3D It

The future of cars is making itself available, 3D printing. The article can be found here. It's a technology that has been around but just right now is increasingly expanding into mainstream. The body of the car which can be made from plastics is simply printed out layer by layer on a machine. This will undoubtedly cut back on production time and in the longer run cut down on costs. Build in lithium-ion batteries within the chassis is another fairly new technology. Combine the two and I'm fairly confident we are looking at a quick and easy way of building a car. If it will be affordable is another question.

Fractal V

Big thanks to the late Benoit B. Mandelbrot, the father of fractal geometry, for all those cool pictures. RIP.

Solar Energy Boat

Read this article late last night and was very impressed with the solar energy application on boats. The 'Turanor' runs strictly on solar power and stores the excess energy in batteries which is used at night when the sun is down. The boat itself weighs 85 tones but still manages an average speed of 7.5 knots. It's an experimental craft of course and it is no speedboat, still the solar panels have tremendous value. As of now solar energy doesn't match up with the power of a combustion engine but I think in the near future we are going to see 'hybrid boats' that run partially on diesel and on an electric engine powered by solar panels. It would cut down the cost of fuel, plus generally speaking, when boats are in the middle of the ocean they have plenty of room. If you could install solar panels on areas of the boat which are idle or if you can design a mechanism that transports the panels to the side of the boat and retract it when you're in port, you could make this work without too much effort. Cargo boats consume a huge amount of fuel when they traverse the oceans, so solar panels would be a wise economical asset.

Lazar's Hydrogen Car

Fascinating to see Bob Lazar again. He was quite a hot item back in the 90s with his claims of having worked at Area 51 and to have worked on a saucer shaped craft there. I recall the 'shockwaves' that he created and the folks that took issues with his claims. Subsequently Lazar got a, pardon my French, shitload of critique. Many people doubted his credentials, pointed out there was no evidence to his claims and even doubted he was a scientist to begin with.

Considering these points of criticism it's intriguing to see how Bob Lazar managed to build a hydrogen system in his car, and not only that. He also set up a lot of equipment which produces hydrogen on a daily basis. Still doesn't end here since he produced materials you can't get at the counter in order to make the hydrogen system work. I would say that qualifies him as a smart guy. It should be clear to everyone that the technology to replace fossil fuel based engines is already present.

Fractal IV

Dark Stuff

How little we know about the Universe.

Meteorite Ricochets Boy

(From A.P.)

A schoolboy has survived a direct hit by a meteorite after it fell to earth at 30,000mph.
Gerrit Blank, 14, was on his way to school when he saw "ball of light" heading straight towards him from the sky. A red hot, pea-sized piece of rock then hit his hand before bouncing off and causing a foot wide crater in the ground. The teenager survived the strike, the chances of which are just 1 in a million - but with a nasty three-inch long scar on his hand. He said: "At first I just saw a large ball of light, and then I suddenly felt a pain in my hand. "Then a split second after that there was an enormous bang like a crash of thunder." "The noise that came after the flash of light was so loud that my ears were ringing for hours afterwards. "When it hit me it knocked me flying and then was still going fast enough to bury itself into the road," he explained. Scientists are now studying the pea-sized meteorite which crashed to Earth in Essen, Germany. "I am really keen on science and my teachers discovered that the fragment is really magnetic," said Gerrit. Chemical tests on the rock have proved it had fallen from space. Ansgar Kortem, director of Germany's Walter Hohmann Observatory, said: "It's a real meteorite, therefore it is very valuable to collectors and scientists. "Most don't actually make it to ground level because they evaporate in the atmosphere. Of those that do get through, about six out of every seven of them land in water," he added. The only other known example of a human being surviving a meteor strike happened in Alabama, USA, in November 1954 when a grapefruit-sized fragment crashed through the roof of a house, bounced off furniture and landed on a sleeping woman.

Fractal III

Fractal II

Geometry in nature. You can find a lot of cool fractal pics here.

Fractal

A fractal is generally "a rough or fragmented geometric shape that can be split into parts, each of which is (at least approximately) a reduced-size copy of the whole,"[1] a property called self-similarity. The term was coined by Benoît Mandelbrot in 1975 and was derived from the Latin fractus meaning "broken" or "fractured." A mathematical fractal is based on an equation that undergoes iteration, a form of feedback based on recursion.

