Solar panels

We've all seen a solar panel whether it is on a calculator or on the side of a roof, theoretically with enough sunlight solar panels will last forever. Photovoltaic Cells work by changing photons into electrons. many materials are used in this process but silicon is the most commonly used material. Basically when light strikes this cell a certain portion of it is absorbed within the semiconductor material. This means that the energy of the absorbed light is transferred to the semiconductor. The energy knocks electrons loose, allowing them to flow freely. 

Renewable energy

Using renewable energy is one of the ways the world can help preserve the delicate Eco system and ozone layer. There are many types of renewable energy sources such as:

• Wind power 
• Hydroelectric power
• Solar energy
• Bio mass
• Wave power
• Geothermal energy

If it could be harnessed enough sunlight falls on to planet earth in one hour to meet world energy demands for a year. Also One wind turbine can produce enough electricity to power up to 300 homes.

So renewable energy is the future of energy.

Amazing properties of water

• Ice is less dense than water. This pretty much means it will float on water and freeze from top to bottom. If ice was not less dense than water fishes and other pond life would be greatly affected if ice froze from the bottom upwards.
• Water has a specific heat capacity. Meaning it takes a lot of energy to make water a little warmer This is why on a hot day the sand on a beach can be too hot to walk on but the sea still feels cool the energy from the sun is enough to heat the sand a lot but the water only a little. This has some very important implications, especially for organisms that live in water. Seas, lakes and rivers maintain a much more constant temperature than air which means that animals can live in water all year round without having to adapt to large temperature changes.
• Capillary action. If you put a very fine tube into a beaker of water you will see that some of the water travels a short way up the tube this is caused by water molecules clinging to the sides of the tube and other molecules of water with it.Eventually the weight of the water being pulled is too great to be supported and the water stops moving, having reached an equilibrium. This same principle allows plants to draw water up from the ground. As water molecules travel up the stem more water molecules stick to them and more stick to those and so on until a column of water is being transported in the xylem.

Bee's brains damaged by pesticides

Scientists have found two types of chemicals called neonicotinoids and coumaphos which are both present in common pesticides. These chemicals interfere with any insects ability to learn or remember information. Experiments shown that exposure to these chemicals when put together decreed brain activity. The bees are falling in numbers because they have been hit with a vast number of diseases, losses of habitat  and in the US the mysterious Colony Collapse Disorder has caused numbers to plummet. This is really bad news because Albert Einstein said that the human population will die out after four years if there were no honey bees so they really are a animal to conserve.

Why is sugar so addictive?

We all know how tempting it can be to have one too many chocolates or an extra slice of cake, even when we know it would be healthier not to. But what drives this craving for sweet treats?


Many scientists are lead to believe that we are primed to desire sugar at an instinctive level as it plays a vital role in our survival. When we eat glucose (simple sugar) gets absorbed into the blood stream. A recent study shown that children have a distinct preference to sugary foods over other foods, while they also enjoy sugary foods more than adults do. Scientists claim that our addiction to sugar is an ''evolutionary hangover'' as children who preferred sugars would have a better chance of survival. 

Most toxic bacteria on the planet

 Most toxic bacteria known to man:
The most dangerous bacteria known to man  is the Clostridium Botulinum. Four kilograms of Clostridium Botulinum could wipe out the entire human population .It does this by stopping the communication between you brain and muscles.Botulinum is found every were on this planet.It is found in soil from the sea but need perfect conditions to become deadly.This will have no effect if you just eat the soil because our stomachs have very high concentrated acid which will destroy Clostridium Botulinum.

Did a comet wipe out the dinosaurs?

Around 65 million years ago a giant space object slammed straight into planet earth around the Yucatan peninsula killing 70% of species on our planet. 

Since 1990 scientists have debated what sort of space rock hit planet earth. Scientists know generally how big the explosion would have had to be in order to create the fallout found in drill samples. Based on the size of the explosion and the amount of iridium and osmium deposited at the K-Pg boundary, the most common theory is that the space rock was carbonaceous asteroid about 13 kilometers across. But scientists from Dartmouth College argue that the real culprit was a comet because if moved at the speed that a asteroid couldn't achieve.

So what do you think comet or asteroid? 

