Spassky Cave Church in Russia
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Showing posts with label Science. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Science. Show all posts
NASA twin spacecraft from the "Grail" mission, called "Eb" and "Flow", reached the moon at the beginning of January, and one of them has just sent its first video "dark" side of the Earth's satellite, the moon and those who never see from Earth.
This video clip is recorded flight from northern to the southern half of the moon. The north pole is visible in the top of the screen while the probe is flying towards the south pole.
The moon is "bound" for the Earth so that the planet always faces one side only. clip that you can see is just the first of many that should arrive within an interactive project to explore the dark side of the month and should include students of American schools.
Astronomers believe they've found the oldest thing they've ever seen in the universe: It's a galaxy far, far away from a time long, long ago.
Hidden in a Hubble Space Telescope photo released earlier this year is a small smudge of light that European astronomers now calculate is a galaxy from 13.1 billion years ago. That's a time when the universe was very young, just shy of 600 million years old. That would make it the earliest and most distant galaxy seen so far.
By now the galaxy is so ancient it probably doesn't exist in its earlier form and has already merged into bigger neighbors, said Matthew Lehnert of the Paris Observatory, lead author of the study published online Wednesday in the journal Nature.
While Ellis finds the basis for the study "pretty good," there have been other claims about the age of distant space objects that have not held up to scrutiny. And some experts have questions about this one. But even the skeptics praised the study as important and interesting.
The European astronomers calculated the age after 16 hours of observations from a telescope in Chile that looked at light signatures of cooling hydrogen gas.
Earlier this year, astronomers had made a general estimate of 600 to 800 million years after the Big Bang for the most distant fuzzy points of light in the Hubble photograph, which was presented at an astronomy meeting back in January.
In the new study, researchers focused on a single galaxy in their analysis of hydrogen's light signature, further pinpointing the age. Garth Illingworth of the University of California, Santa Cruz, who was the scientist behind the Hubble image, said it provides confirmation for the age using a different method, something he called amazing "for such faint objects."
The new galaxy doesn't have a name — just a series of letters and numbers. So Lehnert said he and colleagues have called it "the high red-shift blob. "Because it takes so long for the light to travel such a vast time and distance, astronomers are seeing what the galaxy looked like 13.1 billion years ago at a time when it was quite young — maybe even as young as 100 million years old — Lehnert said. It has very little of the carbon or metal that we see in more mature stars and is full of young, blue massive stars, he said.
What's most interesting to astronomers is that this finding fits with theories about when the first stars and galaxies were born. This galaxy would have formed not too soon after them.
"We're looking almost to the edge, almost within 100 million years of seeing the very first objects," Ellis said. "One hundred million years to a human seems an awful long time, but in astronomical time periods, that's nothing compared to the life of the stars."
A new critique, published as a chapter in the new textbook "Calendars and Years II: Astronomy and Time in the Ancient and Medieval World" (Oxbow Books, 2010), argues that the accepted conversions of dates from Mayan to the modern calendar may be off by as much as 50 or 100 years. That would throw the supposed and overhyped 2012 apocalypse off by decades and cast into doubt the dates of historical Mayan events. (The doomsday worries are based on the fact that the Mayan calendar ends in 2012, much as our year ends on Dec. 31.)
Later, the GMT constant was bolstered by American linguist and anthropologist Floyd Lounsbury, who used data in the Dresden Codex Venus Table, a Mayan calendar and almanac that charts dates relative to the movements of Venus.
But according to Aldana, Lounsbury's evidence is far from irrefutable.
"If the Venus Table cannot be used to prove the FMT as Lounsbury suggests, its acceptance depends on the reliability of the corroborating data," he said. That historical data, he said, is less reliable than the Table itself, causing the argument for the GMT constant to fall "like a stack of cards."
Aldana doesn't have any answers as to what the correct calendar conversion might be, preferring to focus on why the current interpretation may be wrong. Looks like end-of-the-world theorists 
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A mysterious shiny object floating high over Manhattan's West Side set off a flurry of reports and wild speculation Wednesday that a UFO was flying over the city.Police and the FAA said they began getting flooded with calls starting at 1:30 p.m. from people reporting a silvery object hovering high over Chelsea.Law enforcement sources said they believed the object was likely some sort of balloon, but as of late Wednesday they had not confirmed exactly what it is.A Daily News reporter could see a tiny, silver dot floating approximately 5,000 feet above 23th St. and Eighth Ave., where dozens of people gathered late in the afternoon to catch a glimpse."It's been hovering there for a while. I'm just kind of baffled," said Joseph Torres, 49, of Dyker Heights, Brooklyn, who spotted the object after leaving a movie.
"How can it be ordinary? There is something going on."Despite clear skies, it was not easy to make out the tiny object shimmering overhead."You really have to look up to see it," said one witness, who gave only his first name, Rico. "It's a little crazy. I guess that's why they call it an unidentified flying object because they don't know what it is."Not long after the first sightings, messages began appearing on Twitter linking to a month-old press release announcing the publication of a book by a retired NORAD officer predicting that UFOs would buzz the earth's major cities on Oct. 13.
The Federal Aviation Administration said it received several calls to its operations center but after reviewing radar data, the agency could not find anything out of the ordinary."We re-ran radar to see if there was anything there that we can't account for but there is nothing in the area," said spokesman Jim Peters. "There was some helicopter traffic over the river at that time and we checked with LaGuardia Tower. And they said they had nothing going low at that time.""Nothing that we can account for would prompt this kind of response," he said.Peters said if it was a weather balloon or any kind of organized balloon release, authorities should have been notified in advance. Police officials said they had received no notification.
"How can it be ordinary? There is something going on."Despite clear skies, it was not easy to make out the tiny object shimmering overhead."You really have to look up to see it," said one witness, who gave only his first name, Rico. "It's a little crazy. I guess that's why they call it an unidentified flying object because they don't know what it is."Not long after the first sightings, messages began appearing on Twitter linking to a month-old press release announcing the publication of a book by a retired NORAD officer predicting that UFOs would buzz the earth's major cities on Oct. 13.The Federal Aviation Administration said it received several calls to its operations center but after reviewing radar data, the agency could not find anything out of the ordinary."We re-ran radar to see if there was anything there that we can't account for but there is nothing in the area," said spokesman Jim Peters. "There was some helicopter traffic over the river at that time and we checked with LaGuardia Tower. And they said they had nothing going low at that time.""Nothing that we can account for would prompt this kind of response," he said.Peters said if it was a weather balloon or any kind of organized balloon release, authorities should have been notified in advance. Police officials said they had received no notification.
Starch grains found on 30,000-year-old grinding stones suggest that prehistoric man may have dined on an early form of flat bread, contrary to his popular image as primarily a meat-eater.
