Google are buying into it to share with NASA and various universities. The revolutionary technology is no doubt the start of a whole new era of computing progress. Perhaps this is the start of the Singularity.

They claim that when it runs it is the coldest thing known to Humankind. Perhaps the coldest place in the entire universe. If it is then we are sure to get some attention from our universal neighbours. Along the same lines as figuring out anti gravity which is probably the next step in this quickly escalating process.

The next question appears to be what can we do with such a machine now that we have one. The answer is that it is perfectly suited to tasks such as facial recognition which is probably the first thing it will be used for. Google claim that it will help them fight spam too. No doubt it will also be useful for undertaking certain climate modelling tasks and in the hunt for life hosting planets with the reams of data the have been collected already needing many years to process with conventional computing resources.

One thing is for sure, For certain tasks this new system is the fastest thing we have built yet.

Tags: Construction, e=mc2, Research, Space by sparky
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Scientists working at IBM have found an additional use for their advanced water cooling system developed for the aquasar super computer project proving once again that water is an intrinsic component of the energy process.

They have a working prototype of a concentrated PV module integrated with the cooling device allowing them to achieve upto 5000x concentration levels without vaporising the PV modules. The way it works is at the nano level where water is piped directly onto the surface of the silicon chips and immediately pumped away. The physics are based on the human blood system so we know that is works for us.

Tags: Construction, e=mc2, Environment, Research, Solar, Water by sparky
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At least some of the people of Japan have grasped the reality of the continuing environmental pollution and radiation destruction emitting from the Fukushima Nuclear Facility. In Minami-Soma prefecture they are officially moving to Solar for their electricity generation. While it is too late to do anything about the mess that has been made it is still a positive sign that they are not willing to take the risk of having another power station melt down in their zone.

The sad truth is that as far as humans are concerned Japan has been permanently radiated. It is simply not feasible for the people who live on the Japanese islands to clean up the layer of topsoil across the entire country that has been continuously bathed in radioactive fallout from the Fukushima facility over the past two years. Add to that the animals and food that is grown in the top soil that has been consumed and the damage to the water table and coastal fishing grounds from the release of millions of tonnes of highly radioactive water used to cool the smouldering remains of the breached reactors while the molten plutonium and uranium descended into the earths crust and there is absolutely no way that anyone living in Japan will be untouched by the radioactive fallout.

It will take years for the official results to be determined as the increase in cancer rates over the coming decades will seem like an upward trend at a casual glance. In the end it will be obvious that anyone who lives in Japan is guaranteed to get cancer if they live long enough. The long term affect on the genetic viability of the inhabitants of Japan is a whole lot scarier though. In that regard the Japanese people have become a nation of guinea pigs and lab rats.

Tags: Construction, e=mc2, Environment, Nuclear, Society by sparky
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20 KW of solar for each house will become the new standard for Solar PV installations once the all electric car becomes the dominant form of private transport. That will allow the owner the option of fast charging during daylight hours directly from their own power supply.

How much space does 20 KW of Solar require?

The average PV solar panel currently on the consumer market can convert 20 – 25% of sunlight to electricity. The average amount of sunlight absorbed by a solar panel turns out to be around 70W/sq meter over a daily basis. At peak sunlight during the middle of the day that number rises to around 150W/sq meter. That means approx 10 square meters will provide a daily average of around 1KW of electricity. So the average house will require 10 x 20 or 200 square meters of solar PV to allow a daily average of 20KW to be generated locally. The average roof is about that size and with the addition of a Garage or carport it is entirely reasonable that most home owners will adopt a 20KW installation target over the coming decade. Especially as the price of PV continues to drop and the efficiency of the panels continues to improve.

However while that is good news for home owners who have the fund and space to make the transition to an all electric private transport system that doesn’t really help people in densely populated urban areas where apartment living is the norm. In that case they will continue to use metered electricity from the large suppliers. The issue for the large suppliers is how to pick up the coming dramatic decrease in available off grid energy that the decline of fossil fuels will create. If each car requires 20KW to make it viable to fast charge and provide a decent transportation infrastructure on the level that we are accustomed to they will need something a bit more efficient than solar PV.

