artificial leaf

http://www.chicagotribune.com/bluesky/originals/ct-uic-artificial-leaf-bsi-20160822-story.html

Ally MarottiContact ReporterBlue Sky Innovation

University of Illinois at Chicago researchers have developed a way to mimic plants’ ability to convert carbon dioxide into fuel, a way to decrease the amounts of harmful gas in the atmosphere and produce clean energy.

The artificial leaf essentially recycles carbon dioxide, said Amin Salehi-Khojin, assistant professor of mechanical and industrial engineering at UIC and lead researcher on the project.

And it’s powered entirely by the sun, mimicking the real photosynthesis process.

“Real leaves use the energy from the sun and convert carbon dioxide to sugar,” Salehi-Khojin said. “In the artificial leaf that we built, we use the sun and we convert CO2 to (synthetic gas), which can be converted to any hydrocarbon, like gasoline.”

Here’s how it works: The energy of the sun rearranges the chemical bonds of the carbon dioxide. So the sun’s energy is being stored in the form of chemical bonds, which can be burned as fuel, Salehi-Khojin said.

The ability to store the sun’s energy that way could solve a problem the clean tech community faces with battery storage.

Technology surrounding wind turbines and solar panels has developed enough that those forms of energy harvesting are becoming economically viable, and large corporations are increasingly sourcing power from wind and solar farms. But a way to store that energy — so wind and solar power can be used on demand — is not as readily available.

Clean-energy startups look for a boost from Paris climate deal

Multiple companies are developing batteries, and although some experts think they’ll be cheap enough to compete with fossil fuels by the end of the decade, they’re not there yet.

UIC’s development could push renewable energy technology forward, said Professor Michael R. Wasielewski, executive director of the Institute for Sustainability and Energy at Northwestern University.

“Whether you use solar or whether you use wind as a source of electricity, you have a source that’s intermittent and not storable, so what you need to do is find a storage method,” he said. This artificial leaf closes “the carbon cycle so you don’t have any excess CO2, so it’s an environmentally friendly way of storing this renewable energy.”

A study presenting their research was published July 29 in the journal “Science.” A patent is pending on the technology. Salehi-Khojin received a National Science Foundation grant for about $330,000 last summer to help with the research.

Scientists around the world have been studying carbon reduction, as this type of reaction is called, for years, Salehi-Khojin said. The team at UIC found a catalyst that was able to break down the chemical bonds of carbon dioxide better than the silver and gold traditionally used in the process.

Salehi-Khojin said he thinks a prototype could be ready in about five years, given the help of an industry partner. He envisions putting it in solar farms next to power plants so it could recycle carbon dioxide from the plant, then the plant could use the power it generates.

California Institute of Technology Professor Nathan Lewis, who has been studying solar fuels and artificial photosynthesis for more than 40 years, said UIC’s development is only a small piece of an eventual solar fuel product that can be widely implemented.

“There’s a lot of steps that need to occur to envision how these things would translate into a commercializable system, but it’s a step for building a piece of a full system that may be useful,” he said. “It’s going to take a lot of effort from a lot of people to really push this over the goal line.”

amarotti@tribpub.com

Twitter @allymarotti

Copyright © 2016, Chicago Tribune

See also:

http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/energy/a23938/fix-carbon-dioxide-useful-products/

Reverse Photosynthesis Uses Sunlight To Convert Plant Biomass Into Fuel

http://www.techtimes.com/articles/147122/20160405/reverse-photosynthesis-uses-sunlight-to-convert-plant-biomass-into-fuel.htm

By Alyssa Navarro, Tech Times | April 5, 7:24 AM

 

A vast majority of the planet's industrial system is fueled by petroleum, a naturally-occurring liquid found in formations beneath the surface of the Earth. This makes the petrochemical industry completely indispensable in society.

However, petrochemicals have a huge impact on both the environment and climate.
Now, a team of scientists from Denmark has discovered a new method called reverse photosynthesis which could potentially revolutionize industrial production of chemicals and fuels.

How Reverse Photosynthesis Works

Photosynthesis is a process used by most plants to convert light energy from the Sun into chemical energy, often resulting to vital products such as oxygen.
Just like photosynthesis, the reverse process collects sunlight thru the chlorophyll, a green pigment found in leaves.

But instead of building plant material, the process allows energy in solar rays to break down with the help of a specific enzyme that combines with light energy.

Here is how it works: researchers collect a large sugar molecule broken down from biomass, and then mix it with the special enzyme from bacteria and fungi.

The special enzymes used in reverse photosynthesis are called monooxygenases, natural enzymes applied in the production of industrial fuel. When exposed to sunlight, the plant biomass is completely broken down.

Klaus Benedikt Møllers, one of the study's researchers, said with reverse photosynthesis, the breaking down of sunlight transforms carbon bonds, instead of building plants and producing oxygen.

The revolutionary process takes place within five minutes with sunlight, but without sunlight, it would take hours to achieve the energy transformation.

Although researchers have yet to determine whether reverse photosynthesis is natural process that occurs in the environment, there are many indications that bacteria and fungi actually use reverse photosynthesis to access nutrients and sugar in plants.

The Impact Of Reverse Photosynthesis

David Cannella, one of the researchers of the study, said their discovery means that the production of biofuels and biochemicals for things like plastic could be faster and more efficient.
"Some of the reactions, which currently take 24 hours, can be achieved in just 10 minutes by using the Sun," said Cannella.

The new method's ability to split chemical bonds between hydrogen and carbon may be developed to turn biogas-planted source methane into liquid fuel methanol, an "attractive" raw material that can be processed into fuels.

Claus Felby, a professor from University of Copenhagen and lead researcher of the study, believes that the discovery is a "game-changer" that could change how the industry produces chemicals and fuels, "thus serving to reduce pollution significantly."

In the meantime, further investigations must be done before their discovery could directly benefit society, but the potential is "one of the greatest we have seen in years," added Felby.
The findings of the study are featured in the journal Nature Communications.




 

transforming light into crystal

http://scienceblog.com/74321/solid-light-compute-previously-unsolvable-problems/#xcRbaviDwlQkk76W.97

‘Solid light’ could compute previously unsolvable problems

Researchers at Princeton University have begun crystallizing light as part of an effort to answer fundamental questions about the physics of matter.

The researchers are not shining light through crystal – they are transforming light intocrystal. As part of an effort to develop exotic materials such as room-temperature superconductors, the researchers have locked together photons, the basic element of light, so that they become fixed in place.
“It’s something that we have never seen before,” said Andrew Houck, an associate professor of electrical engineering and one of the researchers. “This is a new behavior for light.”
The results raise intriguing possibilities for a variety of future materials. But the researchers also intend to use the method to address questions about the fundamental study of matter, a field called condensed matter physics.

“We are interested in exploring – and ultimately controlling and directing – the flow of energy at the atomic level,” said Hakan Türeci, an assistant professor of electrical engineering and a member of the research team. “The goal is to better understand current materials and processes and to evaluate materials that we cannot yet create.”

