After studying how trees branch in a very specific way, Aidan Dwyer created a solar cell tree that produces 20-50% more power than a uniform array of photovoltaic panels. His impressive results show that using a specific formula for distributing solar cells can drastically improve energy generation. The study earned Aidan a provisional U.S patent – it’s a rare find in the field of technology and a fantastic example of how biomimicry can drastically improve design.
Hello Clockers and new visitors too. Today’s look at the latest MUFONreports had two of the last three (most recent) reports about high flying Cylinders over Indiana and Illinois yesterday; here’s the reports:
While smoking in the parking lot of my business, observed a large dull silver/gray cylinder flying at high altitude from E – W high in the sky. It was a nearly cloudless day, and I was with my co-owner, who also witnessed the craft. She went inside and grabbed binoculars – which I used to observe the craft in more detail. No wings, no tail, no contrail. A large cylinder, at least twice the size of a large jetliner, with rounded ends vs pointy nose and tail. Estimated altitude 30,000 ft. There was no sound, but from that altitude and distance, not surprising. We watched as the cylinder crossed the sky over Kokomo slightly to our North from East to West – a total of maybe two minutes – last seen heading over Burlington due West of Kokomo.http://mufoncms.com/cgi-bin/manage_sighting_reports.pl?mode=view_long_desc&id=29773&rnd=522401309349254
Last night, with the flames from the Los Alamos fire, 35 miles north west of here, seen over the mountains, the pictures I took echoed that fire energy:
‘Major Result’ on Sunspot Cycle to be Announced Tuesday
by Mike Wall, SPACE.com Senior Writer
Date: 10 June 2011 Time: 05:00 PM ET
A photo of a sunspot taken in May 2010, with Earth shown to scale. The image has been colorized for aesthetic reasons. This image with 0.1 arcsecond resolution from the Swedish 1-m Solar Telescope represents the limit of what is currently possible in terms of spatial resolution.
CREDIT: The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, V.M.J. Henriques (sunspot), NASA Apollo 17 (Earth)
Astronomers will unveil a “major result” on Tuesday (June 14) regarding the sun’s 11-year sunspot cycle.
The announcement will be made at a solar physics conference in New Mexico, according to an alert released today (June 10) by the American Astronomical Society. The discussion will begin at 1 p.m. EDT (1700 GMT).
Sunspots are blotches on the sun that appear dark because they are significantly cooler than the rest of the solar surface. While they look small from our vantage point on Earth, these enigmatic structures can be huge — up to 30,000 miles (48,280 kilometers) across, or as wide as the planet Neptune. Sunspots last for a few days or weeks before dissipating. [Photos: Sunspots on Earth’s Star]
SOLAR ACTIVITY: The chance of strong solar flares today is low, but the chance of giant prominences is 100%. Mike Borman photographed this one from his backyard observatory in Evansville, Indiana:
“A number of giant prominences are dancing around the limb of the sun,” he reports. “They have beautifully intricate shapes.”
Prominences are tendrils of hot plasma held aloft by solar magnetic fields. Today’s are big enough to see with ease using no more than backyard solar telescopes. Where should you point your optics? Targets of interest may be found in a full-disk photo taken by Borman.
The Moon grows dark during a total lunar eclipse on December 21, 2010/ Credit: Jason Major
On June 15 there will be a total lunar eclipse visible from Australia, Indonesia, southern Japan, India, a large area of Asia, Africa, Europe and the eastern part of South America. This is expected to be one of the darkest eclipses ever (with a magnitude of 1.7), second only to the July 2000 eclipse.
Quantum Physics First: Physicists Measure Without Distorting
ScienceDaily (June 2, 2011) — Quantum mechanics is famous for saying that a tree falling in a forest when there’s no one there doesn’t make a sound. Quantum mechanics also says that if anyone is listening, it interferes with and changes the tree. And so the famous paradox: how can we know reality if we cannot measure it without distorting it?
An international team of researchers, led by University of Toronto physicist Aephraim Steinberg of the Centre for Quantum Information and Quantum Control, has found a way to do just that by applying a modern measurement technique to the historic two-slit interferometer experiment in which a beam of light shone through two slits results in an interference pattern on a screen behind.
In a new experiment, researchers have succeeded for the first time in experimentally reconstructing full trajectories which provide a description of how light particles move through the two slits and form an interference pattern. (Credit: iStockphoto/Karl Dolenc)
That famous experiment, and the 1927 Neils Bohr and Albert Einstein debates, seemed to establish that you could not watch a particle go through one of two slits without destroying the interference effect: you had to choose which phenomenon to look for.
“Quantum measurement has been the philosophical elephant in the room of quantum mechanics for the past century,” says Steinberg, who is lead author of Observing the Average Trajectories of Single Photons in a Two-Slit Interferometer, to be published in Science on June 2. “However, in the past 10 to 15 years, technology has reached the point where detailed experiments on individual quantum systems really can be done, with potential applications such as quantum cryptography and computation”
