Author: gavril

The search for ET continues in the skies above. The guys at SETI have spent hours and hours on searching and scanning the skies for any extra terrestrial life. It’s been 25 years, and SETI has allowed people from around the world to contribute to its search-the-sky-for-ET program. Though, no such evidence has been found yet. So SETI is now turning to open source. A website known as setiQUEST.org is being established. This site will display data gathered and the search code being used. Hopefully the guys at SETI do manage to contact extra terrestrials with knowledge that will help save our planet as it is being subjected to various exploits everyday, endangering it little by little as days go by. Maybe the extra terrestrials will help us with a greener future.

[NetworkWorld]

Japan is all set to send out a craft in space, powered by solar power. The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency will launch the space yacht, using solar sails on 18th May. Accelerated by the sun’s radiation, the Interplanetary Kite-craft will have solar particles bounce off its sails. Known as the Ikaros, the space craft will be the first of its kind to enter into deep space using solar sails.

This simply means that the craft will need no fuel to cruise through space. So long as it is near enough to the sun to catch a particle powered breeze, this sailing space craft will need no fuel whatsoever. The Ikaros sports 46-foot flexible sails, thinner than human hair, equipped with thin-film solar cells that generate power. This technology is sure to revolutionize space travel into a more cleaner and eco-friendly event.

[Popsci]

Japan is all set to send out a craft in space, powered by solar power. The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency will launch the space yacht, using solar sails on 18th May. Accelerated by the sun’s radiation, the Interplanetary Kite-craft will have solar particles bounce off its sails. Known as the Ikaros, the space craft will be the first of its kind to enter into deep space using solar sails.

This simply means that the craft will need no fuel to cruise through space. So long as it is near enough to the sun to catch a particle powered breeze, this sailing space craft will need no fuel whatsoever. The Ikaros sports 46-foot flexible sails, thinner than human hair, equipped with thin-film solar cells that generate power. This technology is sure to revolutionize space travel into a more cleaner and eco-friendly event.

[Popsci]

Well this might sound a bit morbid, but you can now bid farewell to your loved ones in an eco-friendly way. The Resomator is turning the funeral business in UK a shade green. This washing machine like contraption is a smokeless alternative to cremation. Using chemicals, the machine helps decompose the body quickly.

Costing around £300,000, the Resomator is filled up with a mix of water and potassium hydroxide that helps dissolve body tissues and organs speedily. Placed in a sealed silk or wooden coffin, the body is placed on a stainless steel shelf inside the metal cylinder and the chamber is heated to 180 degrees, breaking down the body in less than three hours under extreme pressure. This may sound frightening at first, but it does save the ozone to an extent. And then again, there’s always the burial alternative.

[Dailymail]

Nothing would set a better eco-conscious example to the people of the United States than the White House going solar powered itself. And that’s exactly what companies are trying to convince the White House to do. So much, that these companies are even offering these panels for free, not that the White House can’t afford a whole array of them.

President Jimmy Carter had taken a green step in 1979 had installed some of these soak-in-the-sun devices, which were stripped off in 1986. A 17.85 kilowatt solar array can help the White House reduce its bills by a sweet 81%. That’s about $1,610 per month. 102 solar panels, each generating 175 watts on the roof of the White House will help offset carbon emissions that equal 1.5 million cars annually. Looks like it’s about time for the White House to add a shade of green to its roofs!

[CoolerPlanet]

You aren’t the only one who loves a nice juicy beef steak. This train loves it just as much as you do. To run between Fort Worth and Oklahoma City, Amtrak’s Heartland Flyer is powered up 20% by a beef based biofuel. 80% is powered up using regular diesel. With a grant of $274,000 from the Federal Railroad Administration, this train will run for the next 12 months on this route.

Using cow tallow or fat from cattle, carbon monoxide and hydrocarbon emissions are reduced by 10%. It also decreases particulates by 15% and sulfates by 20%. This sure is a cleaner alternative compared to diesel. And no, cows will not be killed specifically for this purpose. The fat is obtained from animals that are to be used for meat. The guys at PETA are sure to skip travelling by this train though.

[FastCompany]

Everyone’s waking up to eco-consciousness now and most of us have probably realized the need to save our environment from the certain doom it’ll face as time goes by if we continue endangering it further. The best we can do at our home is recycling most of the stuff we usually dump in our garbage cans. Recycling helps decrease the amount of junk piled up at landfills and saves a whole lot of energy too!

Switzerland currently is the country with the highest percentage of garbage recycling, around 52% that is, followed by Austria, Germany, Netherlands and Norway. Some countries use recycling as a profitable business, especially in Asian countries like Japan that met a profit of 360 billion dollars with recycling. China has 2.5 million people are involved in recycling activities.