Five amazing facts about water

1. Everyone knows that if you're overheated it's important to drink water. But did you know that it's even more important to drink it when your body is freezing? The risk of dehydration is actually higher in cold weather because your body is working harder to stay warm. Water regulates your body temperature while hydrating it.

1. Water keeps the tissues in your body moist. This will protect your vital organs especially your lungs because it is vital for them to maintain a high level of moisture.

1. Your blood sugar levels play a huge role in your diet and overall health. Help get them under control by drinking more water and eating more hydrating foods like fresh fruits instead of sugar-filled carbohydrates. 

1. Water helps protect cells and enhancing overall health. Proper hydration has been linked to the prevention of everything from cancer to emotional disorders.

1. Your body is more likely to be fatigued because when you are dehydrated, your organs have to work harder to pump oxygenated blood. So skip the coffee and get some water instead!

Lost tectonic plate found

Scientists found a tectonic plate that had diapered under North america millions of years ago still peaks out in places around California and Mexico. The Farallon oceanic plate was once nestled between the Pacific and North American plates, which were converging around 200 million years ago at what would become the San Andreas fault along the Pacific coast. This slow geological movement forced the Farallon plate under North America, a process called subduction. A lot of the Farallon plate got pushed down deep into the mantle below the crust. the plate then fragmented leaving some parts of the plate visible.
In California, these seismic surveys revealed a large mass of cool, dry material 62 miles to 124 miles 100 to 200 kilometers below the surface. This strange spot was dubbed the Isabella anomaly.  

Microscopic life captured in plankton net

The photo to the right shows a sample of water teeming with microscopic life.

The sample was collected in a plankton net suspended into an incoming tide for 20 minutes from a bridge over an inlet near Brunswick, Maine. It was later photographed in a lab at the Southern Maine Community College. Several diatoms which are aquatic, photosynthetic plants can be identified here.

The round, cathedral window like structure is a stepanodiscus and the connected, rectangular tubes are tabellaria. Diatoms are at the bottom of the food chain, meaning that nearly all life depends upon these creatures. They produce as much as 50 percent of the Earth’s oxygen.

Neanderthal's large eyes cause extinction

A study of Neanderthal skulls suggests that they became extinct because they had larger eyes than our species.

As a result, more of their brains were devoted to seeing in the long, dark nights in Europe, at the expense of high-level processing.
Although they could see better humans had far better intelligence this meant that they could fashion warmer and sturdier clothing and form bigger social networks.
The research team suggests that the ancestors of the Neanderthals left Africa and migrated to Europe meaning they had to adapt to the darker longer nights. The result was that they had to evolve bigger eyes.

Viruses could be used to cure bacterial diseases

At the Eliava in Georgia patents are treated for all kinds of bacterial infections with viruses known as phages, in other countries these diseases are cured with antibiotics. Phages work by getting in side of the bacteria and their DNA will replicate until the bacteria die. This could be the future for medicine seeing that more and more bacteria are becoming resistant to antibiotics.

The phages can be injected, sprayed or even swallowed. The good thing about phages are that they have no side effects or negative aspects which antibiotics do. 

In the future we may see phages used to treat minor bacterial infections and antibiotics kept for the serious life-threatening conditions. 

Monopole video

In the video to the right you can clearly see monopoles functioning on a very small scale it can produce around 2.5 volts, on a bigger scale it would work well in 3rd world countries.
This may be the key to the future of energy!

The video is by me

The Expanding Universe

For hundreds of years astrologists have been baffled by the sheer size of the universe. The universe is still expanding from the initial blast 13.77 Billion years ago and some theory's suggest that the universe will reach its maximum size and will eventually collapse back in causing the great crunch.    
For the last eighty years, astronomers have been making increasingly accurate measurements of two important cosmological parameters:   the rate at which the universe expands and the average density of matter in the universe. Knowledge of both of these parameters will tell which of the three models describes the universe we live in, and thus the ultimate fate of our universe. The Sloan Digital Sky Survey, with its large systematic measurement of the galaxy density in the Universe, should enable astronomers to precisely measure the density parameter.

Non-Newtonian liquids

When something hits a non-Newtonian fluid the liquid will suddenly go extremely hard acting in a non-Newtonian way. When you apply pressure to a non-Newtonian fluid the particles bunch together into patterned regular forms its almost as if it's temporarily turning into a crystal.

