no cloud cover. Doing the math here, that means we can get 43.5 Watt hours of power for every foot of lens we have using only a centimeter of silicon. Total USA energy usage, that's oil, coal, nuke, etc, is 29 x 10^15 watt hours a year.

Assuming that we could get 6 hours a day with these solar cells on average every day in some place like part of the Arizona - New Mexico deserts, how much land would we need to power the USA; assuming we could store this power to use it when we wanted. That's another problem, but let's avoid that for now.

Our 1 sq ft gets us 261 W-h of power a day on average assuming that 6 hours a day, or 95MW-h a year. I know that sounds like a lot, but a standard 1,000 MW base load power plant does 6.5 times that in a month; 648,000 MW-h in an average 30-day month; most of those plants are running 90% of the 24 hours in a day. Anyway, back to our numbers. 29 x 10^15 divided by 95 x 10^6 equals 305 million or so square feet. Now that's just for the concentrator, realistically, we'll need probably 2x that amount of space to build a real solar facility. But, how big is 305 million square feet. 1 square mile is just under 28 million square feet, so if we double the 305 million we need, and divide that by our 28 million, we get 21 square miles. That's not too bad an area to cover a desert with to get all the power the USA used with in the last year. now all we need to do is to figure out a way to store it, converting that to gas/diesal/hydrogen and or transmission losses would probably mean we'd need to double this area again, but still even doubling plus a bit more to 50 square miles is still not that much. That's 10 miles by 5 miles. 43,480 square miles of the lower 48 of the USA is already built-up with roads, houses, etc, so 50 or even 100 or even 200 more is not a lot.

43,480 square miles of the USA is already built up with roads, building, etc

(http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/view.php?id=24956

Wednesday, April 13, 2011

Darpa’s Hologram Goggles Will Unleash Drone Hell | Danger Room | Wired.com

this is teh coolest technology in teh world... not the attack drone, but the 3D sunglasses!

Tuesday, April 12, 2011

'Solar fuel' research mimics photosynthesis | Green Tech - CNET News

Artificial leafs: sunlight plus air equals drop in replacement liquid fuels. That's what this article is about, and what these folks are trying to do.

GE to build massive thin-film U.S. solar plant | Green Tech - CNET News

more good news for everyone. more companies making them; more competition, lower prices for all.

Google invests in giant BrightSource solar project | Green Tech - CNET News

solar thermal is a potential helper in deserts for their energy budget. America's deserts certainly are big and good for that. I'd like to see this one work. The big difference here is the fact that this one cools it's energy transfer material with air instead of water. this is a requirement for ones in the deserts for obvious reasons.

My Way News - Japan ups nuke crisis severity to match Chernobyl

Yikes!

Wednesday, April 6, 2011

Whoa, windfarms in UK operate well below advertised efficiency | Watts Up With That?

research in the UK finds that wind generation was below 20% capacity more than 1/2 of the time, and below 10% capacity over 1/3 of the time!

Cheap electrical storage would help here, ultra-capacitors or something, but at the end of the day, I think wind is not the answer. Solar, by contrast, could be, we still need massive energy storage, though.

U.S., Colombia Seal Free Trade Agreement - FoxNews.com

Free trade helps everyone. This is great news!

A Browser that Speaks Your Language - Technology Review

okay this is too cool, and could be fun. text to speech in using your browser via Google's server farm.

More Star Trek Technology ...

Tuesday, April 5, 2011

Redesigning Banking with Behavioral Economics in Mind - Technology Review

this sounds really interesting.

Monday, April 4, 2011

SpaceX teases 'something big,' suggests we check back April 5th (video) -- Engadget

perhaps there is a good reason for the retirement of the shuttles and the cancellation of the Constellation program. SpaceX, the only private space launch company IN THE WORLD, could be announcing (spoiler alert, do not follow this link if you want to be surprised tomorrow) this.

Hmm, how do I do this, I want to talk about why this is cool, but if I do I end up ruining the surprise. Who am I kidding, anyone reading my comments here, clearly doesn't care about the surprise. So, with that in mind, let me say that this does make sense, IF they can do it. This rocket, the Falcon 9, is being designed to launch people to the space station. This is what the shuttle did, and what the smaller of the Constellation rockets would have done. Mind you that the bigger Constellation rocket would have been for the new Lunar and Mars missions, but, oh well. Maybe SpaceX can do that in a few years too.

Increase in Housing Quality and its effect on Home Values: 1940-2010 — VisualizingEconomics

Here's a link to a few graphs that are quite interesting.

Cruisin’ with The Nation: Why red isn’t the new green | JunkScience.com

So these big-shot greenies, whom also are Communists (failed idea in its own right), are taking a cruise on arguably the least green cruise ship currently afloat. Cruise ships aren't all that green to begin with.

Now while I have no problem with either cruises, or green ideas in general, I do have a problem with stupidity and hypocrisy. They talk about car pooling, flying during the day instead of the night, or driving a prius to the cruise ship, as opposed to taking a regular trip. The ship, which only holds about 2300 guests, puts out as much CO2 in a week as about 37,000 SUVs. So, I ask you, what is the difference if 2300 people drive a Prius to get to the ship? That makes no sense for an eco nut!

Quantum Dots as Solar Cells - Technology Review

Why is this worth being aware of? These Israeli scientists have done something no one else has. They have come up with a way, well proven in theory but not in a lab until them, to make thin film solar cells as efficient as the silicon ones.

Silicon ones, in general use are about 20% efficient; the new ones coming off the line anyway. Thin film ones top out in the 8-10% range. Thin film ones, though, are WAY cheaper than the heavier silicon alternatives. Traditional solar cells are made almost like computer chips, and thus quite a bit more expensive than thin film ones which are made in a way quite similar to newspaper printing.

One thing that I found particularly interesting is that they can, using their new technique, tune the solar cell to the spectrum of light coming from the sun. That, too, will make them even more efficient. Sunlight is mostly green, which is why humans see that color the best, and that's why the first computer monitors were all green and black. (Most folks don't know that tidbit, but it's true.)

Saturday, April 2, 2011

Spring is fireball season

This is odd. For the last 30 years or so scientists have noticed that right around the start of spring, we get 10-30% more meteors hitting the Earth.

Rotten meat doesn't stand a chance

Basically some folks figured out a way to make cheap sensors to tell when meat or fish has gone bad. Yes, I want to see this on the market!