US currently recycle just 31.5% of its garbage. Using recycled paper would help save 544,000 trees in the United States, 9 cubic yards of soil from being used as landfill for every ton of cardboard recycled and 5% energy if aluminum is recycled instead of being produced.

Numbers sure make people think harder. Hopefully these statistics do.

[TheNewEcologist]

San Francisco took the required steps. Maybe the rest of the United States should have a tree census too! The country is losing trees faster than any around the globe. Between the years 2000 and 2005, the US has lost a larger area of forest land and trees than any other country. It is one of the seven most heavily deforested nations around.

The United States has lost around 46,000 square miles of forest area in those five years. That’s an area as big as Pennsylvania itself! The number is sure to have increased in the last five years too. Globally, our planet has lost around 400,000 square miles of forest cover. It’s about time we wake up and start planting more trees taken that their number is fast depleting.

[USA Today]

The next time you visit Japan, you’ll probably ride in an emission free taxi. Three new electric taxis hit the asphalt today, and probably more will follow suit in future. Japan currently has around 60,000 taxis, each guzzling gas and polluting the environment causing around 20% of the countries CO2 emissions. Together with a US firm, Better Place, Japan will soon wipe away these blemishing numbers with electric taxis.

These taxis use switchable batteries. Instead of docking up every time the taxi runs out of juice, the battery can simply be switched for a charged one, while the drained one is left charging. This obviously increases the cars range to an extent. This concept is sure to grab the attention of taxi operators around the globe.

[Techvert]

Electronics are best found in Best Buy, America’s electronic store chain. Well, Best Buy is setting up in the UK too and will offer a whole range of green technology. The Best Buy stores in UK will have GreenTech areas showcasing everything that’s green and uses electricity, including electric vehicles.

The first store will be situated in Thurrock, Essex and will open up next Friday. Planning an expensive electric car? Step inside UK’s first Best Buy with the £86,950 Tesla Roadster on display! That’s not all. The store also offers less expensive electric vehicles too. You can also grab solar chargers for your electric gadgets, energy monitors, energy saving plugs and gadgets and a whole lot of other cool stuff from the stores GreenTech section. Hopefully stores like these open up around the world making green technology easily accessible and buyable.

[Electricpig]

The Earth Day test flight of the bio-fuel powered F/A-18 Green Hornet was just one of the efforts the Navy has taken up to switch to alternative fuels. According to Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus, the Navy saw a change in its energy provider in the 1850s when sails were done away to make way for coal. In the early 20th century, coal was pushed away and oil poured into fuel tanks instead. Perhaps its time now to switch to a cleaner, greener and more energy efficient fuel!

If all goes as planned by Ray Mabus, the Navy will have an aircraft carrier and its support vessels fossil-fueled by 2016. National security is yet another stronger reason, besides environment friendliness, that is having the Navy make these efforts. Maybe we could do away with wars altogether and save the world of a whole lot of energy too!

[ScientificAmerican]

We’ll know just how much CO2 power plants in Canada spew, thanks to the new mobile carbon dioxide capture and compressor unit unveiled on Monday by Canada’s natural resources ministry that will measure and analyze power plants’ emissions. Known as the CanCO2, this unit removes pollutants from plant emissions, purifies and compresses CO2 to be stored, transported and used.

Data recorded by the unit will help in further carbon capture and storage procedures. Up scaling this technology would help Ottawa reduce its greenhouse gas emissions, according to Natural Resources Minister Christian Paradis, which is why the Zero-Emission Technologies Group Is currently negotiating with two other companies for a technology boost.

[Yahoo]

This isn’t a long lost cousin of the T-Rex from Jurassic Park. The E.Rex is instead a three wheeled vehicle being built by the Silicon Valley startup OptaMotive. If you’ve heard of the Campagna Motors T-Rex before, picture it with an electric engine and you’ll know what the E.Rex is like. The vehicle can go from zero to 60 in just 5 seconds. With a range of 100 miles, the vehicle is three times more efficient than the Toyota Prius.

The E.Rex’s battery uses 96 lithium–iron phosphate cells and the 13.6–kilowatt-hour pack charges up in 2.5 hours at 220 volts and 20 amps. The vehicle also has regenerative breaking, a reinforced roll cage, seatbelts, seating for two and will soon have a proper body with doors and a windshield. Standing 42 inches tall and 138 inches long, the E.Rex may not be a vehicle you could drive to work though.