"It's like a flat bread, like a pancake with just water and flour," said Laura Longo, a researcher on the team from the Italian Institute of Prehistory and Early History.
"You make a kind of pita and cook it on the hot stone," she said, describing how the team replicated the cooking process. The end product was "crispy like a cracker but not very tasty," she added.
The grinding stones, each of which fit comfortably into an adult's palm, were discovered at archaeological sites in Italy, Russia and the Czech Republic.
The researchers said their findings throw mankind's first known use of flour back some 10,000 years, the previously oldest evidence having been found in Israel on 20,000 year-old grinding stones.
The findings may also upset fans of the Paleolithic diet, which follows earlier research that assumes early humans ate a meat-centered diet.
Also known as the caveman diet, the regime frowns on carbohydrate-laden foods like bread and cereal, and modern-day adherents eat only lean meat, vegetables and fruit.
It was first popularized by the gastroenterologist Walter L. Voegtlin, whose 1975 book lauded the benefits of the hunter-gatherer diet.
UFO? Kite? New Chinese military aircraft? Whatever it was last month, it's still hovering in the news.China's state-run People's Daily reported Sept. 13 (in its "Life & Culture" section) that air traffic controllers "observed with instruments" a UFO about 20 miles from Baotou, the largest city in Inner Mongolia, about 8 p.m. on Sept. 11. Flights were diverted to a secondary airport and three flights were forced to circle to avoid "collisions," a Baotou Airport spokeswoman said. Normal operations resumed after about an hour. The PD offered no details about the UFO.
Yesterday, the UFO reappeared — in the saucy British tabloid The Sun, renewing interest in the night lights over northeastern China. Accompanying a photo, The Sun wrote that a "major" airport "was forced to shut down to prevent packed passenger jets crashing into a UFO." Without citing a source, the paper described the object as, quote, "flat and tubular" (a seeming oxymoron ) and wrote that it "hovered two miles from Bootee" (its transliteration of Baotou). "Astonished officials say it then zoomed in to circle the airport before suddenly vanishing," according to The Sun.Video shows nothing but an occasional blinking light. UFOs over China are becoming almost routine.
Last month's report was the ninth in three months, with at least eight sightings reported in several provinces between late June and late July. One in July that briefly closed an airport in Hangzhou turned out to be part of a military test at a nearby air base. Another UFO was just jet contrails, and one other was a kite.The blurry photo in The Sun looks suspiciously like the UFO that disrupted air traffic in Hangzhou for an hour the night of July 7. And the details of that incident also have a familiar, earthly ring.
Astronomers say they have for the first time spotted a planet beyond our own in what is sometimes called the Goldilocks zone for life: Not too hot, not too cold. Juuuust right. Not too far from its star, not too close. So it could contain liquid water. The planet itself is neither too big nor too small for the proper surface, gravity and atmosphere.
It's just right. Just like Earth.
"This really is the first Goldilocks planet," said co-discoverer R. Paul Butler of the Carnegie Institution of Washington.
The new planet sits smack in the middle of what astronomers refer to as the habitable zone, unlike any of the nearly 500 other planets astronomers have found outside our solar system. And it is in our galactic neighborhood, suggesting that plenty of Earth-like planets circle other stars.
Finding a planet that could potentially support life is a major step toward answering the timeless question: Are we alone?
Scientists have jumped the gun before on proclaiming that planets outside our solar system were habitable only to have them turn out to be not quite so conducive to life. But this one is so clearly in the right zone that five outside astronomers told The Associated Press it seems to be the real thing.
"This is the first one I'm truly excited about," said Penn State University's Jim Kasting. He said this planet is a "pretty prime candidate" for harboring life.
Life on other planets doesn't mean E.T. Even a simple single-cell bacteria or the equivalent of shower mold would shake perceptions about the uniqueness of life on Earth.
But there are still many unanswered questions about this strange planet. It is about three times the mass of Earth, slightly larger in width and much closer to its star — 14 million miles away versus 93 million. It's so close to its version of the sun that it orbits every 37 days. And it doesn't rotate much, so one side is almost always bright, the other dark.
Temperatures can be as hot as 160 degrees or as frigid as 25 degrees below zero, but in between — in the land of constant sunrise — it would be "shirt-sleeve weather," said co-discoverer Steven Vogt of the University of California at Santa Cruz.
It's unknown whether water actually exists on the planet, and what kind of atmosphere it has. But because conditions are ideal for liquid water, and because there always seems to be life on Earth where there is water, Vogt believes "that chances for life on this planet are 100 percent."
The astronomers' findings are being published in Astrophysical Journal and were announced by the National Science Foundation on Wednesday.
That close proximity and the way it was found so early in astronomers' search for habitable planets hints to scientists that planets like Earth are probably not that rare.
Vogt and Butler ran some calculations, with giant fudge factors built in, and figured that as much as one out of five to 10 stars in the universe have planets that are Earth-sized and in the habitable zone.
With an estimated 200 billion stars in the universe, that means maybe 40 billion planets that have the potential for life, Vogt said. However, Ohio State University's Scott Gaudi cautioned that is too speculative about how common these planets are.
Vogt and Butler used ground-based telescopes to track the star's precise movements over 11 years and watch for wobbles that indicate planets are circling it. The newly discovered planet is actually the sixth found circling Gliese 581. Two looked promising for habitability for a while, another turned out to be too hot and the fifth is likely too cold. This sixth one bracketed right in the sweet spot in between, Vogt said.
With the star designated "a," its sixth planet is called Gliese 581g.
"It's not a very interesting name and it's a beautiful planet," Vogt said. Unofficially, he's named it after his wife: "I call it Zarmina's World."
The star Gliese 581 is a dwarf, about one-third the strength of our sun. Because of that, it can't be seen without a telescope from Earth, although it is in the Libra constellation, Vogt said.
But if you were standing on this new planet, you could easily see our sun, Butler said.
The low-energy dwarf star will live on for billions of years, much longer than our sun, he said. And that just increases the likelihood of life developing on the planet, the discoverers said.
"It's pretty hard to stop life once you give it the right conditions," Vogt said.
Now, for the last couple of years, those in the know have been pointing towards the next big false flag (ref: 9-11's ptech war-game side-switching con) being a false flag Cyber Attack on the very thing that all of us take for granted in this so-called developed world, OUR ELECTRONIC INFRASTRUCTURE, so the warning I'm about to highlight may be just 'the official cover story' for the above false flag and must be taken with a pinch of corporate salt.