The team’s findings, reportedonline on Sept. 8 in the journal Physical Review X, are part of an effort to answer fundamental questions about atomic behavior by creating a device that can simulate the behavior of subatomic particles. Such a tool could be an invaluable method for answering questions about atoms and molecules that are not answerable even with today’s most advanced computers.
In part, that is because current computers operate under the rules of classical mechanics, which is a system that describes the everyday world containing things like bowling balls and planets. But the world of atoms and photons obeys the rules of quantum mechanics, which include a number of strange and very counterintuitive features. One of these odd properties is called “entanglement” in which multiple particles become linked and can affect each other over long distances.

The difference between the quantum and classical rules limits a standard computer’s ability to efficiently study quantum systems. Because the computer operates under classical rules, it simply cannot grapple with many of the features of the quantum world. Scientists have long believed that a computer based on the rules of quantum mechanics could allow them to crack problems that are currently unsolvable. Such a computer could answer the questions about materials that the Princeton team is pursuing, but building a general-purpose quantum computer has proven to be incredibly difficult and requires further research.

Another approach, which the Princeton team is taking, is to build a system that directly simulates the desired quantum behavior. Although each machine is limited to a single task, it would allow researchers to answer important questions without having to solve some of the more difficult problems involved in creating a general-purpose quantum computer. In a way, it is like answering questions about airplane design by studying a model airplane in a wind tunnel – solving problems with a physical simulation rather than a digital computer.

In addition to answering questions about currently existing material, the device also could allow physicists to explore fundamental questions about the behavior of matter by mimicking materials that only exist in physicists’ imaginations.

To build their machine, the researchers created a structure made of superconducting materials that contains 100 billion atoms engineered to act as a single “artificial atom.” They placed the artificial atom close to a superconducting wire containing photons.

By the rules of quantum mechanics, the photons on the wire inherit some of the properties of the artificial atom – in a sense linking them. Normally photons do not interact with each other, but in this system the researchers are able to create new behavior in which the photons begin to interact in some ways like particles.

“We have used this blending together of the photons and the atom to artificially devise strong interactions among the photons,” said Darius Sadri, a postdoctoral researcher and one of the authors. “These interactions then lead to completely new collective behavior for light – akin to the phases of matter, like liquids and crystals, studied in condensed matter physics.”
Türeci said that scientists have explored the nature of light for centuries; discovering that sometimes light behaves like a wave and other times like a particle. In the lab at Princeton, the researchers have engineered a new behavior.

“Here we set up a situation where light effectively behaves like a particle in the sense that two photons can interact very strongly,” he said. “In one mode of operation, light sloshes back and forth like a liquid; in the other, it freezes.”

The current device is relatively small, with only two sites where an artificial atom is paired with a superconducting wire. But the researchers say that by expanding the device and the number of interactions, they can increase their ability to simulate more complex systems – growing from the simulation of a single molecule to that of an entire material. In the future, the team plans to build devices with hundreds of sites with which they hope to observe exotic phases of light such as superfluids and insulators.

“There is a lot of new physics that can be done even with these small systems,” said James Raftery, a graduate student in electrical engineering and one of the authors. “But as we scale up, we will be able to tackle some really interesting questions.”

Besides Houck, Türeci, Sadri and Raftery, the research team included Sebastian Schmidt, a senior researcher at the Institute for Theoretical Physics at ETH Zurich, Switzerland. Support for the project was provided by: the Eric and Wendy Schmidt Transformative Technology Fund; the National Science Foundation; the David and Lucile Packard Foundation; the U.S. Army Research Office; and the Swiss National Science Foundation.

Read more at http://scienceblog.com/74321/solid-light-compute-previously-unsolvable-problems/#I0rPzFLyip23rCWR.99

China mulls high-speed train to US: report

(chinadaily.com.cn)

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/business/2014-05/08/content_17493399.htm
 

Photo taken on June 27, 2013 shows China's first intelligent high-speed test train produced by CSR Qingdao Sifang Co Ltd waits to be tested in Qingdao, a coastal city in East China's Shandong province. China is considering building a high-speed railway across the Siberia and Bering Strait to Alaska, across Canada to the US. In not so distant future, people can take the train from China to the US. [Photo/Xinhua]

China is considering building a high-speed railway across the Siberia and Bering Strait to Alaska, across Canada to the US. In not so distant future, people can take the train from China to the US, according to Beijing Times Thursday citing Wang Mengshu, a railway expert and academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering.

The proposed journey will start from China's northeast region, cross Siberia to Bering Strait, and run across the Pacific Ocean by undersea tunnel to reach Alaska, from Alaska to Canada, then on to its final destination, the US. To cross Bering Strait will require approximately 200km undersea tunnel, the technology, which is already in place will also be used on Fujian to Taiwan high-speed railway tunnel. The project will be funded and constructed by China. The details of this project are yet to be finalized.

Solar powered toilet

From Slashdot:

"With funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation's Reinvent the Toilet challenge, [a] team has developed a toilet that uses concentrated solar power to scorch and disinfect human waste, turning feces into a useful byproduct called biochar ... a sanitary charcoal material that is good for soils and agriculture. By converting solid waste to biochar (liquid waste is diverted elsewhere, as it's easier to deal with), the toilet thus allows for sanitary waste disposal without huge infrastructure investments. The toilet itself, called the Sol-Char, is a fascinating bit of engineering. In order to sanitize waste without the help of massive treatment facilities, Linden's team instead designed the toilet to scorch waste in a chamber heated by fiber optic cables that pipe in heat from solar collectors on the toilet's roof. 'A solar concentrator has all this light focused in on one centimeter. It'd be fine if we could bring everyone's fecal waste up to that one point, like burning it with a magnifying glass,' Linden said. 'But that's not practical, so we were thinking of other ways to concentrate that light.'"

Solar Power Down From Space By 2025

from slashdot

"A NASA veteran, aerospace entrepreneur, and space-based solar power (SBSP) expert, [John] Mankins designed the world's first practical orbital solar plant. It's called the Solar Power Satellite via Arbitrarily Large PHased Array, or SPS-ALPHA for short. If all goes to plan, it could be launched as early as 2025, which is sooner than it sounds when it comes to space-based solar power timelines. Scientists have been aware of the edge the "space-down" approach holds over terrestrial panels for decades. An orbiting plant would be unaffected by weather, atmospheric filtering of light, and the sun's inconvenient habit of setting every evening. SBSP also has the potential to dramatically increase the availability of renewable energy."

sustainable natural lighting via genetically modified plant

http://singularityhub.com/2013/04/25/kickstarter-campaign-to-create-glowing-plant-goes-viral-singularity-labs-ftw/

In what they call the “first step in creating sustainable natural lighting,” a group of innovators coming out of Singularity University have launched a Kickstarter campaign to create glowing plants. Admittedly the idea of replacing street lamps with glowing foliage will seem far-fetched to many. But after just three days the campaign has gone viral, already having surpassed its goal of $65,000.

The core team includes Omri Amirav-Drory, a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford and founder of the gene building startup Genome Compiler, a Singularity University company coming out of the rapidly expanding Singularity Labs. Also part of the core team are Senstore co-founder Antony Evans, and Kyle Taylor, a biologist who teaches Intro to Molecular and Cell Biology at the biohacker space BioCurious. The three have now joined forces at Singularity University. I got a chance to speak with Evans, the group’s Project Manager, and ask him about the groups’ exciting and eccentric vision.
To create the glowing plants, the team will first generate modified genes with the Genome Compiler software, then insert them into Arabidopsis, a small flowering plant related to mustard and cabbage (they make sure to point out that the plant is not edible). The main gene, luciferase, is the same one that makes fireflies light up the night.

