Sempra Generation, a subsidiary of Sempra Energy, announced today the completion of the El Dorado Energy Solar project, the largest operational thin-film, solar-power project in North America. Located on 80 acres of sunshine-rich desert in Nevada, the 10-megawatt facility consists of more than 167,000 solar modules and at peak production will generate enough electricity to power approximately 6,400 homes.

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Installation of a 5 KW Hummer Wind Turbine.

http://www.holysolar.com : The Holy Solar crew trucked down to Hopland, California, for the annual SolFest celebration at the Solar Living Institute & left with this song and video. In Joy!

This vast sinkhole in Turkmenistan was created many years ago by a Soviet gas company drilling for potential resources in the area. Reports of the expedition vary; some say the pit was created as early as the 1950s, another says 1971.

When drilling started, the rig suddenly disappeared into the ground. It had drilled into an underground cavern, the roof of which had collapsed, forming a 60 meter-wide, 20 meters deep. It was also rich in natural gas, which was now largely unusable and escaping into the atmosphere.

Some bright spark then thought, to contain the noxious gas, that it would be a good idea to burn it off, and so ignited the crater. Since then, the gas riddled pit has been burning indefinitely, and shows little sign of letting up.

There is now a lucrative tourism trade surrounding Turkmenistan’s Doorway to Hell, so good in fact that a small village has erupted near the pit. Darvaza is now home to about 350 inhabitants, who live a semi-nomadic lifestyle in the region and often set up their home near the burning sinkhole. With all that gas being released into the air, let’s just hope they’ve got strong stomachs and a poor sense of smell.

Source 1, 2, 3

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With a range of up to five miles at a flying height of 10,000 ft, this 40,000 pound chemical laser, which is fitted to an adapted Boeing 747, can take accurate aim at speeds of up to 300mph. This modified military jumbo jet is equipped with the latest in airborne laser weapons technology, for identifying, tracking and shooting down missile threats.

The YAL-1 Airborne Laser (ABL) has been some twelve years in the making. Now, after various stages of testing and the odd hold-up, it looks likely to be given the green light for an in-flight missile shoot-down sometime in 2009.

Seekin’ and a-destroyin’: artist’s impression of the airborne laser in action

Image: Missile Defense Agency

The ABL is a megawatt-class chemical oxygen iodine laser (COIL), assisted by six infrared sensors and two kilowatt-class solid-state lasers. Watt? Basically, the ABL’s infrared sensors detect the bright hot exhaust plume of a missile that’s boosting off up to a few hundred kilometres away. Within seconds, the two lower-powered lasers track the missile’s course and pinpoint an impact spot, while adapting to atmospheric distortions like air turbulence.

Moments later, in comes the big gun, the COIL itself, which is made up of six SUV-sized modules to the rear of the plane. The laser beam travels down the length of the aircraft, the huge turret in the nose swivels towards the target, and telescope mirrors inside steer the beam onto the missile. It fires for three to five seconds, heating and softening the missile’s shell so that – boom! – it blows up mid-flight. Cue the high fives and victory whoops.

Is that a gun in your cockpit? The ABL’s turret, reckoned to be the world’s largest

Image: Missile Defense Agency

But are there any drawbacks to this missile-zapping laser, for the environment and for people?

The directed-energy laser is fed with a compact mixture of chemicals not unlike rocket propellant. To get the COIL’s iodine molecules excited and emitting the photons that do the damage, they’re mixed with hydrogen peroxide and potassium hydroxide – chemicals found in hair bleach and drain cleaner. Chlorine gas is used too – nasty stuff employed in warfare for its noxious effects – but traces of it are said to be removed from the exhaust gases. Not exactly rose water, then, but not quite mustard gas either.

According to one report, during a five second burst the high-octane laser produces enough energy to power an average American home for over an hour. This may not seem dazzlingly energy efficient; but once it has been built, firing such a pure energy weapon carries a fraction of the energy cost of launching equivalent missiles, with the extra resources and fuel they require. A fraction of the actual cost too, so good news for the military budgeters.

You know, Bill, that thing kinda reminds me a something: laser turret exposed

Image: Credit: Air Force photo by Bobby Jones

So what else might this sharp-shooting addition to the missile defense system have its sights trained on?

Though the laser could be deployed against other aircraft, their jets probably wouldn’t give off enough heat to be detected effectively by the ABL’s infrared sensors. Elsewhere, ground targets would be tricky to track; and firing the laser down through the atmosphere would weaken the beam – which wouldn’t be potent enough to penetrate tough armoured vehicles. That said, somewhat more ominous plans are afoot to expand the ABL’s scope against other traditional targets. Watch this airspace; just be sure to wear your mirrored shades.