[Wired]

The Beijing International Automotive Exhibition and is dreaming of a greener future. Themed as “Imagining the Green Future”, the Expo has its spotlight focused on cleaner greener and more energy efficient vehicles this year. 95 cars using newer energy are on display by Chinese as well as international automakers.

Besides these, 65 concept vehicles and 89 debutants together form the 990 exhibits on display at the Expo this year. Also known as the Auto China 2010, the Expo is open to professional public from April 25 to 26 with the past to days opened only to journalists. The expo will open its doors to general public between April 27 and May 2 and is expecting around 700,000 visitors. The automobile industry is now greener than ever.

[Xinhuanet]

We’ve heard of a census wherein every citizen in a city is accounted for right since the times of the Bible. Well, San Francisco is going to have all its trees accounted for too! This project, known as the Urban Forest Map, will have information on every tree in the city collected from sources like city of San Francisco itself and a non-profit group called Friends of the Urban Forest.

The website community will also be allowed to edit or add information regarding trees, making the project similar to the functioning of a Wiki. Starting in the Bay Area, the project once kicked off will soon spread its roots to other cities as well. Maybe a hi-tech system to help nab tree-cutters would be a useful addition to this website project!

[Wired]

The world will soon see more of solar power, developing hand in hand with nano-materials popping up everywhere. Quantum dots, nano-wires, nano-antenna, carbon nano-tubes, and multiple quantum wells are pushing solar technology to greater levels. Nano-materials, tiny little particles invisible to the naked eye, help reduce materials needed to produce photovoltaic cells. This also leads to decrease in production costs and material costs.

Materials such as these are being tested for cost efficiency as compared to the use of silicon and thin-film photovoltaics. Companies are also developing photovoltaic sprays and thin film nano-solar panels. Companies like NanoSolar have panels capable of capturing 15.3% of the sun’s light. Nano-materials such as these being developed nowadays will sure help solar power find greater applicability in the very near future.

[Coolerplanet]

Airports around the globe are going greener by the day. We’ve heard of the Page Field General Aviation Airport in Southwest Florida and the Le Castellet International Airport in the South of France using solar power before. This time it’s the Alice Springs Airport in Northern Australia that will soak in the sun.

A 235-kilowatt solar power station has been planned with SolFocus providing the solar arrays. 28 units of SolFocus’ 1100S concentrator photovoltaic arrays will be installed by developer Ingenero and the project will be completed in the third quarter of this year. Half the project’s costs will be financed by the Australian Government, amounting to $1.1 million. This project will help do away with around 470 tons of carbon emissions annually!

[Ecoseed]

You aren’t the only one who has been sweating it out more than ever this summer. Everyone else around the globe is feeling the heat too! The sun is swelling up in pride and baking the earth to a blistering brown. March 2010 was the hottest ever, breaking records globally. Our planet has been subjected to the hottest January to March period in history this year.

Combining together the global land and ocean temperature, March 2010 was the warmest march ever, with 56.3°F (13.5°C), which is 1.39°F (0.77°C) above the 20th century average of 54.9°F (12.7°C). this heat has sure brought out drops of sweat on foreheads everywhere. Brace yourself for a hot summer season this year.

[ScienceDaily]

The sun shone with all its glory this Earth Day brightening up the world to its sparkling golden glory. And as a gift to us all, SunRun came up with an ingenious info-graphic that will help spread the word of solar power use around. Informative and enlightening, this info-graphic can also be embedded on blog sites and your own webpage, and visitors are sure to stop and have a look at it.

The info-graphic informs on ways to fix the broken electricity grid with the use of solar power. It also has a whole lot of stuff on the potential of solar energy and shows just how bad coal power can be. With a whole lot of information on rising energy demand and costs and the current usage of solar energy, the info-graphic also states that there should be around 30,000 new solar installations in 2010 in the United States. Worth a look!

[Sunrunhome]

If you’re in Denver and need to commute, do yourself and the environment a favor and shun the city bus and your car. Use a cycle instead. And if buying one worries you, simply enroll in the cities bike-sharing program! This Earth Day will see B-Cycle fling their doors open to what will be the first city-wide bike sharing program in the US. Compromising insurance company Humana, bike maker Trek Bicycle, and advertising agency Crispin Porter + Bugosky, B-Cycle will open 50 stations across Denver, Colorado.

The bikes, unlike the old gas guzzling four-wheeler you’ve got back home, are equipped with computers that display the kilometers you’ve travelled, the calories you’ve burnt and the number of carbon offsets you’ve earned. B-Cycle is eager to set up shop in Boston and Minneapolis too in future. Clean transport like this deserves a pat on its back.

[Gas2]