Evans acknowledges that this isn’t the first time luciferase has been used to create glowing plants. But to create plants bright enough to light our way will take a lot of optimizing. The feature that they’ve already worked out is modifying the luciferase gene so that it recycles, as lots of the enzyme will be needed to make the plant sufficiently bright.

[Source: Kickstarter]

With Genome Compiler they’re able to design and print DNA, to make new sequences from scratch. But even while the price of DNA synthesis drops, costs can mount quickly, especially when you’re troubleshooting. At the time of this writing, the Kickstarter campaign had raised over $64,000 – less than a thousand shy of their goal after just three days. The more money the group gets, the more genes they’ll be able to print and test.

To create a system that people can experiment with, they had to start simple. If you’ve seen Arabidopsis you know it’s more suited to light a dinner table than a sidewalk. “We chose it for good reasons, it’s about as safe as it gets. It’s a winter plant that won’t do well in direct sunlight, so it won’t go crazy [by spreading uncontrollably]. Two, it’s about as good as it gets as a model organism. Because it has such a small genome its metabolic pathways have been completely mapped. What I would really like to do one day is a willow tree, but genetically engineering trees is pushing the boundaries of science that we’re not ready for.”

While the genetics will have to be worked out, for Arabidopsis and willow trees or whatever comes after, Evans said the toughest part about getting the project going was “dealing with the ethics and regulatory questions. Science in some ways is the easy part. There isn’t a lot of precedent for what we’re doing. It took a long time to get to a consensus [with regulatory bodies] on that.”

The glowing gene is first inserted into agrobacteria which are then used to move the gene into the plant. [Source: Kickstarter]

Want to support the cause, or maybe just have the only house on the block with a glowing yard? People from the US who back with $40 or more will be sent seeds (50 to 100) of their own so they can cultivate the glowing crop in their own backyard. They emphasize that the seeds will never be sold commercially, so the only chance ever to get the seeds is through Kickstarter. Those interested can follow them on twitter or Facebook or follow developments on their blog. And anyone in the Sunnyvale, CA area can meet up with the team at the Bioluminesence Community meetups at BioCurious Monday evenings.

Evans acknowledged that they’ve encountered a fair amount of skepticism, but the team hopes to convert those skeptics. “More than lighting streets it’s about educating and inspiring the public – it’s not as dangerous as people think. We want to put a beautiful plant in their hands and show them it’s useful and safe.” And for those who are interested, the team plans on publishing a paper so that others can learn from their trial-and-error and won’t have to reinvent the wheel. “The plant is the sexy part, but if we can establish guidelines, I think that might be the more important part.”
The funds raised with the campaign are just the beginning. The real resource, Evans tells me, is people. “Bigger than the light itself, if we can get people to invest their time, being creative, building an ecosystem, then they can get together to try things and build things. I know it sounds cheesy, but I think of the light of the plant as ‘lighting the way.’ I want kids to see it and think, ‘I can do that,’ go down to the lab and start coming up with things. And that’s where the real innovation will come from, because they’ll come up with things we can’t.”

Like the campaign, Evans hopes the plants will eventually grow into something beyond the original vision. Plants are exquisitely sensitive to their environment and respond to minute changes in air, temperature, light. “You could modify the plants for all kinds of sensing applications,” he says. “I firmly believe that this is something that’s going to revolutionize our society. With this technology we have a lot of tools that can solve a lot of humanity’s problems. We’re limited only by our imagination.”

New Gasoline Substitute from Plants

http://www.sfgate.com/science/article/Biofuel-created-by-explosive-technology-4191168.php

Biofuel created by explosive technology

 Chemical engineers at UC Berkeley have created a new, cleaner fuel out of an old concoction that was once used to make explosives.

The fuel, which uses a century-old fermentation process to transform plant material into a propellant, could eventually replace gasoline and drastically cut down on greenhouse gas emissions, according to the team of Berkeley scientists.

"It's a much more efficient way of (creating renewable fuel) than many of the other products being considered," said Harvey Blanch, a professor of chemical engineering at Berkeley. "This product is one that may be closest to commercialization."

The discovery, published in the journal Nature, means corn, sugar cane, grasses and other fast-growing plants or trees, like eucalyptus, could be used to make the propellant, replacing oil.
The process uses a fermentation system discovered around 1914 by Chaim Weizmann, a chemist who later became the first president of Israel. Weizmann used a bacterium called Clostridium acetobutylicum to ferment sugars and turn them into acetone, butanol and ethanol. The process, dubbed ABE, allowed the British to manufacture cordite and make explosives used during World War I.

The process was later used to manufacture synthetic rubber, but that was unnecessary after petroleum became widely available. The last U.S. factory using the process to produce acetone and butanol closed in 1965.

The research into creating a diesel substitute is part of a 10-year development program by the Energy Biosciences Institute, a collaboration among UC Berkeley, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The research, paid for using $50 million a year from the British oil company BP, has been going on for five years.

Blanch and Douglas Clark, a professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering, extracted the acetone and butanol from the fermentation mixture, according to their paper. Their co-author, chemistry Professor Dean Toste, then created a catalyst that converted the brew into a mix of hydrocarbons similar to those in diesel fuel.

The resulting substance burns as well as petroleum-based fuel and contains more energy per gallon than ethanol, according to the study. It can be produced using a variety of renewable starches and sugars that can be grown in crops.

"You can take a wide variety of sugar sources - from corn, sugar cane, molasses to woody biomass or plant biomass - and turn it into a diesel product using this fermentation process," said Blanch, adding that about 90 percent of the raw material remains in the finished product, reducing the loss of carbon. "Grasses are also a possible source. Eucalyptus could also be used. Anything that's fast-growing."

The blend could be adjusted for summer or winter driving, according to the researchers, who predicted it will be five to 10 years before the fuel is ready to be mass-marketed.

Blanch said it will probably take five years for the fuel to be perfected and become ready to be sold to the public. It could take another five years, he said, to develop a system that would produce the product on a scale large enough to meet the demand of the motoring public at a low enough cost to compete with oil-based products.

The expectation in California is that it will be used initially for niche markets, like the military, and eventually in trucks, trains and other vehicles that need more oomph than hybrid or battery power can provide.

Peter Fimrite is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: pfimrite@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @pfimrite

Petrol from air

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/exclusive-pioneering-scientists-turn-fresh-air-into-petrol-in-massive-boost-in-fight-against-energy-crisis-8217382.html

Exclusive: Pioneering scientists turn fresh air into petrol in massive boost in fight against energy crisis

Is scientific breakthrough a milestone on the road to clean energy?

A small British company has produced the first "petrol from air" using a revolutionary technology that promises to solve the energy crisis as well as helping to curb global warming by removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

Air Fuel Synthesis in Stockton-on-Tees has produced five litres of petrol since August when it switched on a small refinery that manufactures gasoline from carbon dioxide and water vapour.
The company hopes that within two years it will build a larger, commercial-scale plant capable of producing a ton of petrol a day. It also plans to produce green aviation fuel to make airline travel more carbon-neutral.