Notice that there was a MASSIVE filament in the sun's lower hemisphere around about the 22nd of February. The arrival of the radiation from that on the 27th February coincided with the 8.8-mag Chile earthquake, and there's already been many aftershocks with a 7.2 off Libertador O'Higgins today, as well as these other events, today.
Well, as of today's date there's STILL a second dark filament in the upper hemisphere ... it's when these filaments crash back to the sun's surface that the radiation burst takes place.
Also, after an extended period of solar sunspot inactivity, we're approaching the start of the 'potentially spectacular' 2010 SOLAR MAXIMUM that this 2006 NASA article warned about.
This week researchers announced that a storm is coming--the most intense solar maximum in fifty years. The next sunspot cycle will be 30% to 50% stronger than the previous one. If correct, the years ahead could produce a burst of solar activity second only to the historic Solar Max of 1958.
That was a solar maximum. The Space Age was just beginning. In 1958 you couldn't tell that a solar storm was underway by looking at the bars on your cell phone; cell phones didn't exist. Even so, people knew something big was happening when Northern Lights were sighted three times in Mexico. A similar maximum now would be noticed by its effect on cell phones, GPS, weather satellites and many other modern technologies.
For the last two days my faithful FreeView's been playing up. And I was rather intrigued by the recent 'flock of starlings falling to earth' story. Remember, a burnt-out electronic infrastructure would have CATASTROPHIC IMPLICATIONS for modern life on this planet. Far much more than the Swine Flu 'work from home' strategies the government rolled out recently. Everything would go down. Energy Grid. Transport. Money. Everything. There is no such thing as a Global Backup system. It'll be a TWO YEAR gap in electrical/electronic service, at the very least.
A self-confessed Boeing-whistleblower has been warning of imminent Gamma Ray Bursts or Electromagnetic Pulses from our sun based on interference it's receiving from a massive interstellar cloud radiating from the centre of our galaxy. This is the same cloud that David Wilcock was discussing at the Awake & Aware conference in L.A. late last year. In his mesmerising presentation, he discussed distinct and noticable changes in the magnetic/radiational data from our neighbouring planets in the solar system. This is the same cloud that's been observed to have been affecting light output from various beighbouring stars, according to NASA observations.
What to do?
Notice that there was a MASSIVE filament in the sun's lower hemisphere around about the 22nd of February. The arrival of the radiation from that on the 27th February coincided with the 8.8-mag Chile earthquake, and there's already been many aftershocks with a 7.2 off Libertador O'Higgins today, as well as these other events, today.
Well, as of today's date there's STILL a second dark filament in the upper hemisphere ... it's when these filaments crash back to the sun's surface that the radiation burst takes place.
Also, after an extended period of solar sunspot inactivity, we're approaching the start of the 'potentially spectacular' 2010 SOLAR MAXIMUM that this 2006 NASA article warned about.
This week researchers announced that a storm is coming--the most intense solar maximum in fifty years. The next sunspot cycle will be 30% to 50% stronger than the previous one. If correct, the years ahead could produce a burst of solar activity second only to the historic Solar Max of 1958.
That was a solar maximum. The Space Age was just beginning. In 1958 you couldn't tell that a solar storm was underway by looking at the bars on your cell phone; cell phones didn't exist. Even so, people knew something big was happening when Northern Lights were sighted three times in Mexico. A similar maximum now would be noticed by its effect on cell phones, GPS, weather satellites and many other modern technologies.
For the last two days my faithful FreeView's been playing up. And I was rather intrigued by the recent 'flock of starlings falling to earth' story. Remember, a burnt-out electronic infrastructure would have CATASTROPHIC IMPLICATIONS for modern life on this planet. Far much more than the Swine Flu 'work from home' strategies the government rolled out recently. Everything would go down. Energy Grid. Transport. Money. Everything. There is no such thing as a Global Backup system. It'll be a TWO YEAR gap in electrical/electronic service, at the very least.
A self-confessed Boeing-whistleblower has been warning of imminent Gamma Ray Bursts or Electromagnetic Pulses from our sun based on interference it's receiving from a massive interstellar cloud radiating from the centre of our galaxy. This is the same cloud that David Wilcock was discussing at the Awake & Aware conference in L.A. late last year. In his mesmerising presentation, he discussed distinct and noticable changes in the magnetic/radiational data from our neighbouring planets in the solar system. This is the same cloud that's been observed to have been affecting light output from various beighbouring stars, according to NASA observations.
What to do?
I like to discuss about the preparation methods to communicate after a major solar flare event, the preparation method must be simple to follow & easily understood by the masses.
I found a great forum at God Like Production and they discuss at length ways to communicate after all the electronics get overloaded by induced electricity shock from the Solar Storm.
Various methods from the simplest to the complicated are discussed and I have a few of myself too so Let's list them all below:
*Pencil & Pen method - Since before the arrival of internet we had been sending snail mails everywhere in the globe but this time round there will be no mail vans but horseback mail instead. Leave a written note at home before going out may serve as a communication as well.
*CB Radio or UHF Radio - These radio can be preemptively protected using a simple Faraday cage so that they can be used AFTER the solar storm passed.
*Internet - Many may also argue that you won't get internet once the Internet service provider goes down after the solar storm, I will debate that the service provider can and possibly will restore their services very quickly if they know what to protect against the solar storm now. Keep your favorite internet laptops, tablets, smart phones protected with a faraday cages in case you can use it to send email or video calls to seek help.
*Renewable Energy - do not wait for the government to provide electricity to the individual, get a renewable energy source for your self as soon as possible. It may be solar panels, wind mill, bicycle generator, hand crank or even DIY methods of energy production from reflected sun lights to a steam engine power generator. Anything is possible if you have the will power & time to invest.
I may not be 100% prepared myself as there are so many things to prepare! Let's list down the items that require some kind of preparation:
-Food - in times where everywhere are closed due to lacking of electronically powered gadgets like vehicles, computers & refrigerators we must prepare food storage in event there are no electronics around to help us.
-Water - water pump from city water supply may get disabled during the solar storm as most of them are computer controlled, get a big water tank or fish tank that can give you some water to filter to drink during crisis. Filtration is important & remember to boil before drinking.
-Protect gadgets of priority - protect your electronics with faradays cages if possible so that no EMP can get through, that may means spare electronics to be kept in faraday cages. For me it may be a spare landline telephone, iPad, CB radio (not yet buy), portable hard disk, video camera and more.
Two asteroids are expected to pass within 154,000 miles of Earth on Wednesday _ closer than the distance between the Earth and the moon, NASA announced.Neither will hit the planet, NASA was quick to add.
Asteroid 2010 RX30 is estimated to be approximately 32 to 65 feet in size and will pass within approximately 154,000 miles of Earth at 5:51 a.m. Wednesday. The second object, 2010 RF12, estimated to be 20 to 46 feet in size, will pass within approximately 49,000 miles at 5:12 p.m.