These are important because: 

• If a house is built on certain types of clay and an earthquake puts stress on this material through the sudden movement, the apparently solid clay can turn into a runny liquid.
• Body Armour that behaves like a liquid so that you can move easily but turns into a solid on impact from stress could be useful for police or the military.

   

Boomerang Nebula

Space,an amazing thing that has
forever interested scientists.Over the last couple of  100 years we have discovered so much more with our forever developing technology. This cloud of gas Also know as Boomerang nebular (Bow tie nebular) is located around 5,000 light years away from earth.It was developed by a star spewing out gas out of it core.It was photographed in 1998 by the Hubble space telescope but was discovered in 1980.The thing that is so special about boomerang nebular is that it is the coldest place so far in the universe.You may have seen the post about Absolute zero. Well this nebular is only 1°C of that mark.It is -272°C,background glow from The big band is hotter then the nebular.

Tardigrades

Tardigrades are one of the most impressive animals ever. these organisms are their what scientists call extremophiles which mean they don't care where they live. The tardigrades secret is when conditions get too tough the basically shrivel up and die with the option of reviving if conditions get too tough.

Tardigrades can:

• Withstand temperatures between 1 kelvin and 148 degrees Celsius   
• They can survive being exposed to 1000 times the amount of radiation that would kill an elephant
• They can withstand pressures of up to 6 times of which you find in the deepest oceans in earth. 

You'll be surprised to know that in 2007 scientists at NASA and ESA have sent these organisms into space and opened an air lock door and leaving them in the vacuum of space, all of them returned healthy and some of them even laid little Tardigrade eggs.

   

Absolute Zero

Absolute zero is the holy grail of temperatures, but even though we know how cold it is -273.15 Degrees Celsius reaching it has eluded scientists for many years and probably will for many years to come.
The person who discovered this was Sir William Thomson who stated that heat is just molecules moving around in a substance. So he wanted to get stuff as cold as he could get it. Through this experiment he found out that all kinetic energy could be drained from an substance so it could no longer get any colder.

Absolute zero dose not mean a complete absence of motion in a substance instead it means the state of minimal movement of a substance's particles.

Anting

 Birds get parasites and the need a way to get rid of them, well they've already figured out a solution.

Anting is is where birds will lie down on top of an ants nest and let hundreds of ants swarm all over them, the ants secrete chemicals such as formic acid this keeps mites and other pests away, this also acts as a pain killer to the birds and they tend to scoop up mouthfuls of ants and crush them causing the liquid to go into the birds bodies.Sometimes birds can get addicted to this and spend days on top of these ant nests and forget to do basic tasks such as eat or sleep.

Top five most deadly diseases

Today we will be talking about the top five diseases with the highest case fatality rate meaning the percentage of people diagnosed that end up dying.

1.    Nipah has a case fatality rate of around 50% it is named after a town Malaysia where it was discovered in 1999. this virus has killed around 106 people so far.
2. H5N1 formerly known as bird flu has a case fatality rate of 54%. And cant be easily carried by humans.
3. Marburg hemorrhagic fever has a case fatality rate of 80% in 1967 this disease killed 27% of scientists who contracted the disease from monkeys, and this disease has occasional out breaks in Africa
4. Zebov has a case fatality rate of 83% Zebov has symptoms such as vomiting, fever and failure of blood vessels causing bleeding under the skin.
5. Rabies this has a case fatality rate of 100% meaning everyone who shows symptoms will die but there have only been 10 recorded deaths from rabies each year in america the reason rabies hasn't brought humanity to its knees is because there is a cure for rabies and rabies has a incubation time of 2-3 months meaning you have plenty of time to get vaccinated.

Europa

Europa is the sixth closest moon of the planet Jupiter, and the smallest of its four Galilean satellites, but still one of the largest moons in the Solar System. Europa was discovered in 1610 by Galileo Galilei and possibly independently by Simon Marius around the same time. Progressively more in-depth observation of Europa has occurred over the centuries by Earth-bound telescopes, and by space probe flybys starting in the 1970s.