Tim Fox, head of energy and the environment at the Institution of Mechanical Engineers in London, said: "It sounds too good to be true, but it is true. They are doing it and I've been up there myself and seen it. The innovation is that they have made it happen as a process. It's a small pilot plant capturing air and extracting CO2 from it based on well known principles. It uses well-known and well-established components but what is exciting is that they have put the whole thing together and shown that it can work."

Although the process is still in the early developmental stages and needs to take electricity from the national grid to work, the company believes it will eventually be possible to use power from renewable sources such as wind farms or tidal barrages.

"We've taken carbon dioxide from air and hydrogen from water and turned these elements into petrol," said Peter Harrison, the company's chief executive, who revealed the breakthrough at a conference at the Institution of Mechanical Engineers in London.

"There's nobody else doing it in this country or indeed overseas as far as we know. It looks and smells like petrol but it's a much cleaner and clearer product than petrol derived from fossil oil," Mr Harrison told The Independent.

"We don't have any of the additives and nasty bits found in conventional petrol, and yet our fuel can be used in existing engines," he said.

"It means that people could go on to a garage forecourt and put our product into their car without having to install batteries or adapt the vehicle for fuel cells or having hydrogen tanks fitted. It means that the existing infrastructure for transport can be used," Mr Harrison said.

Being able to capture carbon dioxide from the air, and effectively remove the principal industrial greenhouse gas resulting from the burning of fossil fuels such as oil and coal, has been the holy grail of the emerging green economy.

Using the extracted carbon dioxide to make petrol that can be stored, transported and used as fuel for existing engines takes the idea one step further. It could transform the environmental and economic landscape of Britain, Mr Harrison explained.

"We are converting renewable electricity into a more versatile, useable and storable form of energy, namely liquid transport fuels. We think that by the end of 2014, provided we can get the funding going, we can be producing petrol using renewable energy and doing it on a commercial basis," he said.

"We ought to be aiming for a refinery-scale operation within the next 15 years. The issue is making sure the UK is in a good place to be able to set up and establish all the manufacturing processes that this technology requires. You have the potential to change the economics of a country if you can make your own fuel," he said.

The initial plan is to produce petrol that can be blended with conventional fuel, which would suit the high-performance fuels needed in motor sports. The technology is also ideal for remote communities that have abundant sources of renewable electricity, such solar energy, wind turbines or wave energy, but little in the way of storing it, Mr Harrison said.

"We're talking to a number of island communities around the world and other niche markets to help solve their energy problems.

"You're in a market place where the only way is up for the price of fossil oil and at some point there will be a crossover where our fuel becomes cheaper," he said.
Although the prototype system is designed to extract carbon dioxide from the air, this part of the process is still too inefficient to allow a commercial-scale operation.

The company can and has used carbon dioxide extracted from air to make petrol, but it is also using industrial sources of carbon dioxide until it is able to improve the performance of "carbon capture".
Other companies are working on ways of improving the technology of carbon capture, which is considered far too costly to be commercially viable as it costs up to £400 for capturing one ton of carbon dioxide.

However, Professor Klaus Lackner of Columbia University in New York said that the high costs of any new technology always fall dramatically.
"I bought my first CD in the 1980s and it cost $20 but now you can make one for less than 10 cents. The cost of a light bulb has fallen 7,000-fold during the past century," Professor Lackner said.

Ta Ta Aircar Debut in India

My thought: I saw news of this in 2005, so I'm not so jazzed to read 'keep an eye out for Airpod in your city in the coming years'.  The design looks very different from earlier and far less stable than I had hoped - not that the Smart Car is anything I'd want to drive on an interstate hwy. At this point, why not just get a Merlin Corbin?

http://www.gizmocrazed.com/2012/08/this-tiny-car-runs-on-air/

This Tiny Car Runs On Air!

Posted by Nick

Electric cars have been the main source of hope in the alternative car market and have become largely accepted worldwide by many major motor companies, but Tata Motors (an Indian car manufacturer) is changing things up with the first car to run on air, the Airpod.

The Airpod’s technology was originally created in France at Motor Development International but has since been bought buy Tata in hopes to bring it to the Indian consumer car market. With virtually zero emissions and at the cost of about a penny per kilometer, it is definitely one of the most environmentally and economically friendly vehicles in the world. The tank holds about 175 liters of compressed air that can be filled at special stations or by activating the on-board electric motor to suck air in from the outside. Costing about $10,000, this car could beat out most smart cars from the market.

The design is still being worked on, as well as inputting more traditional steering tools as it currently uses a joystick to control the rear differential, but this car certainly has a lot of potential for getting around the city. It may start in India but could spread like wildfire from there so keep an eye out for Airpod in your city in the coming years.

Sun's Twin Discovered -- the Perfect SETI Target?

http://news.discovery.com/space/suns-twin-is-an-optimum-seti-target-120426.html

Analysis by Ray Villard

There are 10 billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy that are the same size as our sun. Therefore it should come as no surprise that astronomers have identified a clone to our sun lying only 200 light-years away.

Still, it is fascinating to imagine a yellow dwarf that is exactly the same mass, temperature and chemical composition as our nearest star. In a recent paper reporting on observations of the star -- called HP 56948 -- astronomer Jorge Melendez of the University of San Paulo, Brazil, calls it "the best solar twin known to date."

WATCH VIDEO: What does it take to find a planet 63 light-years from Earth?

SLIDE SHOW: Exquisite Exoplanetary Art
His team combined observations from the Very Large Telescope (VLT), Keck Telescope, and Hobby Eberly Telescope to characterize the star and look for planets. Though fast orbiting large planets weren't found it still begs the question: could HP 56948 have a twin solar system too?

The majority of planetary systems discovered to date make our solar system look like the exception and not the rule. For example, the sun-like star 55 Cancri, only 41 light-years away, has a mix of close-in hot Jupiters, followed by terrestrial planets an then more Jupiters.

In some systems the planets are in much more elliptical orbits than found around our sun. Epsilon Eridani for example has a planet that swings as close to the star as Venus is from our sun, and then climbs out to the orbital radius of Jupiter.

The good news is that astronomers have not detected the short-period wobble of HP 56948 that would indicate a hot Jupiter was tugging on it. This leaves the inner few million miles around the star safe territory for the presence of one or more terrestrial planets. Earth-mass worlds would pull so weakly on the star that they have not yet been detected.


But the chemical composition of HP 56548 has unusual amounts of aluminum, calcium, magnesium, and silicon -- by the same ratio as our sun has. In our solar system these elements are found locked away in interplanetary dust, meteorites and rocky planets like Earth.

This means terrestrial planets could exist around HP 56548. In fact, there is a reasonable chance that the star's planetary system has a solar system architecture with the massive outer worlds staying beyond the "frost line" where ices condense to form bloated worlds. And, a family of terrestrial planets huddled close to the star.

Simply put, the nearby presence of a twin star potentially offers a fascinating experiment in parallel evolution. Assuming that HP 56548 has at least one inhabitable planet, has life arisen and successfully evolved to higher forms over 4 billion years? If not, why not?

