The thought of turning solar energy from space into electricity and beaming it back to earth goes back to the days of Sim City 2000. This technology could be in a our near future as scientists now think this possible with current technology. Scientists believe that satellites rotating around the earth could beam down 5-10 gigawatts of continuous, renewable energy. Mr. Bova in a recent article with the Washington Post believes just one of these satellites could power all of California.
If they could beam this energy to more than one focal point, imagine what we could do with that. For now we will just have to wait and see if one of these is actually launched in the near future.
SpaceX’s Falcon 1 launched this past night and made history on the companies 4th attempt. The rocket launched without a hitch and "About nine and a half minutes after launch, the second stage engine shuts down, and the Falcon 1 becomes the first privately developed liquid fuel rocket to orbit the Earth,” the company said.
Space Exploration Technologies Corporation got it right this time and acheived their goal of privately owned launch and is now readying itself for the next launch in 2009.
OSXPlanet is a free program currently in beta which "is able to generate live images of the earth as well as other planets in the solar system with additional informations such as the current clouds, storms, satellites, volcanos, earthquakes and times and locations of cities."
The program provides you with real time information from cameras or satellite views and can be set to your location of choice. The program refreshes every minute if you choose and displays as the desktop background.
German scientists have shown that all over the earth cows orient their bodies North to South. Apparently you can see that all cows point north. So if you are lost without a compass and in need of direction and happen to be near a farm or wild cows, you’re in luck. Now what else can people waste their time doing?