CSP is the only quick and viable solution in that case. To quickly scale up to cover the losses represented by the decrease in available fossil fuel each city will have to provide additional electricity for the millions of new all electric cars that are about to hit the roads before the end of this decade. CSP is almost 100% efficient. A standard oil based CSP plant requires a lot of steel but not much more than a large building or ocean liner. Sure they also require a Steam turbine but they can be bought from large companies like Seimens pretty much off the shelf. The tech is well understood and highly efficient already.

The global daily output of Stainless Steel in 2012 was 94,520 tonnes which is almost 100,000 tonnes a day. Each panel in a CSP plant is approx 2.5 sq/m and weighs approx 8 Kg/sqm or a total of 20 Kg at 100mm thickness. To cover 2 square kilometers requires 1000mx1000mx2 = 2,000,000 square meters / 2.5 = 800,000 panels at 2.5 square meters per panel. 1 tonne of Stainless Steel provides 1000kg/20kg = 50 panels. 100,000 tonnes x 50 = 5,000,000 panels. That means in a single day we produce enough Stainless Steel to provide the raw material to cover 5,000,000 / 800,000 = 6.25 CSP plants each one with a total area of 2 square Kilometers.

Each CSP plant will be able to produce enough electricity to fast charge 2,000,000 / 200 = 20,000 cars at the same time in peak solar hours. Fast charging will enable a normal car to charge in 5 minutes so in the hottest part of the day between 10:00 – 14:00 a single plant will provide enough electricity to the grid to charge 4 hours x 60 minutes = 240 minutes / 5 = 48 x 20,000 = 960,000 cars. Each car can drive for anywhere between 60 – 400 Km om a single charge and as the average daily commute is approximately 35 km in most major cities that mean a single 2 sq/km CSP plant will be able to provide enough electricity to power over 7 million cars per week with a cycle rate of around half of that actually required on a weekly basis.

While constructing the large fields of Concentrated Solar Panel systems the local economy will see a substantial increase in income. Once completed the Energy companies will be able to continue to cover base load electricity without major disruptions to the supply and availability of normal electricity use. Electric car owners who do not have their own roof tops will be able to charge quickly and easily. Fuel stations will not have to completely shutdown operations and will remain a central part of a car owners lifestyle as they will be better placed to provide fast charge services to the large pool of commuters who don’t have easy access to electricity at street level.

The viability of CSP as a solution for every major city on the planet to solve the impending energy crisis represented by the sudden loss of fossil fuels should be a no brainer!

Unfortunately it is patently clear that providing a consistent and cheap source of electricity to each major city is going to be fought to the death by the coal, nuclear and oil companies. It’s a sad thing that the world has been held to ransom by these people for over a century when we have had the means to be energy self sufficient for the entire time.

Tags: Construction, e=mc2, Solar by sparky
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Al Gore is a strange person. He is a backer of “Bloom” fuel cell power stations but he refuses to speak publicly about the energy crisis. Instead he puts all his efforts into climate change. What is the point of his overt insistence that climate change is the real problem when finding lasting solutions to the energy crisis will fix not only the energy crisis but also mitigate climate change?

It appears that an Hereditary Elite is not allowed to publicly discuss the fact that we are running out of fossil fuels and the massive impact that is having on the global economy. Since the officially accepted “peak oil” was reached in 2006 the global economy has been in tatters. Since the unofficially accepted “peak oil” in 2000 the global economy has been in a constant state of decline. Now that we are only 3 years away from the logical conclusion to the first decade after the official “peak oil” we can see a lot of countries that were previously publicly antagonistic or apathetic to “peak oil” becoming very concerned with their energy security.

Qatar, Saudi Arabia, UAE all have massive Concentrated Solar Power plants under construction. China has raised again it’s official target for Solar energy production by pushing forward it’s timeline from 2020 to 2016. In China’s case they are being urged on by the sudden realisation that they are unable to breath the air around them any longer due to the over use of fossil fuels as they continue to grow their consumption rates and keep the big indebted players in the global economy from completely collapsing.