If 4 billion years is the typical time for the emergence of intelligent beings, then there is a civilization now orbiting HP 56548. If we dare to extrapolate even further, a technological civilization should have developed astronomy, which is at the root of modern physics. Their astronomers should have located our sun as easily as we found their star. They then might have been compelled to undertake a program of both monitoring and transmitting radio message to our solar system.

That said, it would not be surprising if SETI observations of the star came up empty handed. The system may not have an Earth-sized planet in its habitable zone. Even if there is one it may not be Earth-like with oceans and plate tectonics. And, even if there is a world flourishing with multi-cellular life, it may not have progressed to an intelligent species. Or, it has a civilization but it is not as technologically advanced as ours.

ANALYSIS: Do the Meek Inherit the Galaxy?
Keep in mind that any alien astronomers on such a planet would be studying Earth as it appeared in the early 1800s. That information, encoded in light, is just arriving at HP 56948 now. Our radio and television signal leaking into space won't reach the star for another 130 years. In the absence of such an electromagnetic signature extraterrestrials may overlook Earth and scout elsewhere.
They nevertheless would speculate, as we are, whether our sun offers and abode for intelligent life. But the quarantine imposed by the physics of time and space keeps us forever apart.

Russian scientists reach lake under Antarctica: Lake Vostok

http://news.yahoo.com/russian-scientists-reach-lake-under-antarctica-142203186.html
By VLADIMIR ISACHENKOV | Associated Press 

MOSCOW (AP) — After more than two decades of drilling in Antarctica, Russian scientists have reached the surface of a gigantic freshwater lake hidden under miles of ice for some 20 million years — a lake that may hold life from the distant past and clues to the search for life on other planets.

Reaching Lake Vostok is a major discovery avidly anticipated by scientists around the world hoping that it may allow a glimpse into microbial life forms, not visible to the naked eye, that existed before the Ice Age. It may also provide precious material that would help look for life on the ice-crusted moons of Jupiter and Saturn or under Mars' polar ice caps where conditions could be similar.

"It's like exploring another planet, except this one is ours," Columbia University glaciologist Robin Bell told The Associated Press by email.

Valery Lukin, the head of Russia's Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute (AARI), which is in charge of the mission, said in Wednesday's statement that his team reached the lake's surface on Sunday.

Lukin has previously compared the Lake Vostok effort to the moon race that the Soviet Union lost to the United States, telling the Russian media he was proud that Russia will be the first this time. Although far from being the world's deepest lake, the severe weather of Antarctica and the location's remoteness made the project challenging.

"There is no other place on Earth that has been in isolation for more than 20 million years," said Lev Savatyugin, a researcher with the AARI. "It's a meeting with the unknown."
Savatyugin said scientists hope to find primeval bacteria that could expand the human knowledge of the origins of life.
"We need to see what we have here before we send missions to ice-crusted moons, like Jupiter's moon Europa," he said.
Lake Vostok is 160 miles (250 kilometers) long and 30 miles (50 kilometers) across at its widest point, similar in area to Lake Ontario. It lies about 3.8 kilometers (2.4 miles) beneath the surface and is the largest in a web of nearly 400 known subglacial lakes in Antarctica. The lake is warmed underneath by geothermal energy.
The project, however, has drawn strong fears that 60 metric tons (66 tons) of lubricants and antifreeze used in the drilling may contaminate the pristine lake. The Russian researchers have insisted the bore would only slightly touch the lake's surface and that a surge in pressure will send the water rushing up the shaft where it will freeze, immediately sealing out the toxic chemicals.

Lukin said about 1.5 cubic meters (50 cubic feet) of kerosene and freon poured up to the surface from the boreshaft, proof that the lake water streamed up from beneath, froze, and blocked the hole.

The scientists will later remove the frozen sample for analysis in December when the next Antarctic summer comes.

Scientists believe that microbial life may exist in the dark depths of the lake despite its high pressure and constant cold — conditions similar to those expected to be found under the ice crust on Mars, Jupiter's moon Europa and Saturn's move Enceladus.

"In the simplest sense, it can transform the way we think about life," NASA's chief scientist Waleed Abdalati told the AP by email.

Scientists in other nations hope to follow up this discovery with similar projects. American and British teams are drilling to reach their own subglacial Antarctic lakes, but Bell said those lakes are smaller and younger than Vostok, which is the big scientific prize.

Some scientists hope that studies of Lake Vostok and other subglacial lakes will advance knowledge of Earth's own climate and help predict its changes.

"It is an important milestone that has been completed and a major achievement for the Russians because they've been working on this for years," Professor Martin Siegert, a leading scientist with the British Antarctic Survey, which is trying to reach another Antarctic subglacial lake, Lake Ellsworth.

"The Russian team share our mission to understand subglacial lake environments and we look forward to developing collaborations with their scientists and also those from the U.S. and other nations, as we all embark on a quest to comprehend these pristine, extreme environments," he said in an email.

In the future, Russian researchers plan to explore the lake using an underwater robot equipped with video cameras that would collect water samples and sediments from the bottom of the lake, a project still awaiting the approval of the Antarctic Treaty organization.

The prospect of lakes hidden under Antarctic ice was first put forward by Russian scientist and anarchist revolutionary, Prince Pyotr Kropotkin at the end of the 19th century. Russian geographer Andrei Kapitsa pointed at the likely location of the lake and named it following Soviet Antarctic missions in the 1950s and 1960s, but it wasn't until 1994 that its existence was proven by Russian and British scientists.

The drilling in the area began in 1989 and dragged on slowly due to funding shortages, equipment breakdowns, environmental concerns and severe cold.

While temperatures on the Vostok Station on the surface above have registered the coldest ever recorded on Earth, reaching minus 89 degrees Celsius (minus 128 degrees Fahrenheit), the water in the lake is warmed by the giant pressure of the ice crust and geothermal energy underneath.

The Russian team reached the lake just before they had to leave at the end of the Antarctic summer season.

____

AP Science Writer Seth Borenstein contributed to this report from Washington.

http://earthsci.org/education/Lake_Vostok/vostok.html

Rare earth: One of the world's largest scandium deposits found in Queensland

http://www.abc.net.au/rural/news/content/201110/s3335822.htm

By Karen Hunt

Monday, 10/10/2011

A north Queensland mining company has discovered one of the world's largest deposits of the rare earth, scandium.

Scandium is used to make solid oxide fuel cells, which are used generating electricity from natural gas and renewable fuels..

This discovery has been made at a former nickel mine at Greenvale, just out of Townsville.

With scadnium selling currently selling for $5,000 a kilo, owner Metallica Metals says it will double the size of a planned cobalt and nickel mine at the site.

Metallica managing director Andrew Gillies says the deposit's quality and purity are outstanding, and very unusual.

"Scandium is found probably in most rocks, typically perhaps five to 15 parts per million; we've got sometimes a thousand times that," he said.

"We would think that we've got something unique. There's only three resources in the world and we've got two of them."

