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POPSMost spectacular view in the Solar System Few sights in the solar system are more strikingly beautiful than softly hued Saturn embraced by the shadows of its stately rings. The Cassini Orbiter on its mission in deep space caught this rare occasion of Saturn eclipsing the Sun.
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POPSA JOKE THAT IS TOO TRUE TO BE FUNNY. Finally some clever person put Republicans in the middle of the light bulb screwing joke and IT HITS THE OLD PROVERBIAL NAIL ON IT'S OLD "IF THE SHOE FITS, WEAR IT" BLOCKHEAD! The only screwing light bulb joke EVER without humor! Just to be fair... Here is one about Dems screwing a light bulb: How many Democrats does it take to change a light bulb? One to change the bulb, six to talk about how wonderful it's going to be when the new bulb is screwed in, and ten to argue for increased funding for solar lighting research.:eek:
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POPSFive Reasons Why Aliens Will Make Contact with the Japanese First North Korea is rumored to have recently released a statement claiming that their nuclear reactor has the dual capability of communicating wirelessly with alien species up to 1,000 light years away in real time. Of course, we can't believe everything that the North Korean government says, but seriously, I wouldn't be surprised at all if they were already communicating with other planets. If that's the case, it should be relatively easy for Japan, a neighboring country, to intercept their signals with laser pulses and let the world know definitively what Kim Jong Il has known for decades—that there is life beyond Earth.
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POPSCould Jupiter wreck the solar system?
"So what's the likelihood Mercury could crash into the Earth? If it did, the asteroid that most likely wiped out the dinosaurs will seem like a drop in the ocean compared with a planet 4880 km in diameter slamming into us. There will be very little left after this wrecking ball impact. But here's the kicker: There is only a 1% chance that these gravitational instabilities of the inner Solar System are likely to cause any kind of chaos before the Sun turns into a Red Giant and swallows Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars in 7 billion years time. So, no need to look out for death-wish Mercury quite yet… there's a very low chance that any of this will happen. But some good news for Mars; the researchers have also found that if the chaos does ensue, the Red Planet may be flung out of the Solar System, possibly escaping our expanding Sun. So, let's get those Mars colonies started! Well, within the next few billions of years anyhow…" Good stuff for the next science-fiction movie :-)
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POPS0.3% of Saharan Sun Enough To Power Europe The visionary proposal comes as the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission released its strategic energy technology plan which highlighted photovoltaic cells as one of the eight technologies that need to be developed in the future. The plan also includes fuel cells, hydrogen, clean coal, second generation biofuels, nuclear fusion, wind and smart grids.
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POPSIs your English Pronunciation O.K.? I was inspired by the earlier clip on the difficulty of learning English to post this page. I first got a copy of a variation of this nearly 30 years ago. I've only included the first three verses here. There are are about 12 more verses like this one on this page. Check it out and let me know if you don't hung up on some of this!!
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POPSThe key to oil independence is a new electrical grid It seems that with alternative sources of energy, such as wind and solar, the United States has the potential means to substantially reduce our dependence on oil - especially once plug-in cars are on the market. But until we substantially upgrade our nation's electrical grid with modern technology that will enable the energy created by these sources to be transmitted intelligently around the county, their impact will be limited. It's going to take a greater commitment from Congress to jump start this. Making it happen will provide a huge boost to our economy, environment and political leverage with the Middle East, Russia, Venezuela and more.
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POPSWill "Th!nk" Ignite an Electronic Car Revolution in the U.S.? Think City is one of two models that are out already, together with the Think Ox, with a choice of either lithium or a sodium battery, it's range is enough to take a suburban dweller to the downtown office and back, with zero carbon footprint. The car is thoughfully fully computerized and allows a key-less entry. It features real time navigation, web, e-mail and open source interfaces, intelligent and sustainable driving and route calculations. The DNA-key gives the user feedback on charging status and sends messages, for example, for pre-heat or pre-cool options via GPRS. Pricing has yet to be announced, but the company's current vehicles cost less than $25,000.
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POPS'Major discovery' from MIT primed to unleash solar revolution Sunlight has the greatest potential of any power source to solve the world's energy problems, said Nocera. In one hour, enough sunlight strikes the Earth to provide the entire planet's energy needs for one year. "This is a major discovery with enormous implications for the future prosperity of humankind,"
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POPSTop 10 Archaeological Discoveries of 2007 This is Archaeology Magazine's Top 10 list - mine would be a little different. If you visit source site, there are more discoveries of 2007 which didn't make it into the magazine's list but proposed by scholars.
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POPSUnintelligent Design At this point, 30 years after the Nobel Laureate Daniel Kahneman and his late collaborator Amos Tversky started documenting a rash of fallacies in human reasoning, the idea that the human mind would be "perfect in His image" is as outdated (and narcissistic) as the idea that the solar system would revolve around the planet earth. The only theory that can really make sense of these needless imperfections is Darwin's theory of natural selection, which holds that humans (and all other life forms) evolve through a blind process known as descent-with-modification, in which new life forms represent random modifications of earlier life forms -- with no central overseer to guide the process. Such a random process can, over time, lead populations of creatures to become more adapted to their environment, but it is also vulnerable to getting stuck, in the sort of good-enough-but-not-perfect solutions that mathematicians call local maxima.
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POPSCan we harness energy from outer space? While nuclear fusion has already been tested with the hydrogen isotopes deuterium and tritium, those reactions give off the majority of their energy as radioactive neutrons, raising both safety and production concerns. Helium-3, on the other hand, is perfectly safe. It doesn't give off any pollution or radioactive waste and poses no danger to surrounding areas. helium-3 has two protons but only one neutron. When it's heated to very high temperatures and combined with deuterium, the reaction releases incredible amounts of energy. Just 2.2 pounds (one kilogram) of helium-3 combined with 1.5 pounds (0.67 kilograms) of deuterium produces 19 megawatt-years of energy Roughly 25 tons of the stuff could power the United States for an entire year.
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POPSWoW, Now THAT'S a rainstorm NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope observed a fledgling solar system like the one depicted in this artist's concept, and discovered deep within it enough water vapor to fill the oceans on Earth five times. This water vapor starts out in the form of ice in a cloudy cocoon (not pictured) that surrounds the embryonic star, called NGC 1333-IRAS 4B (buried in center of image). Material from the cocoon, including ice, falls toward the center of the cloud. The ice then smacks down onto a dusty pre-planetary disk circling the stellar embryo (doughnut-shaped cloud) and vaporizes. Eventually, this water might make its way into developing planets.
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