• Europa is the smoothest surface of any planet/moon in our solar system.
• Most of Europa's surface is highly reflective, because it is mostly made of ice.
•  Europa has a very thin tenuous atmosphere mainly made up of molecular oxygen.
•   The Galileo probe found our that Europa has a slight magnetic signature that it picks up from Jupiter's magnetic field but the signature could only be created if Europa was covered with something that conducted electricity much like salt water dose. 

Europa may be 485,000,000 miles away from the sun but it isn't actually that cold, turns out that Europa is caught in a constant gravitational tug of war with Jupiter its self and its sister moons IO and Ganymede causing friction on Europa meaning its sub surface oceans are probably quite warm and liquid.

The earth is slowing down

The earth.It is slowing down now this is nothing to be worried about.Take a guess at what is causing it to slow down? Yeah it is the moon. All though the moon's gravity controls our tides It is that very thing slowing us down.How you ask it is very simple the moons gravity is pulling the tides round which is causing enough friction to slow us down now this number is very very small over a long period of time it has a bigger impact

• Today the earth spins 1-2 milliseconds slower then it should.
• This is over 101 years witch is a long time but it is slowing down.

Our Galactic Neighbour Is Up To 40,000 Light-Years Closer To Us Than We Thought

Using high-powered telescopes and a sophisticated system of measurement, scientists know the distance of a neighbouring galaxy more accurately than ever before. 

The study measured the Large Magellanic Cloud, on of our closest galactic neighbours, to be about 163,000 light-years from Earth — it is the most accurate measurement since scientists first tried to guess the distance a century ago.

Knowing that our neighbouring galaxy is actually closer than first anticipated is quite a daunting fact, but it is slightly easier to get to now.

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Rogue planet

A planet that does not orbit a host star has been found 100 light years from Earth.
The planet, named CFBDSIR2149, is known as a rogue or free-floating planet because it wanders through space free of its parent star.

This planet has a temperature of around 398 degrees Celsius it also has a mass between four and seven times bigger than Jupiter's.

A rogue planet is thought to form in two different ways  it either starts as a normal planet and is then kicked out its star system believed to be the case with CFBDSIR2149 or it begins the same way a star does  from collapsing gas and dust  but does not have enough mass to cause the nuclear fusion that creates starlight.  

Latest solar flare activity

A swirling mass of plasma churned above the Sun for almost two days before it finally erupted (Feb. 25-26, 2013). Some of the matter was cooler than surrounding matter so it appears quite a bit darker than the material swirling behind it. The images are a combination of two wavelengths of extreme ultraviolet light. 

You can read more about solar flares here http://scienceforyou123.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/a-solar-flare-is-large-explosion-of.html

Problems with world and how to fix them

Earth, A very important element to life BUT we are screwing it up as i type this.Our planet, a couple of billions of years after it was created it was in the right position to sustain life.But recently we have had some dramatic changes to our planet and it is very worrying.

• Hotter climate
• Melting ice-caps  
• Deforestation 
• Burning fossil fuels  
• And many more

The greenhouse effect

Humans are not realising the dangers of all these things that we are taking or destroying. Something that will take hundreds of years to grow some that are not replaceable witch is very worrying.once we run out of this it is gone forever Witch means, No fossil fuels NO Forest's which then leads into other problems.such as More carbon dioxide into the climate creating the green house effect.

THIS also is a very BIG problem because of how fast the ice-caps are melting.Now your probably thinking why does it matter if the ice caps melt.well i will tell you why it matters its because depending were you live the sea levels will rise roughly about 215ft (65m) that's why it matters.Now don't worry this will not happen in this generation but we want a safe environment for our children and our grand children


 
Ways we can help the environment

Public transport or Cycling
 Now public transport yes it is a pain,But will reduce the amount of carbon dioxide going into the atmosphere also riding a bike is very Helpful keeps you fit and helps the environment.





Less fossil fuels
If you say no to public transport or a bike then go to ELECTRIC cars They are so much more friendlier to the environment and don't give of carbon dioxide.






 
STOP deforestation
If we could stop it it would be amazing but if you cut one down plant another 3 there for every 1 you cut down you grow 3 more.

  

Recycle
Recycling is very important so we don't set harmful gases into the air also we don't have to chop down more materials to make new things.
 









These are some ways of keeping our planet happy and I hope you get the point of how it is changing and will change over the years. Thank you for your time.