Neb. mine find to challenge China’s dominance of vital rare minerals

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/aug/2/rush-for-rare-earth-may-create-nebraska-boomtown/

By Claire Courchane

-

The Washington Times

Updated: 10:58 a.m. on Wednesday, August 3, 2011
Geologist Matt Joeckel displays a core sample of carbonatite rock containing niobium and rare-earth elements, which was taken from a deposit near Elk Creek, Neb., in early February. (Associated Press)Geologist Matt Joeckel displays a core sample of carbonatite rock containing niobium and rare-earth elements, which was taken from a deposit near Elk Creek, Neb., in early February. (Associated Press)

Elk Creek, Neb. (population 112), may not be so tiny much longer. Reports suggest that the southeastern Nebraska hamlet may be sitting on the world’s largest untapped deposit of “rare earth” minerals, which have proved to be indispensable to a slew of high-tech and military applications such as laser pointers, stadium lighting, electric car batteries and sophisticated missile-guidance systems.

Canada-based Quantum Rare Earths Developments Corp. last week received preliminary results from test drilling in the area, showing “significant” proportions of “rare earth” minerals and niobium.

The only people more excited than Quantum? The residents of Elk Creek, where nearly one in seven people live under the poverty line, but whose economy has been booming ever since the company showed up late last year to start laying the groundwork for a possible mining bonanza.

“It’s been a very, very positive experience for our community,” said state Sen. Lavon Heidemann, an Elk Creek farmer. “When Quantum came in here, they put money in the local community. And any time you have money flowing in a small town, that’s a positive.”

The potential mining operation, the first in the U.S. in a decade, could have an international impact as well. U.S. officials and lawmakers in Congress have been eager to break the near monopoly on global production of the 17 rare-earth elements in China, which has shown its willingness to use its power in the market for political ends.

Quantum acquired a circular piece of land - a bit more than 4 miles in diameter - near Elk Creek late last year. The land, which the U.S. Geological Survey projects may have one of the world’s largest deposits of niobium and rare earths, has since been poked, prodded and drilled to determine whether it held any niobium, which has never been mined in the U.S., or rare earths, which the U.S. has not mined in almost 10 years.

Boom times based on natural-resource strikes can disrupt a community and its economy, but it’s hard to find anyone in Elk Creek bad-mouthing the potential rare-earth bonanza.

“The whole community is behind Quantum,” said Greg Krueger, a local contractor. “When the drillers showed up this spring, people just opened their arms up.”

The town of Elk Creek consists of not much more than a Lutheran church, a village tavern and a grocery store called Scotty’s, owned by a local family. Even in the exploratory phase, Quantum has brought some big changes.

“They’ve rented houses, they go to our local grocery store for their food, and straight off they signed all of their leases with local farmers, just like they promised,” Mr. Heidemann said.

Mr. Krueger added that Elk Creek residents were eager to provide any help they could, including allowing the drills to be dragged across their land free of charge.

“It was, ‘What do you need? Where do you need to stay?’ Nobody is pessimistic, as far as thinking, ‘They’re here to destroy things,’ ” Mr. Krueger said.

“Elk Creek is a very small community,” he added. “And [Quantum] has provided a lot of business.”

The Quantum project is the latest example of U.S. attempts to become less dependent on foreign sources for the obscure minerals found in few places on earth, but essential to a variety of modern gadgets.

The U.S. has relied on China for years for the 17 minerals that are defined as rare earths by the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry. Despite having such obscure names as praseodymium, promethium and samarium - no copper or zinc here - they are necessary for such routine contemporary technologies as magnets, laser pointers and miniature electronics, such as iPods.

“Without these minerals, our cellphones would be 3 pounds,” Quantum CEO Peter Dickie said.

The U.S. used to produce rare earths through the Mountain Pass Mine in California, but it was shut down in 2002, primarily because of environmental concerns, including the spillage of hundreds of thousands of gallons of water carrying radioactive waste into a nearby lake.

China has emerged as the world’s predominant supplier, controlling 97 percent of the global market for rare earths. In recent years, lawmakers have expressed concerns about China’s “rare earth” dominance, and these concerns were heightened when Beijing temporarily halted exports to Japan last year during a territorial dispute.

Another essential mineral Quantum hopes to mine is niobium, a steel strengthener used by the automotive and aerospace industries.

Using niobium, “you get a thinner, lighter, stronger steel,” Mr. Dickie said. “It’s important to the automotive industry, where they’re trying to get lightened-up vehicles” needed to meet fuel-economy standards without compromising safety.

The U.S. imports most of its niobium from Brazil, and has never mined it at home.

U.S. resources

Mineral mining has created many a boomtown in the West over the past two centuries, such as the Klondike gold rush and the copper industry of Butte, Mont. But some places have been left holding the bag, or turned into ghost towns, when the deposits were tapped out, leaving behind environmental damage from storage, mining processes and waste.

Environmental groups have remained silent on the Quantum project in Nebraska, but rare earths are used in many aspects of “green” technology, including hybrid-engine cars and wind turbines.

The Sierra Club of Nebraska has declined to comment on the mine until production begins.

Said Brian McManus, a spokesman for the Nebraska Department of Environmental Quality, “The project is still in early stages, so we don’t have a lot of detail on it.”

He added that the permits the company has obtained will help to make sure they stay environmentally cautious.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency did not return requests for comment.

Although studies have shown the U.S. has 13 million metric tons of rare-earth minerals, National Mining Association spokeswoman Carol Raulston said it does not mine any of it - partly as a result of the difficulty of obtaining permits.

“One of the key problems that investors tell us about is that the permitting regime in this country is so complicated and time-consuming that it has hurt investments here in the United States,” Ms. Raulston said.

Mr. Dickie said a bill approved by the House Natural Resources Committee late last month may help Quantum and other U.S. mining operations.

The National Strategic and Critical Minerals Policy Act of 2011 states that it is “essential to the national interest to ensure an expanding and competitive manufacturing industry built upon a healthy mining and minerals industry.”

The bill “helps to ensure a steady supply in the event of a breakdown of a normal supply chain, but the other thing that’s important to us is that it has brought to the forefront of the minds of politicians and users - who are, quite frankly, everybody - the knowledge that these materials are critical,” Mr. Dickie said.

On July 5, the U.S. and European Union won a major case against China when the World Trade Organization ruled that China was engaging in restraint of trade by keeping world supplies low on several other minerals on which it is the major supplier. Trade analysts said that ruling could set a precedent for a future rare-earth minerals case that also could loosen China’s grip on that market.

But Rep. Mike Coffman, Colorado Republican, who fought for rare-earth amendments on the bill, said that it is not enough to open up supplies from abroad.

“It’s important to develop other sources [for rare earths] in the United States and not be so reliant on China,” Mr. Coffman said. “It’s a bipartisan bill with a very strong chance of passage.”

Looking forward

Elk Creek residents say they know the riches won’t pour in overnight. They don’t care.

“It’s not short and sweet,” Mr. Dickie said of the process to open a mine. “There’s obviously regulatory and permitting issues that you run into.”

Mr. Dickie said the next step is to get results of metallurgical testing, followed by a full feasibility study.

He said the date for mine construction to begin is “fluid,” but hopes it will be in the next couple of years.

Minerals and money flow aren’t the only benefits to Elk Creek of the proposed Quantum mine: The project will create several hundred jobs in addition to the handful it created while test-drilling proceeds.

Other companies racing to exploit the rare-earth rush include Molycorp, which is attempting to reopen the former Mountain Pass Mine in California and recently secured the environmental permits to proceed there.