NASA said the Catalina Sky Survey near Tucson, Ariz., discovered both objects on Sunday. The Minor Planet Center in Cambridge, Mass., reviewed the observations and determined the preliminary orbits. The center's personnel concluded both objects would pass within the distance of the moon to Earth, approximately 240,000 miles.
The asteroids should be visible with moderate-sized amateur telescopes.
Atlantis Resources' chief executive Tim Cornelius explained that, " The turbines turn at six to eight revolutions per minute, so are incredibly slow turning and will have zero impact on the surrounding environment." Theoretically, the turbine rotors should not harm marine animals.
So what is Tidal Current Power?
Tidal current technology is a form of hydropower and harnesses the energy in tides and converts it into usable power.
Tidal current power is different from wave power. Wave power harnesses power of the waves while Tidal Current technology extracts energy from the high tide bulge created by the gravitational pull of the Moon and Sun moving horizontally around the Earth’s surface.
As per the Atlantis, Sea water, which is 832 times denser than air, gives a 5 knot ocean current more kinetic energy than a 350 km/h wind; therefore ocean currents have a very high energy density. Hence a smaller device is required to harness tidal current energy than to harness wind energy.
Tidal Power and Tidal current power differ in that, Tidal power requires the building of barrages to manage and direct the flow of the current etc… the civil construction cost and impact on the environment is much higher in the tidal power barrage systems.
Tidal Power facts:
- The first large scale tidal power system the Rance Tidal Power station in Brittany, France, started functioning in 1966! It is still the largest tidal power station based on installed capacity.
- Tidal power stations were first developed and tested in the 1970’s; they harness the water masses that periodically flow into sea bays and drive conventional hydro turbines when the tide goes out. The disadvantage of this technology is that they require large barrages in the sea.
- Unless taken to extremes, Tidal Current power system does not require blocking of any waterways, and hence does not have the adverse environmental effects associated with Tidal Barrages.
- Tidal current energy takes the kinetic energy available in currents and converts it into renewable electricity.
- As oceans cover over 70% of Earth’s surface, ocean energy (including wave power, tidal current power and ocean thermal energy conversion) represents a vast source of energy, estimated at between 2,000 and 4,000 TWh per year, enough energy to continuously light between 2 and 4 billion 11W low-energy light bulbs.
- USA and UK could produce 15% of power they need from the Ocean itself.
On the whole the project sounds and looks really good and it has been working in Australia. Will wait to see how it works out in Orkney, Scotland.
Thousands of people flocked to an exhibition in Japan on Sunday to see a capsule from the Hayabusa space probe which was hoped to have brought asteroid dust to Earth. 
The capsule, which journeyed billions of kilometres (miles), was fired back to Earth in June.
Technical problems had plagued the Hayabusa, which at one stage spun out of control and lost contact with JAXA for seven weeks, delaying the mission for three years until the asteroid and Earth re-aligned.
When it finally latched onto the potato-shaped Itokawa asteroid, a pellet-firing system designed to stir up dust malfunctioned, leaving it unclear how much material the probe was able to gather.
The space agency has said it found "minute particles" of what it hopes is asteroid dust in the capsule, but it is expected to take months to get the final results of the analysis.
The Hayabusa project has generated great excitement in Japan.
"I was so impressed that such a small thing came back to Japan after a seven-year space journey," said one of the visitors. "It is just amazing."
(Reuters) – A lake in Argentina's remote, inhospitable northwest may offer clues on how life got started on Earth and how it could survive on other planets, scientists say. Researchers have found millions of "super" bacteria thriving inside the oxygen-starved Lake Diamante, in the center of a giant volcanic crater located over 15,400 feet above sea level.
The bacteria's habitat is similar to primitive earth, before living and breathing organisms began wrapping a protective atmosphere of oxygen around the planet.
The conditions -- which include high arsenic and alkaline levels -- could also shed light on life beyond Earth.
If bacteria can survive here, the theory goes, it could also survive somewhere like Mars.
So-called "extremophiles" have been found in other parts of the world -- and they can have significant commercial value. Bacteria that break down lipids are used in detergents for example.
But Farias said these bacteria, called "polyextremophiles" are exceptional because they flourish in the harshest of circumstances.
"What we have here is a series of extreme conditions all in one place. And this is what makes this place unique in the world," said Farias, a microbiologist at the National Scientific and Technical Research Council in Tucuman province.
The bacteria's DNA mutates to survive the ultra-violet radiation and low oxygen levels found at such high altitudes, which could make it of interest to the pharmaceuticals industry, Farias said. It could also have future commercial applications in products such as sunscreens, she added.
Farias and her team are looking for Argentine funding to produce a metagenome of the bacteria, an advanced study which provides a DNA sequence of the entire microbe colony.
This would enable her crew to study the bacteria in Argentina and help ensure that the South American country keeps hold of potentially lucrative patents for new antioxidants or enzymes that could be derived from the bacteria.
Apple Inc. is getting exclusive access to an exotic metallic material that could provide it with shiny, super-tough computer and phone casings.Liquidmetal Technologies Inc., a Caltech spinoff in Rancho Santa Margarita, Calif., filed a regulatory notice recently that it's granted Apple a perpetual, exclusive license to use its technology in consumer electronics. Liquidmetal retains the rights for other applications.
Apple isn't saying anything about the deal, and it's far from certain that the material will ever make it into its products. Though it matches the sleek Apple aesthetic, it's prohibitively expensive.
The name "Liquidmetal" brings to mind the silvery, shapeshifting villain of the "Terminator 2" movie, but the company's products are somewhat less dramatic. It mixes molten metal alloys in such a way that, when they cool, the structure of the material is more similar to glass than metal.
One is that they can be cast so precisely that they need little or no machining afterward. Regular metals shrink as they cool, which means they lose contact with the die and need polishing for a smoothness.
"Metallic glass" can also be very hard. Hard materials are often brittle, like glass, and that was a problem with early alloys. Liquidmetal CEO Thomas Steipp said the company has figured out how to make tougher variants, much like Pyrex glass is tougher than regular glass.
Apple is big on using metal in its designs -- virtually every Mac is clad in aluminum, except for the cheapest MacBook. It's even started making the bodies for its laptops and Mac mini desktop computers out of single, big chunks of aluminum that it then hollows out. With Liquidmetal, that time-consuming process could conceivably be replaced with casting. Aluminum is also a relatively soft metal, prone to denting, scratching and scuffing.
