Making fuel from air

A British company is working on a process which makes a hydrocarbon fuel out of CO2 and water. Cool idea, but at this point it’s a lab experiment and nothing more (though they’ve produced about five liters in the lab, so it’s proving itself). The big question is, is it scalable, what’s the efficiency, and what’s the source for the energy required to power this process.

The most important point here though, is that this is just one of many such projects in the works, trying to find more eco-friendly fuel sources. If just one of these can be successful, it can make a real impact on the sustainability of our lifestyle on this planet. Our current fossil-fuel-dependent lifestyle is most definitely NOT sustainable and we need to transition to an alternative quickly.

Introverts vs. Extroverts, explained

This is a really cool video that helps explain introverts versus extroverts. In a society where extroversion is the ‘norm’, introverts can feel out of place when in reality it’s society that needs to change, not the introverts (can’t change who you are!). This video is a good one for introverts to watch as it helps you understand why you don’t fit in, and it’s good for extroverts to watch to better understand introverts.

(In case you’re wondering, I’m very introverted…and once I came to understand and accept that, life become so much better!)

December 4, 2012

Plastic light bulbs

Scientists at Wake Forest University have developed what appears to be the ultimate light bulb. Made from plastic, it’s shatterproof, as efficient as LED bulbs, are completely quiet (no humming like some CFL), no hazardous chemicals, and they produce a light of comparable color to natural sunlight. They accomplish this by running electricity through a conductive ploymer that’s been doped with carbon nanotubes. They’re expected to be cheap to make, and if all goes well, will hit store shelves sometime in 2013.

DNA photographed

Using some cool trickery with silicon nanopillars and an electron microscope, scientists in Italy managed to photograph and actual strand of DNA, including the closeup image below where you can start to make out the double helix structure. Impressive work!

You can read more about it in The Atlantic.

November 30, 2012

NASA finds plastic on Mars ( UPDATE:hoax)

NASA has just issued a press release where they state that the Curiosity rover has found PLASTIC on Mars! It’s in the form of small, eighth inch diameter plastic spheres, of a type of plastic that, as far as we know at least, can only be formed using petrochemicals. This suggests there could possibly be a source of oil on Mars…and the oil that would produce this sort of plastic is only known to come from ancient fossilized organic materials like zooplankton and algae. So this raises all sorts of questions…where did the oil come from…does that mean there was once life on Mars…and how was it turned into plastic? It’s amazing what we’re learning from one solitary robot cruising the surface of Mars with limited scientific capability…there’s so much more to learn from that planet!

UPDATE: well that’s embarrassing…it looks like I fell for a hoax, this story is not true.

November 29, 2012