Molycorp did not return requests for comment on its permit, but Quantum does not see the California mine as a threat.

“They’ve been processing some of the mine tailings and building new facilities. It’s been very minor production,” Mr. Dickie said. “We don’t anticipate that we could supply the entire U.S. requirement of rare earths, so obviously there’s room for several other players.”

Richard Branson Announces Virgin Oceanic Submarine

http://www.dailytech.com/Richard+Branson+Announces+Virgin+Oceanic+Submarine+/article21307.htm

Day two of the Brainstorm GREEN conference yesterday revealed that Richard Branson will embark on an undersea venture where he will explore some of the deepest parts of the oceans around the world.
Now, at the Brainstorm GREEN conference, Branson told Fortune Managing Editor Andy Serwer that he would be exploring the deepest parts of the world's oceans in the Virgin Oceanic submarine.

Brainstorm Green Conference

http://www.fortuneconferences.com/brainstormgreen/

***

Map of Earth's gravity

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12911806

Breakthrough: Fossil fuels on demand

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/opinion/a-brave-new-world-of-fossil-fuels-on-demand/article1871149/

In September, a privately held and highly secretive U.S. biotech company named Joule Unlimited received a patent for “a proprietary organism” – a genetically engineered cyanobacterium that produces liquid hydrocarbons: diesel fuel, jet fuel and gasoline. This breakthrough technology, the company says, will deliver renewable supplies of liquid fossil fuel almost anywhere on Earth, in essentially unlimited quantity and at an energy-cost equivalent of $30 (U.S.) a barrel of crude oil. It will deliver, the company says, “fossil fuels on demand.”

We’re not talking “biofuels” – not, at any rate, in the usual sense of the word. The Joule technology requires no “feedstock,” no corn, no wood, no garbage, no algae. Aside from hungry, gene-altered micro-organisms, it requires only carbon dioxide and sunshine to manufacture crude. And water: whether fresh, brackish or salt. With these “inputs,” it mimics photosynthesis, the process by which green leaves use solar energy to convert carbon dioxide into organic compounds. Indeed, the company describes its manufacture of fossil fuels as “artificial photosynthesis.”

Joule says it now has “a library” of fossil-fuel organisms at work in its Massachusetts labs, each engineered to produce a different fuel. It has “proven the process,” has produced ethanol (for example) at a rate equivalent to 10,000 U.S. gallons an acre a year. It anticipates that this yield could hit 25,000 gallons an acre a year when scaled for commercial production, equivalent to roughly 800 barrels of crude an acre a year.

By way of comparison, Cornell University’s David Pimentel, an authority on ethanol, says that one acre of corn produces less than half as much energy, equivalent to only 328 barrels. If a few hundred barrels of crude sounds modest, recall that millions of acres of prime U.S. farmland are now used to make corn ethanol.

Joule says its “solar converter” technology makes the manufacture of liquid fossil fuels 50 times as efficient as conventional biofuel production – and eliminates as much as 90 per cent of carbon dioxide emissions. “Requiring only sunlight and waste C0{-2},” it says, “[this] technology can produce virtually unlimited quantities of fossil fuels with zero dependence on raw materials, agricultural land, crops or fresh water. It ends the hazards of oil exploration and oil production. It takes us to the unthinkable: liquid hydrocarbons on demand.”

The company name honours James Prescott Joule, the 19th-century British scientist. Founded only four years ago, it has begun pilot-project production in Leander, Tex. Using modular solar panels (imagine an array of conventional panels in a one-acre field), it says it will quickly ramp up production this year toward small-scale commercial production in 2012.

Joule acknowledges its reluctance to fully explain its “solar converter.” CEO Bill Sims told Biofuels Digest, an online biofuels news service, that secrecy has been essential for competitive reasons. “Some time soon,” he said, “what we are doing will become clear.” Although astonishing in its assertions, Joule gains credibility from its co-founder: George Church, the Harvard Medical School geneticist who helped initiate the Human Genome Project in 1984.

Joule began to generate buzz toward the end of 2010. When U.S. Senator John Kerry toured the company’s labs in October, he called the technology “a potential game-changer.” He noted, ironically, that the company’s science is so advanced that it can’t qualify for federal grants or subsidies: The government’s definition of biofuels requires the use of raw-material feedstock.

In December, the World Technology Network named the company the world’s top corporate player in bio-energy research. Biofuels Digest named it one of the world’s “50 hottest” bio-energy enterprises, moving it ahead 10 places in the past year (from 32nd to 22nd). Selected from 1,000 eligible companies around the world, 37 of the “50 hottest” are American-based – another reason not to count out the U.S. just yet.

Conventional fossil fuels are formed from solar energy, too – in a process that takes zillions of bugs and millions of years. Joule’s technology ostensibly produces the same products in less time. In other energy-producing roles, vast quantities of microbes are already hard at work underground, loosening hard-to-recover crude oil. It could be time for science to bring these bugs up into the light of day.

Editor's Note: The original newspaper version of this article and an earlier online version incorrectly stated that Joule Unlimited owns a patent for producing liquid hydrocarbons from E. coli, rather than from a genetically engineered cyanobacterium. This online version has been corrected.

NASA Strikes Gold, Silver, Mercury and Water On the Moon

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/2010/10/its-confirmed-there-is-water.html

By Jenny Marder

There is water on the moon ... along with a long list of other compounds, including, mercury, gold and silver. That's according to a more detailed analysis of the chilled lunar soil near the moon's South Pole, released as six papers by a large team of scientists in the journal, Science Thursday.

"We thought the moon was bone dry," said planetary geologist Peter Schultz of Brown University, lead author of one of the studies. "All the books on the moon say that the moon is dry, and now we have to rewrite that chapter."

The data comes from the October 2009 mission, when NASA slammed a booster rocket traveling nearly 6,000 miles per hour into the moon and blasted out a hole. Trailing close behind it was a second spacecraft, rigged with a spectrometer to study the lunar plume released by the blast. The mission is called LCROSS, for Lunar Crater Observer and Sensing Satellite.

Turns out the moon not only has water, but it's wetter than some places on earth, such as the Sahara desert. Roughly 5 percent of water ice - that's combined water vapor and ice - was found buried in the crater. This water ice could provide a valuable resource for human space travel, generating drinking water, but also possibly hydrogen and oxygen for breathing and rocket fuel. The amount, Schultz said, adds up to about 12 to 14 gallons per ton of material. This is important, because transporting water to the moon costs about $100,000 per gallon of water.

"One of the things LCROSS was meant to do as a strategic mission was to understand whether hydrogen is a usable resource," said Anthony Colaprete, principal investigator of the LCROSS studies. "Based on the results, the answer is yes. The resources are there, and they have the potential to be usable for future missions."

But also key to the findings were the range of other chemicals: carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, ammonia, sodium, hydrogen and small amounts of calcium and magnesium. Schultz believes that many of these materials, otherwise foreign to the environment, were deposited by ancient comets and asteroids that collided with the moon.

Researchers have also expressed concerns about mercury found in the soil, which could be toxic and pose obstacles to space travel. "You know how volatile mercury is on earth," said Randy Gladstone of Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, in a press conference on Thursday. "It's probably more volatile than other metals on the moon."