The above (from Wikipedia) is more understandable then the mathematical explanation a few posts back. When reading that page it becomes clear that a fractal can be found in nature. There's something about fractals which I find intriquing. It looks pretty but the recurring geometric shapes somehow feels 'universal'. Below is a natural occuring fractal, romanesco broccoli.

Mandelbrot Set

In mathematics, the Mandelbrot set, named after Benoît Mandelbrot, is a set of points in the complex plane, the boundary of which forms a fractal. Mathematically, the Mandelbrot set can be defined as the set of complex values of c for which the orbit of 0 under iteration of the complex quadratic polynomial zn+1 = zn2 + c remains bounded.[1] That is, a complex number, c, is in the Mandelbrot set if, when starting with z0=0 and applying the iteration repeatedly, the absolute value of zn never exceeds a certain number (that number depends on c) however large n gets.

Personally, I have no idea what the above actually means. Advanced mathematics is like Greek to me. I do like the pictures which are very nice, and hip. Hm. Maybe something for wallpaper companies. Hip with some retro may sell.

Kepler Spacecraft

This should prove interesting. NASA plans to launch the Kepler spacecraft on the 6th of March. It's another telescope in space, fitted with the latest technology so we can expect some nice images, hopefully. The mission is to look for Earth-size planets in the nearby Galactic region, concentrating on those stars similar to our own.

"Kepler is a critical component in NASA's broader efforts to ultimately find and study planets where Earth-like conditions may be present," said Jon Morse, the Astrophysics Division director at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "The planetary census Kepler takes will be very important for understanding the frequency of Earth-size planets in our galaxy and planning future missions that directly detect and characterize such worlds around nearby stars."

Help NASA Name Node 3

You can vote for the name of the new Node 3 scheduled to be installed on the International Space Station this year. Here's the website.

Help us to name another important addition to the station - Node 3 and its cupola!
Vote using the poll on the right.

Voting will be open until March 20th, 2009. NASA will announce the winning name in April 2009.

NASA wants your opinion in naming the International Space Station’s Node 3 – a connecting module and its cupola – before the two segments travel to space and are installed on the orbiting laboratory. The name should reflect the spirit of exploration and cooperation embodied by the space station, and follow in the tradition set by Node 1- Unity- and Node 2- Harmony.

Space shuttle Endeavour will deliver the Node 3 components during the STS-130 mission targeted for December 2009. Once the cupola is attached to one of the module’s six ports, it will offer astronauts a spectacular view of both their home planet and their home in space. The cupola’s six rectangular windows and one circular window overhead will show a panoramic view that will be unrivaled by any other spacecraft ever flown. Aside from providing a perfect location to observe and photograph the Earth, the cupola also will contain a robotics workstation, where astronauts will be able to control the station’s giant robotic arm.

I voted "The Can."

New Solar Power

In Spain they are experimenting with a new solar power system. Lots of mirrors reflect their light on a tower where it is concentrated, turning water into steam which powers a turbine. The pricetag of the project is $1.5 billion and it generates 11 megawatts, enough to power 6000 homes.
Although a hefty pricetag and pretty much only usable in sunny regions of the planet I think it's a great initiative to come up with alternative, clean energy sources. Oil wont last forever and adds to global warming. Read all about the project here.

Mars Rovers Soldier On

Although designed and expected to work for an estimated 90 days, the Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity have been working now for 5 years. It's a great NASA success story and everyone involved in the mission (including the rovers) have performed beyond expectation. The rovers have provided loads of data for scientists to analyse and valuable lessons are being learned such as the behaviour of the Martian atmopshere. There's a lot of dust in the atmosphere of Mars and over time the solar panels of the rovers accumulate that dust which in turn reduces operational power. The strange thing is, on occasion the solar panels receive a gust of wind from the Martian atmosphere which cleans the panels and boosts power. Not many people expected the rovers to last this long but they did. NASA gets a thumbs up on this one.

Dr. Michio Kaku - The Breath Of Fresh Air In Science

Michio Kaku is one of those scientists that keeps you fascinated with the topics he discusses. Although the subject matter is way beyond our level of understanding, at least for the most of us, Dr. Kaku keeps us interested with his enthusiasm and willingness to express himself in laymans terms. Not to mention that he's one of the brilliant minds in theoretical physics. His website can be found here.

Futuristic New Antarctica Station

A new and impressive station has been build in Antarctica by the Belgiums. Carbon free and dependent on solar- and windpower.