[Keeping It Simple]

Science fiction becomes science fact with each passing day!

[Zombie Robot]

Moon Puts On Its Best Show of the Year Tonight 01/29/10

Tonight's full moon will be the biggest and brightest full moon of the year. It offers anyone with clear skies an opportunity to identify easy-to-see features on the moon. As a bonus, Mars will be just to the left of the moon tonight. Look for the reddish, starlike object.
http://www.aolnews.com/science/artic...-2010/19337938

[jon boy]

Originally Posted by Sonic Youth 37

Two Tesla coils play theme to Mario Bros.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B1O2jcfOylU&

thats pretty damn cool!

[pbradley]

I oppose the speculation of this article:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/bl...universe/print

[FreshChops]

NASA unveils new images of the sun

http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/04/21/sol...ex.html?hpt=C1

[FreshChops]

^^^ seriously, I could tell my days were going by faster.... DAMN!

[Zombie Robot]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/36967785...m/ET?gt1=43001

halleys comet. meteor showers are cool. they're gonna destroy your world one day...

[EVOLghost]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pale_Bl...tions_by_Sagan

[EVOLghost]

some neat space photos.

http://io9.com/5602078/behold-the-be...-year/gallery/

[Rob Instigator]

Happy Birthday Neil Armstrong

[SuchFriendsAreDangerous]

Originally Posted by Rob Instigator

Happy Birthday Neil Armstrong

who go belligerently drunk at my grandparents wedding anniversary in 1969 a month before the lunar landing..

E. coli engineered to make convenient 'drop-in' biofuel

* 19:00 29 July 2010 by Helen Knight
* For similar stories, visit the Energy and Fuels Topic Guide

Genetically modified bacteria that munch on sugar to produce refinable fuels could bring down the cost of switching to cleaner energy.

Although many biodiesels produced from crops and cooking fat can be fed directly into car and truck engines, they are not suitable for existing refineries and pipelines, and so require a separate distribution network. Efforts to produce "drop-in" biofuels that can use the existing fuel infrastructure have so far involved prohibitively expensive chemical conversion steps, says Steve del Cardayre at biofuel developer LS9, based in San Francisco.

Organisms such as cyanobacteria could be the answer. It has been known for years that some naturally produce alkanes – the primary hydrocarbon component of gasoline, diesel and jet fuel and thus a potential drop-in biofuel – through photosynthesis. If you could identify the genes responsible it would be possible to manipulate bacteria that may be more suited to industrial production to produce alkanes, says del Cardayre. "People have looked for these genes for over 20 years," he says.
Alkane sequencing

So a team led by Andreas Schirmer at LS9 compared the genomes of 10 cyanobacteria of various strains known to produce alkanes with one type of bacterium that does not. When the team subtracted the genome of the non-producing strain from those of the producing strains, they were left with a shortlist of 17 genes found only in the alkane producers.

The functions of some of the genes were already understood, leaving two prime suspects for a role in alkane production. So the team then inserted them into a new host, a strain of Escherichia coli – chosen because it breeds readily in laboratory conditions and so is a good candidate for industrial-scale processes. As hoped, they found that the re-engineered bacterium began making enzymes that produced alkanes.

"We have a one-step process to make alkane" in an industrial process, says Schirmer. "Basically, in goes the feedstock – sugar – and out comes the vehicle-ready fuel. It's really simple," he adds.

The bacteria can be grown on any sugar, including those produced from second-generation cellulose-based sources such as grasses and plant waste, which do not compete for land with food crops.

The team have so far produced roughly 10 litres of alkane in a 1000-litre pilot fermentation tank at the company's laboratories, and are now attempting to increase the yield in the hope of scaling up to a larger demonstration plant in a couple of years. Once the technology is fully developed, the company expects the alkane to cost around $50 per barrel, says del Cardayre.

Journal reference: Science, DOI:10.1126/science.1187936

[SuchFriendsAreDangerous]

Originally Posted by SuchFriendsAreDangerous

 

Milankovich cycles:


no, the ice-age cycle has nothing to do with the greenhouse gases patterns.. The ice-ages are caused by the 28,000 year polar-tilt cycle of the earth's rotation as it tilts closer and further away from the sun in its rotation. This is the same cycle that causes our seasons, though on a long term the over-all earth tilts further or closer towards the sun making seasons more extreme. During ice-ages the earth primarily tilted away from the sun, during melting periods it is tilting towards. To add to this, the orbit of the earth around the sun moves on a 3 million year cycle, with the earth coming closer and further away over-all in its distance in orbit around the sun. Ice-ages get more extreme in periods where the earth is drifting away from the sun, and melting periods are more extreme as the earth drifts in orbit closer towards the sun.

Since we had our last ice-age thousands of years ago, we are clearly in a melting period. Compounded on this, the earth is also drifting closer to the sun on its orbit cycle rather than away, so the melting period we are experience in this time is more extreme then the last few 28,000 year cycles..

add to this burning up almost a billion years worth of sequestered carbon in the form of fossil fuel deposits and you have the warmest melting periods in millions of geologic years, though truthfully we are not at the tipping point yet, as in regards to carbon the atmospheric saturation is on par with levels approximately 250,000 years ago...

 

...

[the original pincho]

I heard about this, I think it was in the form of ice.

[Kegmama]

This is pretty awesome to me, as it is practically in my back yard!

More than 1,450 fossilized creatures -- all of them about a million years older than those found at Los Angeles' La Brea Tar Pits -- have been discovered at a 28-acre Southern California Edison excavation site in San Timoteo Canyon...

http://www.pe.com/localnews/inland/s...1.2bc5f26.html

[EVOLghost]

"Switching off a single gene in mice unlocks a part of their brain that is otherwise inactive, boosting learning and memory. The same gene seems to serve a similar purpose in humans, creating hope that humans could enjoy similar benefits."


http://io9.com/5642246/deleting-a-ge...ybe-humans-too

[jon boy]

massive find of fossils including a relative of the saber toothed tiger:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-11383757

[PAULYBEE2656]

i have a massive soft spot for amy manizer

 

[hevusa]

doesn't look that soft...

[PAULYBEE2656]

baad boom tcha!
nicely played!!!

[EVOLghost]

!!!
astronomers found a potentially habitable planet?

http://gizmodo.com/5651768/this-may-...irst-new-earth