The truth is that it only requires 2 square kilometers to generate 1 GW of electricity from the sun using conventional oil based parabolic mirrors. Even greater efficiencies can be achieved with more advanced technology. The costs in terms of time and effort to build a 1GW CSP plant is equivalent to a large office building or ocean liner. There is literally not reason why every major city in the world could not have complete energy independence within the next 5 years. The only reason is political will not logistics or technical issues. Throw in the ability to desalinise sea water and they become not only an energy source but also a source of fresh water for farming and drinking. Add in large stored water reservoirs and you have a backup supply for periods when the sun is not shining or at night.

Tags: Construction, e=mc2, Environment, Oil, Solar by sparky
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In the distant past somewhere beyond 5000 years ago there was an advanced civilisation here on Earth that left monuments to their capabilities in the form of the Great Pyramids, Ancient cities, enormous monolithic statues and buildings dotted across the globe. The evidence for their knowledge of the cosmos and advanced scientific prowess is overwhelming. That we have no written records of their time on this planet is disturbing and baffling for many scientists, scholars, historians and archaeologists. Instead we have the permanent and immovable monuments in their place. Massive constructions beyond the technological prowess of modern man. Requiring huge amounts of energy and advanced scientific knowledge to construct and lasting through the ages surviving earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanoes and extreme weather conditions that we see destroying everything in their path.

The ancient copper mines contained more copper than modern human civilisation has ever mined yet the copper is nowhere to be found. The same for ancient gold, silver and other rare earth elements. The ancients had the capacity to mine on a grand scale and yet they left none of it behind for us.

They also had the energy resources to move enormous solid stone blocks of Baalbek weighing in excess of 1200 tons with absolute precision and over distances that are extremely difficult even with todays technology. Their construction techniques are a challenge to modern experts to replicate with no successful attempts yet even with modern tools, science, and heavy lift machinery.

This leads many to question if the ancients had a technology which we do not yet possess. The knowledge of anti gravity and the energy sources to make it possible. Given that we do not see traces of nuclear radiation in the ancient constructions we remain baffled as to how they could achieve the energy capacity required to master anti gravity on a scale that allowed them to construct massive buildings and cities across the globe.

Tags: Construction, e=mc2, Resources, Society, Space, Transport by sparky
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Recent news from Stanford and RICE Universities have focused on results of advanced research being undertaken to improve battery performance. Both projects have made use of carbon fibre nanomaterials in the form of nanotubes and Graphene sheets to achieve the results.

The paintable battery project from RICE University allows the possibility of turning any surface into a battery. They employ carbon nanotubes in the paint along side lithium. Examples of use include painting the exterior surface of the house and then covering with solar panels or the same could be done for a car by covering the entire surface interior and exterior that has the potential for greatly increasing the travel range of a single charge. When combined with Spray on solar it seems likely that future vehicles will become self charging with a constant supply of energy from the sun to keep them topped up throughout the day.

The results from the Stanford research focus on using Graphene sheets to increase by 1000x the efficiency of nickel-iron batteries. As the components are abundant, cheap and long lasting this approach should enable very powerful batteries for industrial purposes.

Clearly this technology has been kept under wraps for a while and the US is allowing it to be brought to market. The question remaining is will they make it to manufactured stage before we run out of the energy to manufacture them?

In related news it seems that nanomaterial research is going to take it’s spot this year for the solar industry too in the shape of two improvements to thin film technology that utilise nanomesh and dielectric nanostructures to greatly reduce the thickness of the thin film panels and even to go so far as to allow for completely transparent surfaces that are able to absorb technically perfectly across the specific spectrum of light that they are designed to absorb.

Tags: Construction, e=mc2, Research, Resources, Solar by sparky
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Globally the Shale gas industry is getting a lot of press recently as a boom in the Frakking industry has temporarily increased supply of gas to the market in some countries like the USA. What the press refuse to discuss is the failed mathematics behind this supposed boom. The reality is that the shale gas boom is being driven primarily by corrupt business scams that seek to use the energy industry as a way to obtain government funds so they can place bets on the stock market.

