Energy is all around us. Even the smallest particles that we cannot see without a microscope have the potential to unleash enough energy to destroy large portions of the world. There’s a huge gas ball that rises over our east horizon every morning, unseen wind currents that can turn power-capturing turbines, and good ol’ fossil fuels that are still in abundance beneath our feet despite decades of massive collection processes. With all of these standard energy sources, it’s still refreshing to see that some people are being creative with the ways that we collect the energy around us. It is a collection…

Ocean lovers who need motivation to join the world of the uber-rich need only to look to Gray Design and their concept for Xhibitionist, a yacht that could easily be featured in the next Christopher Nolan sci-fi hit. It’s not for the shy. Parking this at any harbor would be like pulling up the valet at a nice restaurant in a Koenigsegg Agera R. It’s not all for show, either. Functionally, it’s designed to be green while keeping jealous onlookers green with envy. The Xhibitionist is an intelligently designed and finely tuned instrument that was made, quite simply, to turn heads. More than that, it poses…

One doesn’t have to work at NASA or SpaceX to explore the heavens. Telescopes have been publicly available for decades and many kids and adults have explored space at night. Exploring during the day brings a distinct challenge; the Sun makes it hard to see anything other than blue skies and trying to look at the Sun itself through a telescope is optical suicide. Self-proclaimed “space cowboy” Alan Friedman uses very basic technology to check out the sun during the day from his backyard in Buffalo, NY, in a way that highlights the beauty of the solar system’s star. He then converts into art, adding…

The term “solar sailing” was first coined by Arthur C. Clarke in the 1964 book “Sunjammer” but the roots of the concept can be traced back centuries. “Let us create vessels and sails adjusted to the heavenly ether, and there will be plenty of people unafraid of the empty wastes.” ~ Johannes Kepler, 17th century astronomer It’s the type of vision that spawns realities unimaginable to most, but it’s a vision that has come true in recent years and that will receive its biggest test as early as 2014, according to NASA. The sail utilizes the “currents” of the Sun’s energy to propel it through space much the…

There are fears in the scientific community about coronal mass ejections (CMEs) and our recent inability to track them properly. CMEs are huge magnetized clouds of electified gas (plasma) that can be as big as 1.5 trillion tons of gas and travel at 3 million mph. If a powerful CME hits the earth’s magnetosphere, it can disrupt salellites, radio communication, and even the electric grid. The head on perspective of tracking CMEs from earth has always offered a challenge. As you’ll see in this video, a combination of new technologies makes it possible to have better understanding of the events. For…

In today’s episode of 1-minute science, we look up. The sun is the source of, well, just about everything that we need. It would be an insult to our readers to go over the details of how important the Sun is to our very existence, so suffice to say that we need it. This graphic by 1bog puts that all into perspective and offers facts and figures that may be helpful if you ever make it to Who Wants To Be a Millionaire. Is that show still around? Click to Enlarge. Home Solar Power Discounts – One Block Off the Grid…

Oracle, a company who for the past decade seems to be known only for being relevant a decade ago is in the spotlight once again. Apparently Google’s Android operating system uses Java, a product of Sun Microsystems which Oracle purchased in 2009. Oracle claims Google “knowingly, directly and repeatedly infringed Oracle’s Java-related intellectual property”, most likely hoping to scupper a “whoops, our bad” legal defense. Oracle has not yet filed suit, so Google is unable to comment on the press release, but at an estimated 200,000 Android handsets being sold each day around the world, this…