Steipp said he could not say what Apple might use the materials for. Neither company disclosed the value of the deal, but Liquidmetal seems to have gotten a shot in the arm from it. It hasn't filed a financial statement since last year, but Steipp, an experienced technology executive, was appointed five days after the deal was announced.
"I believe there's an opportunity for Liquidmetal to be a catalyst for changing the way that product designers think about building their products. It's that different," Steipp said. "We have to prove that, but certainly from what I've seen as technology executive evaluating the technology before I came in ... we've made a lot of progress over the last eight years."
They're fast, they're bright and they'll put on a free show in the nighttime sky in the next couple of days for Nevadans willing to give up an hour or two of sleep. The Perseid meteor shower that shoots across the summer sky each year will be at its most prolific Thursday night and Friday morning, said amateur astronomer Tony Berendsen, owner of Tahoe Star Tours. "The best time will be Thursday from 1 to 2 o'clock in the morning, but you don't have to wait until 1 a.m.," he said. "At 11 p.m., you can look high to the northeast, and you should see some meteors. You also can see them in the early morning any time before 4 a.m."
"This year is going to be good because there's a new moon, so on Thursday, there will be just a thin crescent moon, and it will set shortly after sunset," Berendsen said. "That means all night, we will have dark skies, and the weather is supposed to be clear, which should make it real nice for viewing."
Meteors are pieces of comets, which are dirty snowballs in space made up of frozen ice and rock-like particles, Berendsen said. The particles that become the meteors in the Perseid showers come from the Swift/Tuttle comet discovered in the 1860s.
"Most of the meteors are about the size of a grain of sand or a thumb, but they are traveling 20,000 mph and there is enough atmosphere up there that they run into atoms and molecules," he said. "So, even if they're just the size of a grain of sand, they give off a fair amount of light when they vaporize."
"They're mostly rock but also contain ammonium, so they sometimes leave a gaseous trail."The meteor showers emanate from a point in the constellation Perseus the Hero."They will show up in any area of the sky, but they will always come from the Perseus constellation, high in the northeast sky," he said.Since the Perseid showers come in August when the nighttime temperatures are warmer, Berendsen said it's a good time to camp in the backyard with the children wrapped up in blankets or sleeping bags while the family enjoys a free out-of-this world show.
Researchers have discovered the fossilised remains of an ancient whale with huge, fearsome teeth.
A Peruvian desert has turned out to be the final resting place of an ancient sperm whale with teeth much bigger than those of the largest of today's sperm whales. The fossil, dated at 12–13 million years old, belongs to a new, but extinct, genus and species described in Nature today1. Named Leviathan melvillei, it probably hunted baleen whales. A team of researchers recovered 75% of the animal's skull, complete with large fragments of both jaws and several teeth. On the basis of its skull length of 3 metres, they estimate that Leviathan was probably 13.5–17.5 metres long, within the range of extant adult male sperm whales (Physeter macrocephalus). Its largest teeth, however, are more than 36 centimetres long — nearly 10 
centimetres longer than the largest recorded Physeter tooth.Modern sperm whales lack functional teeth in their upper jaw and feed by suction, diving deep to hunt squid. Conversely, Leviathan had massive teeth in both its upper and lower jaws, and a skull that supported large jaw muscles. It may have hunted like raptorial killer whales, which use their teeth to tear off flesh. Co-author Klaas Post of the Natural History Museum Rotterdam in the Netherlands stumbled across the fossil in November 2008 during the final day of a field trip to Cerro Colorado in the Pisco-Ica Desert on the southern coast of Peru — an area that is now above sea level owing to Andean tectonic activities. The fossils were prepared in Lima, where they will remain.
Moby moniker
The name given to the creature combines the Hebrew word 'Livyatan', which refers to large mythological sea monsters, with the name of American novelist Herman Melville, who
penned Moby-Dick — "one of my favourite sea books", says lead author Olivier Lambert of the National Museum of Natural History in Paris.The authors think that Leviathan, like the extinct giant shark, preyed on medium-sized baleen whales, which were between 7 and 10 metres long, smaller than today's humpback whales and widely diverse at the time. The authors speculate that Leviathan became extinct as a result of changing environmental conditions. "Top predators are very sensitive to the changes in their prey," Lambert says. Changes in number, diversity or size of baleen whales, as well as the climate cooling that occurred at around Leviathan 's time, would have had dire impacts. The creature's surviving cousins — Physeter, pygmy and dwarf sperm whales — are specialized deep-diving squid hunters that occupy a different ecological niche from Leviathan. According to vertebrate palaeontologist Lawrence Barnes at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, this discovery demonstrates that sperm whale-like cetaceans were much more diverse in the past and that the modern sperm whale and pygmy sperm whales are the "only surviving vestiges of a larger evolutionary radiation of related whales in the past".
Battering rams
All sperm whales have characteristically large foreheads to hold their 'spermaceti organ', a series of oil and wax reservoirs buttressed with massive partitions of connective tissue. Scientists have long thought that this organ helps sperm whales to dive deeply to feed. The curved 'basin' atop Leviathan 's snout suggests that it also had a large spermaceti organ, even though it probably did not dive to feed. The authors speculate that, if Leviathan hunted baleen whales near the surface, the large spermaceti organ existed long before modern sperm whales became specialized for foraging squid at depth.The organ could have served other functions, such as echolocation, acoustic displays or aggressive head-butting. "Spermaceti organs could be used as battering rams to injure opponents during contests over females," says evolutionary morphologist David Carrier of the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. According to Carrier, at least two nineteenth-century whaling ships were sunk when large males punched holes in their sides with their foreheads, Carrier adds, and Leviathan may have used forehead ramming to dispatch its prey.
Researchers at the space agency believe they have discovered vital clues that appeared to indicate that primitive aliens could be living on the planet. Data from Nasa's Cassini probe has analysed the complex chemistry on the surface of Titan, which experts say is the only moon around the planet to have a dense atmosphere.They have discovered that life forms have been breathing in the planet’s atmosphere and also feeding on its surface’s fuel. Astronomers claim
the moon is generally too cold to support even liquid water on its surface. The research has been detailed in two separate studies. The first paper, in the journal Icarus, shows that hydrogen gas flowing throughout the planet’s atmosphere disappeared at the surface. This suggested that alien forms could in fact breathe. The second paper, in the Journal of Geophysical Research, concluded that there was lack of the chemical on the surface. Scientists were then led to believe it had been possibly consumed by life. Researchers had expected sunlight interacting with chemicals in the atmosphere to produce acetylene gas. But the Cassini probe did not detect any such gas. Chris McKay, an astrobiologist at Nasa Ames Research Centre, at Moffett Field, 
California who led the research, said: “We suggested hydrogen consumption because it's the obvious gas for life to consume on Titan, similar to the way we consume oxygen on Earth. "If these signs do turn out to be a sign of life, it would be doubly exciting because it would represent a second form of life independent from water-based life on Earth.” Professor John Zarnecki, of the Open University, added: “We believe the chemistry is there for life to form. It just needs heat and warmth to kick-start the process. “In four billion years’ time, when the Sun swells into a red giant, it could be paradise on Titan.” They warned, however, that there could be other explanations for the findings. But taken together, they two indicate two important conditions necessary for methane-based life to exist.
