Tag Archives: nature

For green energy, there’s no place like loam

Diagram of PMFC
Diagram by KVDP

Petroleum use is rife with environmental and security issues, and first-generation biofuels fall well short of carbon neutrality. Moreover, as global food crops literally lose ground to biofuel production, mounting scarcity is driving up food prices, increasing global hunger and political instability.

But what if we could have our rice and burn it, too? What if we could derive energy from crops without killing them, or generate power using plants and land not needed for food, all through the power of microbes?

How Plant-microbial Fuel Cells Work

Starlight, star bright, first shot I snap tonight

Infrared photo of Webster's Falls
Photo: Marcus Qwertyus/Wiki Commons

Photography is all about light; it’s right there in the name: photo (“light”) + graph (“means of recording”). So how do you shoot in the gloom between the golden hours? Well, you have a few options. You can pop in a flashbulb. You can try your hand at painting with light – that is, fiddling with f-stops and shutter speeds to let more light in over a longer period. Unfortunately, flashbulbs tend to wash out photos, and setting up longer exposures tends to limit your photographic freedom.

Night-vision cameras and attachments get around these problems, either by amplifying existing light or working with a different kind of ambient “light” – aka infrared radiation, either from body heat (thermal IR) or from an active IR illuminator attached to the camera. Today, infrared and ultraviolet cameras also make useful tools for inspections and field work. But how do they work, and what is their history?

How Night-vision Cameras Work

The moon, in the conservatory, with an iceberg

Image (and model) by Werner Willmann.

The 100th anniversary of Titanic’s fateful voyage arrives laden with new photos, new articles and, of course, new theories regarding what caused her sundering. Over the past century, researchers, authors and filmmakers have blamed the incident on everyone from White Star management and Belfast’s Harland and Wolff shipyard to Captain E. J. Smith and helmsman Robert Hitchins.

In this article, I examine the latest and arguably most novel theory: The moon did it.

Did the Moon Doom the Titanic?

Let’s do the space-time warp again

Black hole The Large Hadron Collider isn’t going to spawn one, and our own sun will never become one, but it’s fun to think about what might happen if a black hole lurked its way into our cosmic neighborhood. It’s the cosmological equivalent of a ghost story, pitting our bite-sized planet against the reality-bending might of the ultimate bogeyman.

So, what would happen? Let’s just say that, if you’ve ever wondered how taffy feels, you’re about to gain some insight. Still, you might be surprised at some of the crazy ways the scenario plays out—and at the mind-blowing experiences you would have if you could survive the trip.

What if a Black Hole Formed Near Our Solar System?