The lunar poles, which are very cold, create a sort of kitchen-sink effect, where these compounds accumulate and are stored. Further analysis of these materials could tell us more about how they got there, as well as the moon's history more broadly.

The next steps will be to analyze the water ice and other materials on smaller and smaller scales, and to better understand their potential as a resource, said Colaprete: "Is the water accessible underneath that dirt? And if I were an astronaut, how far would I have to walk to find water, and how extensive are these pockets of water?"

More from BBC about water resource:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11598813

China Embargos Rare Earth Exports To Japan, Japan to free Chinese boat captain amid row

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/23/business/global/23rare.html?_r=4

Summary from Slashdot:

"The NY Times reports that the Chinese government has placed a trade embargo on all exports to Japan of a crucial category of minerals used in products like hybrid cars, wind turbines and guided missiles. China mines 93 percent of the world's rare earth minerals, and more than 99 percent of the world's supply of some of the most prized rare earths, which sell for several hundred dollars a pound. The embargo comes after a dispute over Japan's detention of a Chinese fishing trawler captain whose ship collided with two Japanese coast guard vessels as he tried to fish in waters controlled by Japan but long claimed by China. The Chinese embargo is likely to have immediate repercussions in Washington. The House Committee on Science and Technology is scheduled to review a detailed bill to subsidize the revival of the American rare earths industry and the House Armed Services Committee is scheduled to review the American military dependence on Chinese rare earth elements."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-11403241

Japan is to release a Chinese fishing boat captain whose arrest two weeks ago led to a major row with Beijing.

Japan had accused Zhan Qixiong of deliberately ramming two patrol vessels near disputed islands in the East China Sea.

China said his detention was "illegal and invalid", and was sending a plane to bring him home.

It came after four Japanese men were detained in China on suspicion of illegally filming in a military area.

A Japanese foreign ministry spokesman said its embassy in Beijing had received confirmation that the four were being held, but he said he did not want to speculate whether it was linked to Japan's detention of a Chinese fishing boat captain.

Officials said the four men were employees of a Japanese construction company who were in China to bid for a project to dispose of chemical weapons from World War II.

Roland Buerk BBC News, Tokyo

Many in Japan may bristle, saying the country has caved in to Chinese pressure. But Japan certainly had a lot to lose. The economy is dependent on exports for growth, and China is its biggest trading partner. Japan's government is looking in to reports that China stopped shipments to Japan of rare earths - elements in which it has a near monopoly vital for the manufacture of hi-tech goods like electric cars.

By releasing the captain, Japan may ease tension, but it looks weak. China, too, may lose in the long run. The events of this month have cast a chill over its neighbours just as China hopes to take on a larger global role.
Escalating tensions

At a news conference, prosecutors in Naha, Okinawa, said Mr Zhan was just a fishing boat captain and had no criminal record in Japan.

They said they did not perceive any premeditated intent to damage the patrol boats and therefore had decided that further investigation while keeping the captain in custody would not be appropriate, considering the impact on relations with Japan.

It was unclear whether Mr Zhan would be charged with anything, or when he would be released.

"It is a fact that there was the possibility that Japan-China relations might worsen or that there were signs of that happening," said Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshito Sengoku, the Reuters news agency reported. "Our ties are important and both sides must work to enhance our strategic and mutual beneficial relations."

Spokeswoman Jiang Yu said on the Chinese foreign ministry website that the government would send a charter plane to bring Mr Zhan home, reiterating that "any form of so-called legal procedures taken by Japan against the Chinese boat captain are illegal and invalid".

Tensions had escalated since Japan detained the Chinese captain.

Beijing cut off ministerial level contacts between the two countries and thousands of Chinese tourists pulled out of trips to Japan. Concerts by a Japan's top boy band SMAP due to take place in Shanghai were cancelled by the Chinese organisers.

Earlier this week Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao said that Japan bore full responsibility for the situation and demanded the immediate release of the captain.

On Thursday, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton urged the two sides to settle the issue before it had a long-term impact on the region.

The Japanese coastguard arrested Zhan Qixiong on 8 September after his trawler collided with two of their patrol boats in an area claimed by both countries, near uninhabited islands which may have oil and gas deposits

Japanese prosecutors had until next Wednesday to decide whether or not to charge the man.

U.S. Nuclear Weapons Have Been Compromised by Unidentified Aerial Objects

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUS166901+15-Sep-2010+PRN20100915


PR Newswire

WASHINGTON, Sept. 15

Ex-military men say unknown intruders have monitored and even tampered with American nuclear missiles

Group to call on U.S. Government to reveal the facts

WASHINGTON, Sept. 15 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Witness testimony from more than 120 former or retired military personnel points to an ongoing and alarming intervention by unidentified aerial objects at nuclear weapons sites, as recently as 2003. In some cases, several nuclear missiles simultaneously and inexplicably malfunctioned while a disc-shaped object silently hovered nearby. Six former U.S. Air Force officers and one former enlisted man will break their silence about these events at the National Press Club and urge the government to publicly confirm their reality.

One of them, ICBM launch officer Captain Robert Salas, was on duty during one missile disruption incident at Malmstrom Air Force Base and was ordered to never discuss it. Another participant, retired Col. Charles Halt, observed a disc-shaped object directing beams of light down into the RAF Bentwaters airbase in England and heard on the radio that they landed in the nuclear weapons storage area. Both men will provide stunning details about these events, and reveal how the U.S. military responded.

Captain Salas notes, "The U.S. Air Force is lying about the national security implications of unidentified aerial objects at nuclear bases and we can prove it." Col. Halt adds, "I believe that the security services of both the United States and the United Kingdom have attempted—both then and now—to subvert the significance of what occurred at RAF Bentwaters by the use of well-practiced methods of disinformation."

The group of witnesses and a leading researcher, who has brought them together for the first time, will discuss the national security implications of these and other alarmingly similar incidents and will urge the government to reveal all information about them. This is a public-awareness issue.

Declassified U.S. government documents, to be distributed at the event, now substantiate the reality of UFO activity at nuclear weapons sites extending back to 1948. The press conference will also address present-day concerns about the abuse of government secrecy as well as the ongoing threat of nuclear weapons.

WHO: Dwynne Arneson, USAF Lt. Col. Ret., communications center officer-in-charge

Bruce Fenstermacher, former USAF nuclear missile launch officer

Charles Halt, USAF Col. Ret., former deputy base commander

Robert Hastings, researcher and author

Robert Jamison, former USAF nuclear missile targeting officer

Patrick McDonough, former USAF nuclear missile site geodetic surveyor

Jerome Nelson, former USAF nuclear missile launch officer

Robert Salas, former USAF nuclear missile launch officer

WHAT: Noted researcher Robert Hastings, author of UFOs and Nukes: Extraordinary Encounters at Nuclear Weapons Sites, will moderate a distinguished panel of former U.S. Air Force officers involved in UFO incidents at nuclear missile sites near Malmstrom, F.E. Warren, and Walker AFBs, as well as the nuclear weapons depot at RAF Bentwaters.

WHEN: Monday, September 27, 2010

12:30 p.m.

WHERE: National Press Club

Holeman Lounge

Event open to credentialed media and Congressional staff only

SOURCE Former U.S. Air Force Officer Robert Salas, and Researcher Robert Hastings