Solar Breakfast

The sparkle of starlight off water could be the clincher for finding oceans on extrasolar planets. And it could be observable with the tech that will be deployed in the next generation of space telescopes.

Plants are extremely efficient converters of light into energy, setting the bar for researchers creating photovoltaic cells. A team of MIT scientists believe they've created a synthetic chloroplast that can be broken down and reassembled repeatedly, restoring sun-damaged solar cells. More »

That? That's the Gossamer Penguin, an experimental solar-powered aircraft cruising above a dry lakebed at NASA Dryden's Flight Research Center in July 1979. It's just one of the many strange, spectacular images of NASA's early days now available online. More »

Each week our friends at Inhabitat recap the week's most interesting green developments and clean tech news for us -- it's the Week in Green.

This week, California saw a tremendous boost for solar power as the nation's first solar thermal plant in two decades was approved for Kern County. We also saw several incredible new approaches to generating alternative energy as researchers took crucial steps towards tapping the skies for lightning power and scientists unveiled a fuel cell battery that can be powered by soda. And if you can barely contain yourself at the prospect of pop-powered batteries, relax -- a team of scientists is also working on using urine to create low-cost fuel cells.

This week we also watched green transportation take a plunge beneath the sea as French engineers unveiled an awesome pedal-powered submarine. Our neighbors to the north also broke news as students at the University of British Columbia embarked upon a record-setting trip across Canada in an electrified VW Beetle and three Canadian schools announced plans to create a car out of cannabis - hopefully it doesn't go up in smoke. Finally, we took a (sobering) look at the havoc that poor public transportation planning can wreak: a massive traffic jam in China that extended for more than 60 miles and 9 days.

Speaking of students, here are a few projects to get you energized for the coming school year: a German tank armory was recently transformed into an ultra-modern solar-powered school, and we showcased some of the world's most incredible student-built structures. In other news, we brought you two dispatches from the realm of wearable tech - a new energy-harvesting film that could wire your wardrobe and a line of clothing that lets you send and receive phone calls. Can you hear me now?

Inhabitat's Week in Green: of pedal-powered submarines and soda-powered fuel cells originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 29 Aug 2010 22:59:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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This animation from the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico plots the positions of all the known asteroids in the solar system in 1980, and adds new ones as they are discovered. The pace and patterns of asteroid discovery give a neat visual illustration of the history of solar system exploration.

Asteroids! No not the video game—I'm talking about all those old rocks floating around up in space. Here's a mesmerizing video that tracks every single one of them that's visited our solar system since 1980. Space: busy place! More »

Electricity might not grow on trees, but it is freely available in the air -- provided you know how to catch it. Such is the contention presented by Dr. Francesco Galembeck of Brazil's University of Campinas at the 240th annual American Chemical Society shindig. He and his crew have shown how tiny particles of silica and aluminum phosphate become electrically charged when water vapor is passed over them. This aims to prove two things: firstly, that airborne water droplets do carry an electric charge, and secondly, that metals can be used to collect that charge. Detractors have pointed out that Dr. Galembeck's team may be generating the droplets' electrical charge by the act of pumping the air over the metals -- which might imply you couldn't practice this technique with still, humid air -- while there's also the rather large caveat that the little electricity they were able to collect from vapor was a hundred million times less than what you could obtain from a solar cell of equivalent size. Still, it's another new door unto a potential alternative energy source and we don't ever like having to close those.

Continue reading Airborne electricity is ripe for the picking, claim researchers

Airborne electricity is ripe for the picking, claim researchers originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 27 Aug 2010 06:27:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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This solar-powered fellow is part of a robot group called Seaswarm. He and his buddies are cheap, autonomous, and communicate via GPS and Wi-Fi. And 5,000 of them could theoretically clean up the Gulf oil spill in a month. More »

Voyager 2 makes its closest encounter with Neptune, passing just 3,000 miles above the cloud tops of the most distant planet in our solar system.

Ohio State's Buckeye Bullet 2 has just set a new battery-powered vehicle record after hitting a speed of 291 mph averaged over two separate runs done back-to-back in opposite directions. Yes, it's technically slower than the two-way land speed record of 300.992 mph the original Bullet set back in 2009, but that car was powered by hydrogen fuel cells. This year's model instead was developed in partnership with boutique Monaco-based electric car manufacturer Venturi and replaced the fuel cells with lithium-ion batteries from A123 Systems. It's also apparently a testing prototype for a new car that's coming in 2011. Will that car hit these kind of world record speeds? Probably not, but we're not letting that dash our newly formed geek fantasy of seeing it drag against a Tesla.

OSU Buckeye Bullet 2 sets new battery-powered speed record originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 25 Aug 2010 06:42:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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