US energy production could become mostly renewable within 15 years

The good old US of A often comes under international criticism for the amount of pollution they produce, but a study from the NOAA and University of Colorado in Boulder, has shown that this needn't be the case: According to a heinously clever and complex software model the university's researchers have developed, it should be possible to cut US emissions to 78 percent below 1990 levels within 15 years while meeting increased demand. 

Above: Trump won't like it, but to be honest Trump doesn't like anything, as far as I can tell. Image courtesy of Business Insider.

The model takes into account future cost, demand, generation and transmission scenarios, and shows that this could be done using weather driven renewables.“Our research shows a transition to a reliable, low-carbon, electrical generation and transmission system can be accomplished with commercially available technology and within 15 years,” said Alexander MacDonald, co-lead author and recently retired director of NOAA’s Earth System Research Laboratory.

 
Above: A run down on the envelope pushing model. 

One of the problems with all renewable electricity is that renewables are notoriously unreliable - steady sunshine or wind cannot be guaranteed at any one location. But across the whole US the wind is blowing, or the Sun is shining, somewhere - the country just needs the power transmission ability to move the power to where it's needed. Specifically the model opted for using a new, high-voltage direct-current transmission grid (HVDC) to supplement the current electrical grid. HVDC lines reduce energy losses during long-distance transmission, and MacDonald compared the idea of a HVDC grid with the interstate highway system. “With an ‘interstate for electrons’, renewable energy could be delivered anywhere in the country while emissions plummet. An HVDC grid would create a national electricity market in which all types of generation, including low-carbon sources, compete on a cost basis. The surprise was how dominant wind and solar could be.” 

Elsewhere in the Univerese: 

Gorrilas have learned how to dismantle poacher's traps

Design for new European rocket settled

Patent filed on fusion reactor design 

Warp drive.....

Everyone knows that the laws of Physics say you cannot travel faster than light. And everyone knows that half the reason we scientist get paid is to come up with better laws that include loopholes big enough to drive a starship through. Miguel Alcubierre clearly earned his pay at least once, because he came up with a way of combining different ideas from Einsteins theory of General Relativity that actually let us design a faster than light drive.

 

Above: NASA's Advanced Propulsion Lead, Dr. Harold White, has modified the Alcubierre Drive theory, and proven that faster than light travel might just be possible Courtesy of SpaceX.

The Alcubierre drive really is a warp drive, because it exploits a loophole in the rules: If you are stood still in local space, but space expands faster than light behind you, and contracts faster than light in front of you (we know spacetime can expand that fast because space is massless, and is thought to have done this naturally in the first moments of the universe), you'll effectively travel across the universe faster than light- although the laws won't 'see' the movement (because you're stood still compared to local space) and so won't stop you.

Why am I telling you about this (especially seeing that we can't build one of these yet)?
Well the Wolfram demonstrations project has set up a lot of simulations where you can play about with various weird and wacky phenomena, and Alcubierre's warp engine is one of them. Have a look, if we're all very lucky it might be part of your grandchild's pilots test....

 And when he psses he'll go "oh myyyyyyyyy".....

Are all the aliens dead?

Above: Artist/photographer Knate Myers impression of the Milky Way, our home galaxy that consists of 200,000,000,000 star systems.

For centuries we've looked up at the stars and wondered what, and who, might be out there. Our technology has advanced to the point where we can travel into space, where we can scan other star systems for signs of thinking creatures.

And we've found... nothing

Oh, don't get me wrong: We've found habitable environments in our own solar system, we've found planets in their stars' habitable zones, and the jury is very much still out on the question of life (New Scientist has a good top 10 of possible evidence of alien life here). We've also found... strange things, that might be evidence of intelligence, that we still cannot explain: The Wow signal, Tabby's star, 1991 VG. But nothing conclusive. 

And now a study has put forwards a somewhat grim possibility to explain why: They're all dead. 

They did it.

Sci Fi authors have suggested ideas like this many times before: Alistair Reynolds 'Revelation Space' stories, with the intelligent-life-nuking Inhibitors, springs to mind. But Dr Aditya Chopra, from the ANU Research School of Earth Sciences, has authored a paper in Astrobiology magazine where he puts forward the more realistic idea that most life bearing planets simply become barren before intelligence can arise:

"Early life is fragile, so we believe it rarely evolves quickly enough to survive. Most early planetary environments are unstable. To produce a habitable planet, life forms need to regulate greenhouse gases such as water and carbon dioxide to keep surface temperatures stable." He says. 

Lookng around our own solar system we can see examples of this - Mars, Venus, and Earth all had habitable environments in their youth, but today Mars is an arctic desert and Venus is a pressure cooker. 

Above: NASA Goddard have put together this animation of how Mars evolved from a habitable world to an arctic desert.

Has Chopra hit on an answer? Only time - and more space exploration - will tell us.

Darpa looking to connect human brain directly to machinery...

Have you heard the recent developments implantable chips that let the woman in the video below regain some  of her sight? 

Above: Video courtesy of CBS

If not, well, it's awesome. But the US DARPA agency is looking to go further: They are launching a new project to find a way of hooking a chip in the human brain up to a million neurons, and translate electrical signals from the chip into neural signals - and visa versa. If it succeeds the project open the door to directly controlling and using machinery like it is a part of the users own flesh. 

The idea may conjure up images of Sci Fi badguys like these....

Above: Video clip courtesy of Paramount pictures.

...but as with any technological advancement it comes down to how responsibly it is used: This technology could one day mend the lives of millions of people with disabilities. Lets hope the temptation to try and make 'super soldiers' with it doesn't prove too strong for our governments.