Christopher Go, another amateur astronomer from the Philippines, then independently photographed and videoed Friday’s incident. Experts said the amazing impact was either a comet or an asteroid. Video of the incident has been uploaded to YouTube. "When I saw the flash, I couldn't believe it," said Mr Wesley, who is well respected in the astronomy field. "The fireball lasted about 2 seconds and was very bright. "There were no visible remains at the impact point for the next half hour or so, until sunrise put an end to the imaging." Mr Go added: “I still can't believe that I caught a live impact on Jupiter," Their discovery came after Nasa scientists disclosed that they had had solved
the mystery behind a strange “bruise” on Jupiter. Using an infrared telescope on Hawaii, Nasa scientists found evidence that Jupiter was apparently struck near its south pole, and credited Wesley. Mr Wesley, from Broken Hill, in central Australia, first spotted the scar the size of the Pacific Ocean that was left near Jupiter's south pole last year. Using an infrared telescope on Hawaii, NASA scientists found evidence that Jupiter was struck, crediting Mr Wesley. Follow-up observations made with the Hubble space telescope suggested it was made by an asteroid with a force equivalent to a few thousand nuclear bombs. Hubble is certain to be switched from other duties again to photograph Jupiter and give professional astronomers as much information as possible about the new collision. The latest hit near the equator has not left any visible mark so far, but astronomers are on the lookout. The absence of a detectable “gash”, and the short impact time, has led scientists to believe Jupiter was likely struck by a meteor. "We've never seen a meteor slam into Jupiter," said Glenn Orton of Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. With these impacts now apparently less rare than once imagined, astronomers will also be re-examining observations of light and dark spots on Jupiter in historical records. In 1686, Italian astronomer Giovanni Cassini noted a dark spot on Jupiter that was about the same size as the largest bruise seen after Comet Shoemaker-Levy hit the planet in 1994. A British Astronomer Royal, George Airy, saw another dark spot that recorded as being nearly four times bigger than shadows cast by Jupiter's main Galilean moons.The town of Palmerston, Australia is now the unwilling host of a parrot frat party. Hundreds of lorikeets appear to be drunk: The disoriented birds are passing out cold and falling from tree branches.
Though seemingly inebriated parrots have been spotted before in Palmerston, never has the town seen this many at once. The situation concerns veterinarians, since the birds are injuring themselves, and, untreated, could die.
About eight lorikeets arrive each day to the Ark Animal Hospital, which cares for about thirty at a time. “They definitely seem like they’re drunk,” Lisa Hansen, a veterinary surgeon at the hospital told the the AFP. “They fall out of trees… and they’re not so coordinated as they would normally be. They go to jump and they miss the next perch.” Hansen and colleagues nurses them to health by feeding them a “hangover” broth that includes sweet fruit.
Literally drunk parrots have appeared in other parts of the world, for example in Austria in 2006, when birds ate rotting, fermenting berries. This time the inebriated birds remain a mystery: Some locals speculate that the birds are feasting on something something alcoholic, but others fear they have caught an unknown illness.
Though seemingly inebriated parrots have been spotted before in Palmerston, never has the town seen this many at once. The situation concerns veterinarians, since the birds are injuring themselves, and, untreated, could die.
About eight lorikeets arrive each day to the Ark Animal Hospital, which cares for about thirty at a time. “They definitely seem like they’re drunk,” Lisa Hansen, a veterinary surgeon at the hospital told the the AFP. “They fall out of trees… and they’re not so coordinated as they would normally be. They go to jump and they miss the next perch.” Hansen and colleagues nurses them to health by feeding them a “hangover” broth that includes sweet fruit.
Literally drunk parrots have appeared in other parts of the world, for example in Austria in 2006, when birds ate rotting, fermenting berries. This time the inebriated birds remain a mystery: Some locals speculate that the birds are feasting on something something alcoholic, but others fear they have caught an unknown illness.
NextEra Energy Resources thought it had a golden project.
Eleven solar thermal farms have been proposed for Southern California and are going through the permitting process with the California Energy Commission and with the U.S. Bureau of Land Management if on federal land. The 11 farms are among the biggest of the almost 50 renewable energy projects seeking to begin construction in California before the end of the year so they can seek federal stimulus funds.
The company proposed a 2,000-acre solar farm, named Beacon, on fallow agricultural land on the edge of California's Mojave Desert. The site has the great desert sun but is on degraded land near a freeway, an auto test track and old buildings.
The site "is exactly where solar should be," says David Myers, head of conservation group Wildlands Conservancy.
But two years later, NextEra still awaits permission to begin construction from the California Energy Commission, which grants permits on such projects after environmental reviews. Time is running short, not only for NextEra but for several dozen green-energy projects in California. Ground must be broken on them before year's end to get federal stimulus funds worth 30% of the projects' cost.
The deadline — and the push for green energy by President Obama and California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger— has inspired unprecedented coordination among regulators and environmentalists who want green energy but not rampant destruction of wilderness. If they succeed in siting so many large solar projects quickly, California may set a precedent for how other states resolve concerns over land use vs. the benefits of green energy.
"It's a scene that's being played out all over the country," says Benjamin Kelahan, senior vice president for energy of the Saint Consulting Group. But California, he says, is "a hotbed of activity."
Yet the sheer number and size of the California projects, especially a dozen huge solar farms unlike anything regulators have reviewed in 20 years, is stressing agencies and stakeholders alike. No other state has so many huge solar projects in the pipeline. Billions of dollars in stimulus funds ride on whether the permitting process can be sped up without sacrificing California's stringent environmental standards.
No corners are being cut, regulators say. But some environmentalists fear that the tight deadlines will lead to projects that could've been better with more time. And companies say that some projects, like NextEra's, have suffered delays born of inefficient permitting.
"These are large projects at a scale we've never seen before on a time schedule that's never been done before," says Kimberley Delfino, California program director for the environmental group Defenders of Wildlife. "This is not going to be an easy thing to do."
Promise of power, jobs
If all are built, the 49 projects seeking stimulus funding would generate 11,000 megawatts of electricity a year. That's enough to supply 7 million California homes and give California utilities a big boost in meeting mandates to get 33% of their energy from renewable sources by 2020.