Collateral damage, meanwhile, should in theory be minimised by the ABL’s surgically precise targeting. However, there is the rather less surgically precise danger of debris from destroyed missiles falling on civilians in enemy territory and people in nearby countries. There’s also the small chance of birds flying into the 1.5m-diameter laser beam and being vaporised – particularly as it’s invisible to the naked eye – though the risk should be reduced by the brief duration for which it’s fired. Some comfort for ornithologists then.

Shoot to missile-kill: the ABL in flight

Image: US AirForce

Though it might not exactly be on every environmentalist’s New Year wish list, with its lethal speed of light capabilities the ABL is sure to be a smash hit with the gung-ho as well as the Star Wars geeks. Stay on target.

Sources: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11

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If a good friend of usually normal intelligence suddenly insisted they saw little blue men, you’d be inclined to think they had lost all their faculties and would carefully hide all alcohol from sight, that or they’ve been watching too many reruns of the Smurfs. But until only recently the chance of seeing not only blue men but blue women was a very high likelihood, especially if you frequented the Appalachian Hills of Kentucky. In fact, you’d see whole families of blue people.

Stemming from one French immigrant, Martin Fugate, who moved to Kentucky in 1820, the blue families were to become legends in their own rights, all because of the color of their skin.

Ingesting elemental silver can also turn the skin blue. This man, Paul Karason, rubbed colloidal silver on his face and skin many years ago to treat a skin condition, which made him slowly turn a bluish/grey color.
Image via Wunderkabinett

Their story came to the attention of medical researchers in the early 1980s when 9th generation Fugates (now with the surname Stacy, through marriage) gave birth to a child named Benjy. He was a dark blue color immediately after birth, which caused panic among the medical team, and after carrying out a hoard of tests, mainly for heart and lung problems, the doctors found nothing of note. The only clues to the child’s diagnosis was when the grandmother piped up, “Have you ever heard of the blue Fugates of Troublesome Creek? My grandmother Luna on my dad’s side was a blue Fugate. It was real bad in her.”

Born with the condition methemoglobinemia, the Fugates and their affected descendents suffered from a rare hereditary blood disorder where there is excessive methemoglobin in the blood. The American Heritage® Medical Dictionary states methemoglobin is “a brownish-red crystalline organic compound formed in the blood when hemoglobin is oxidated either by decomposition of the blood or by the action of various oxidizing drugs or toxic agents. It contains iron in the ferric state and cannot function as an oxygen carrier.” Because the circulating blood is less oxygenated those with the disorder appear various shades of blue, depending on how seriously they are affected.

Methemoglobinemia is a recessive gene, which means it can only be passed on if both parents carry the gene. So the chances of Martin Fugate meeting and marrying someone who carried the ‘blue’ gene were pretty slim, but that’s what happened. Martin Fugate and Elizabeth Smith went on to have seven children, four of them reported to be blue.

Lorenzo and Eleanor Fugate. Lorenzo was also known as ‘Blue Anze’ and was mentioned in Trost’s The Blue People of Troublesome Creek.
Image Hazard Kentucky via Appalachian History

Researcher Cathy Trost, who compiled the most comprehensive history of the Fugates to date, says:

“The clan kept multiplying. Fugates married other Fugates. Sometimes they married first cousins. And they married the people who lived closest to them, the Combses, Smiths, Ritchies, and Stacys. All lived in isolation from the world, bunched in log cabins up and down the hollows, and so it was only natural that a boy married the girl next door, even if she had the same last name.”

And so, after ten generations, from Martin Fugates father, ‘blue’ people roamed the hills of Kentucky.

It was only when researchers investigating Benjy Stacy’s case discovered a report in the Journal of Clinical Investigation by EM Scott in 1960 that a cure appeared likely.
The article pointed to an absence of an enzyme from the red blood cells called diaphorase, which Scott found was lacking in some indigenous Alaskans he had studied previously. Trost explains:

“In normal people hemoglobin is converted to methemoglobin at a very slow rate. If this conversion continued, all the body’s hemoglobin would eventually be rendered useless. Normally diaphorase converts methemoglobin back to haemoglobin.”

The descendants of the Fugates were then tested, and they too lacked this enzyme. Springing into action, doctors studying the Appalachian clans considered Scott’s findings and found their own methemoglobin converter – a dark blue dye called methylene blue.

Trying to convince members of the blue clan to have blue dye injected into them so they would revert to a natural skin tone must have been harder than trying to find the cure, but one couple conceded. Minutes after the methylene blue was administered the blue tinge to the skin was gone.

Since then, it’s thought that all the Fugates and their relations have been treated – records claim that by 1982 only two of three family members had methemoglobin. We’re guessing they’ve been sorted by now.

So, the next time you’re feeling slightly persecuted, spare a thought for the Blue Fugates, a small populace in America who had skin as blue as blueberries and no doubt endured taunts that only Willy Wonka’s Violet Beauregarde could understand.

Source 1, 2, 3, 4

http://EnergyForEarth.net

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