The simple truth is that coal seam gas or “shale” gas is simply not abundant enough to make an significant impact on a global scale. All the ‘coal seam gas’ has a layer of shale above it. The coal is probably NOT the source of most of the gas, it is just trapped below the shale. Commercial gas reserves are in porous sandstone or limestone,usually with a shale cap or seal. With the majority of the shale gas composed of high amounts of Nitrogen it also requires a significant amount of energy to clean it so that it can actually be used as an energy source. Hence the majority of the Shale gas boom is energy negative meaning it takes more energy to get it to market than it provides.

What this translates to is a massive fraud leveraged against the public purse. When the bets placed with Government cash fail to generate the income that is being hoped for the companies that placed them go bankrupt and the government is left holding the tab. In the meantime the unscrupulous directors of the Frakking companies are enjoying the wealth they have obtained which is conveniently deposited in offshore bank accounts to be used for their retirement.

Of course the people who work in the Frakking business are not complaining about the money that they are earning as they dig more and more wells and pollute the environment with their toxic brew of chemicals required to complete their task. the chemical companies are also not complaining about the large amounts of product they are required to produce in order to meet the needs to the Frakking industry.

It seems the only people who are complaining are the ones who actually live where the gas fields are being exploited as they witness the wholesale environmental destruction of their region and water table. The roving crews of Frakkers are no more accountable for their destruction than the people who were employed to work on the Deepwater Horizon in the Gulf of Mexico are for the Gulf Oil Disaster.

As the USA descends into the mess of complete economic meltdown that is represented by the exponentially increasing cost of living and the exponentially decreasing availability of fossil fuel the only silver lining appears to be that the Frakkers will eventually run out of energy to cause so much destruction any longer. At least on some communities there is action being taken to try to stop the industry before it gets to that point.

Tags: Construction, Corruption, Disaster, e=mc2, Environment, Government, Resources, Society, Water by sparky
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With all the focus on the demise of Solyndra last year and the attempts by the mainstream media to portray the death of Concentrating Solar Power due to the decrease in price of Solar PV thanks to the increasing efficiencies of Chinese production lines, it seems that CSP has been quietly making steady progress across the globe.

With facilities coming online recently in California and the Torresol facilities in Spain coming online at the end of last year. We also see the increased activity in the UAE as they seek to shore up their internal electricity supply due to the impending demise of the oil industry.

The question that still needs to be answered is can the global community bring enough of these large and relatively low output facilities online in the coming decade to make a serious contribution to the urgent issue of replacing the loss of oil from the energy supply infrastructure.

To get an idea of the daunting task that we face the facility in the video below is only capable of producing 5MW peak. Combine that with results from Australia of the total combined output of all the wind power facilities only able to produce an average of 30-40% of full capacity and we start to get a feel for the immensity of the challenge.

Tags: Construction, e=mc2, Solar by sparky
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Dubai has thrown it’s hat into the ring with a massive 48 square kilometer commitment to solar energy launched today in the UAE capital. The project seeks to have a first phase development completed by 2013 with a target of 1 Giga Watt capacity by 2030. With the excess of low cost solar panels now on the market thanks to massive Chinese production this looks like it will be a serious infrastructure achievement once completed.

The reasoning behind this is given below:

The President, His Highness Shaikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, spelt out the country’s goals in tapping alternative sources of energy. ‘‘The UAE is striving to develop and boost its rich resources and expertise in the international energy markets and enhance its leading role as a world centre for renewable energy research and development,” he said.

This can be translated as “we have realised that we can make more money by selling the remaining reserves of oil to foreign powers and we would be stupid if we continued to use it as our primary energy source. The cost in energy of taking remaining oil out of the ground means we are consuming more energy every day in order to keep our power supply steady. Transitioning to a Solar Economy makes perfect sense as we receive some of the most powerful rays from the Sun everyday that make it to the earths surface. Continuing to burn our precious resources when we can sell them tom someone else instead is fiscally irresponsible and damaging to our future wealth potential.”

Given the proximity to the ocean it is highly likely that they will add on a Solar Thermal Water desalinisation plant so they can provide the region with a constant supply of fresh water. Watch for the French to get involved directly in that stage now that Areva have shown their hand with the recent completion and connection to the grid of the Gemasolar project in Spain.

Tags: Construction, Government, Solar by sparky
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