The projects also would drive 10,000 construction jobs, 2,200 operational jobs and up to $30 billion in investment, including up to $10 billion in federal stimulus dollars, says Michael Picker, Schwarzenegger's renewable-energy adviser.
Twenty-two of the 49 projects account for 83% of the power. Some projects fall under the permitting process of counties. But the vast majority of the large solar projects fall under the review of the California Energy Commission and, if the projects are on federal land, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management.
California and federal regulators are working under conditions far from the norm.
Typically, the California Energy Commission rules on seven power plants a year, most often 20- to 40-acre natural-gas plants. This year, it has almost three dozen projects to review, including 11 large solar farms, several of which will each cover 10 square miles of land. Some projects that would normally take two years to review are seeking eight- to nine-month turnarounds, says Tom Pogacnik, a deputy state director for the Bureau of Land Management.
Never before have the bureau and the commission worked so closely to coordinate and expedite project reviews, says Terrence O'Brien, commission deputy director. He's dubbed a fourth-floor conference room a "war room," where staffers meet weekly to set priorities.
In November, commission staffer Christopher Meyer noted that the staff was already "sort of at a breaking point" with the workload, a transcript of a hearing on one of the solar farms says.
More people have since been hired. At the commission, 110 employees work on siting projects, up 25% since the fall. And while other state workers face furloughs on some Fridays, a consequence of California's budget woes, "We're working," O'Brien says.
The agencies are "tearing their hair out," says Peter Weiner, who, at law firm Paul Hastings, represents solar developers.
Moving too fast or too slow?
Whether the permitting process is fast or slow, complete or subpar depends on who's talking — and when.
In January, NextEra thought its chances were "grim" to get the $1 billion Beacon project through the process in time to qualify for $300 million in federal cash grants that are given instead of tax credits as part of the stimulus program, says Matthew Handel, NextEra vice president.
At a January hearing before the California Energy Commission, NextEra unfurled a string of complaints about the process. The Beacon site had to have a plan to relocate desert tortoises, although the site "has no desert tortoises," NextEra's Scott Busa said. The company had to redo a plan five times to monitor ravens that prey on baby tortoises, although the solar fields would draw fewer ravens than the sheep that currently graze and sometimes die on the land, providing a "raven buffet," Busa said.
He also said state regulators gave NextEra a 382-day plan to offset any effect on Native American cultural resources on the site, when the company didn't have 382 days before it had to break ground to get stimulus funding.
Given that the site was considered almost "perfect" for solar, Busa said, "I wonder why we're here two years later?"
After the hearing, the state reduced some demands. For instance, it cut the 382-day plan to 180 days by reducing how much land needed to be surveyed, Busa says. "They've recognized they're under time constraints," he says.
NextEra, a subsidiary of the Florida-based FPL Group energy company, is now optimistic the project will make the Dec. 31 deadline.
The commission's O'Brien says he also wishes that Beacon's review had gone faster. But he says part of the blame rests with NextEra, which at first proposed using fresh groundwater despite commission opposition. "It wasn't a perfect project, and it took time to resolve the issues," O'Brien says.
Home to threatened species
NextEra is proposing one of 11 large solar thermal farms. The farms concentrate the sun's power on mirrors to produce heat used to generate electricity. They'll cover thousands of acres, many of them largely untouched desert. The region has the most intense sun in North America, but it's also home to threatened species, such as the desert tortoise, and rare plants.
Environmentalists, who're largely supportive of solar, still worry that environmental reviews will be rushed.
"We need to proceed with caution, and what the stimulus deadline has done is remove our ability to do that," says Gloria Smith, an attorney for the Sierra Club in San Francisco.
Last week, the Sierra Club faced a two-day deadline to respond to information presented at an all-day hearing on one solar farm. After it complained, the response time was set at eight business days. Typically, it'd be weeks, Smith says.
Some agency reports also lack information they'd normally have, says Joshua Basofin, California representative for Defenders of Wildlife. This month, the commission and the Bureau of Land Management filed their joint environmental review on the 6,500-acre Blythe Solar Power Project. At the filing, numerous issues were unresolved, including relocating desert tortoises and offsetting damage to burrowing owl habitat and Native American cultural resources.
"We're very concerned that there hasn't been comprehensive environmental analysis for some of these projects," Basofin says.
The commission's O'Brien says environmental reviews will be complete. If first reports lack data, the agencies will file supplements, he says.
Several of the projects have changed to reduce their effects on the environment. The Ivanpah solar farm, at 3,500 acres, shrank 12% to lessen damage to desert tortoise and rare plant habitat. The Imperial Valley Solar farm, at 6,000-acres, is 16% smaller than originally proposed to avoid an area especially rich in Native American resources around land that was once an ancient lake.
Next few months are critical
Project developers are hopeful that the deadline for 30% cash grants will be extended, as Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., has proposed in legislation. "But nobody wants to count on an extension," says Sean Gallagher, vice president of Tessera Solar, which has two projects. The stimulus funds "are a critical part of the financing," Gallagher adds.
The next few months are also critical. Companies need permits by fall to have time to finalize financing and transmission plans. Picker, of the governor's office, expects up to 75% of the larger projects will get permits in time.
While some environmentalists say those may not be as well-designed as they could be, leading groups also recognize that land conservation isn't the only factor to consider. Global warming will degrade even pristine land, says environmentalist Delfino. Greener energy is a way to fight back, leading her to conclude that some habitat destruction is worth a bigger "long-term" gain.
"But we cannot have the cure be worse than the disease," Delfino says.
Eleven solar thermal farms have been proposed for Southern California and are going through the permitting process with the California Energy Commission and with the U.S. Bureau of Land Management if on federal land. The 11 farms are among the biggest of the almost 50 renewable energy projects seeking to begin construction in California before the end of the year so they can seek federal stimulus funds.
The company proposed a 2,000-acre solar farm, named Beacon, on fallow agricultural land on the edge of California's Mojave Desert. The site has the great desert sun but is on degraded land near a freeway, an auto test track and old buildings.
The site "is exactly where solar should be," says David Myers, head of conservation group Wildlands Conservancy.But two years later, NextEra still awaits permission to begin construction from the California Energy Commission, which grants permits on such projects after environmental reviews. Time is running short, not only for NextEra but for several dozen green-energy projects in California. Ground must be broken on them before year's end to get federal stimulus funds worth 30% of the projects' cost.
The deadline — and the push for green energy by President Obama and California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger— has inspired unprecedented coordination among regulators and environmentalists who want green energy but not rampant destruction of wilderness. If they succeed in siting so many large solar projects quickly, California may set a precedent for how other states resolve concerns over land use vs. the benefits of green energy.
"It's a scene that's being played out all over the country," says Benjamin Kelahan, senior vice president for energy of the Saint Consulting Group. But California, he says, is "a hotbed of activity."
Yet the sheer number and size of the California projects, especially a dozen huge solar farms unlike anything regulators have reviewed in 20 years, is stressing agencies and stakeholders alike. No other state has so many huge solar projects in the pipeline. Billions of dollars in stimulus funds ride on whether the permitting process can be sped up without sacrificing California's stringent environmental standards.
No corners are being cut, regulators say. But some environmentalists fear that the tight deadlines will lead to projects that could've been better with more time. And companies say that some projects, like NextEra's, have suffered delays born of inefficient permitting.
"These are large projects at a scale we've never seen before on a time schedule that's never been done before," says Kimberley Delfino, California program director for the environmental group Defenders of Wildlife. "This is not going to be an easy thing to do."
Promise of power, jobs
If all are built, the 49 projects seeking stimulus funding would generate 11,000 megawatts of electricity a year. That's enough to supply 7 million California homes and give California utilities a big boost in meeting mandates to get 33% of their energy from renewable sources by 2020.
The projects also would drive 10,000 construction jobs, 2,200 operational jobs and up to $30 billion in investment, including up to $10 billion in federal stimulus dollars, says Michael Picker, Schwarzenegger's renewable-energy adviser.
Twenty-two of the 49 projects account for 83% of the power. Some projects fall under the permitting process of counties. But the vast majority of the large solar projects fall under the review of the California Energy Commission and, if the projects are on federal land, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management.
California and federal regulators are working under conditions far from the norm.
Typically, the California Energy Commission rules on seven power plants a year, most often 20- to 40-acre natural-gas plants. This year, it has almost three dozen projects to review, including 11 large solar farms, several of which will each cover 10 square miles of land. Some projects that would normally take two years to review are seeking eight- to nine-month turnarounds, says Tom Pogacnik, a deputy state director for the Bureau of Land Management.
Never before have the bureau and the commission worked so closely to coordinate and expedite project reviews, says Terrence O'Brien, commission deputy director. He's dubbed a fourth-floor conference room a "war room," where staffers meet weekly to set priorities.
In November, commission staffer Christopher Meyer noted that the staff was already "sort of at a breaking point" with the workload, a transcript of a hearing on one of the solar farms says.
More people have since been hired. At the commission, 110 employees work on siting projects, up 25% since the fall. And while other state workers face furloughs on some Fridays, a consequence of California's budget woes, "We're working," O'Brien says.
The agencies are "tearing their hair out," says Peter Weiner, who, at law firm Paul Hastings, represents solar developers.
Moving too fast or too slow?
Whether the permitting process is fast or slow, complete or subpar depends on who's talking — and when.
In January, NextEra thought its chances were "grim" to get the $1 billion Beacon project through the process in time to qualify for $300 million in federal cash grants that are given instead of tax credits as part of the stimulus program, says Matthew Handel, NextEra vice president.
At a January hearing before the California Energy Commission, NextEra unfurled a string of complaints about the process. The Beacon site had to have a plan to relocate desert tortoises, although the site "has no desert tortoises," NextEra's Scott Busa said. The company had to redo a plan five times to monitor ravens that prey on baby tortoises, although the solar fields would draw fewer ravens than the sheep that currently graze and sometimes die on the land, providing a "raven buffet," Busa said.
He also said state regulators gave NextEra a 382-day plan to offset any effect on Native American cultural resources on the site, when the company didn't have 382 days before it had to break ground to get stimulus funding.Given that the site was considered almost "perfect" for solar, Busa said, "I wonder why we're here two years later?"
After the hearing, the state reduced some demands. For instance, it cut the 382-day plan to 180 days by reducing how much land needed to be surveyed, Busa says. "They've recognized they're under time constraints," he says.
NextEra, a subsidiary of the Florida-based FPL Group energy company, is now optimistic the project will make the Dec. 31 deadline.
The commission's O'Brien says he also wishes that Beacon's review had gone faster. But he says part of the blame rests with NextEra, which at first proposed using fresh groundwater despite commission opposition. "It wasn't a perfect project, and it took time to resolve the issues," O'Brien says.
Home to threatened species
NextEra is proposing one of 11 large solar thermal farms. The farms concentrate the sun's power on mirrors to produce heat used to generate electricity. They'll cover thousands of acres, many of them largely untouched desert. The region has the most intense sun in North America, but it's also home to threatened species, such as the desert tortoise, and rare plants.
Environmentalists, who're largely supportive of solar, still worry that environmental reviews will be rushed.
"We need to proceed with caution, and what the stimulus deadline has done is remove our ability to do that," says Gloria Smith, an attorney for the Sierra Club in San Francisco.
Last week, the Sierra Club faced a two-day deadline to respond to information presented at an all-day hearing on one solar farm. After it complained, the response time was set at eight business days. Typically, it'd be weeks, Smith says.
Some agency reports also lack information they'd normally have, says Joshua Basofin, California representative for Defenders of Wildlife. This month, the commission and the Bureau of Land Management filed their joint environmental review on the 6,500-acre Blythe Solar Power Project. At the filing, numerous issues were unresolved, including relocating desert tortoises and offsetting damage to burrowing owl habitat and Native American cultural resources.
"We're very concerned that there hasn't been comprehensive environmental analysis for some of these projects," Basofin says.
The commission's O'Brien says environmental reviews will be complete. If first reports lack data, the agencies will file supplements, he says.
Several of the projects have changed to reduce their effects on the environment. The Ivanpah solar farm, at 3,500 acres, shrank 12% to lessen damage to desert tortoise and rare plant habitat. The Imperial Valley Solar farm, at 6,000-acres, is 16% smaller than originally proposed to avoid an area especially rich in Native American resources around land that was once an ancient lake.
Next few months are critical
Project developers are hopeful that the deadline for 30% cash grants will be extended, as Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., has proposed in legislation. "But nobody wants to count on an extension," says Sean Gallagher, vice president of Tessera Solar, which has two projects. The stimulus funds "are a critical part of the financing," Gallagher adds.
The next few months are also critical. Companies need permits by fall to have time to finalize financing and transmission plans. Picker, of the governor's office, expects up to 75% of the larger projects will get permits in time.
While some environmentalists say those may not be as well-designed as they could be, leading groups also recognize that land conservation isn't the only factor to consider. Global warming will degrade even pristine land, says environmentalist Delfino. Greener energy is a way to fight back, leading her to conclude that some habitat destruction is worth a bigger "long-term" gain.
"But we cannot have the cure be worse than the disease," Delfino says.
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