Future of Engineering

Labels: Energy-Environment-Engineering, Geo-Sciences

Australian National University scientist says the planet is losing species at a similar rate to the period when the dinosaurs were wiped out. Will Steffen from the Fenner School of Environment says the planet is in the midst of a new geological age, the Anthropocene, in which humans are causing mass species extinction. He says the era began with the industrial revolution and accelerated in the 1950s as humans began burning more fossil fuels and consuming more resources. Professor Steffen says the current levels of species extinction are at least a hundred times greater than natural loss rates.

Professor Steffen says the Anthropocene age will continue for some considerable time."Even if we cut down emissions to zero or close to zero tomorrow, there would be significant amounts of extra CO2 up there for centuries into the future, and I think also in terms of biodiversity loss, there is what some people call committed biodiversity loss, or species that are on their way to extinction and there probably isn't much we can do to turn them around," he said.

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Labels: Energy-Environment-Engineering, Geo-Sciences

Days are gradually growing longer. To the layman this means that in the northern hemisphere days are longer in summer than they are in winter. But geoscientists interpret this phrase as follows: they found that days grow longer not only in spring time. Days may have 25 hours in near future due to Earth’s decelerating

When prehistoric proto-animals inhabited Earth 530 million years ago, there were 21 hours in a day. For dinosaurs who lived 100 million years ago days alternated each other every 23 hours.

About 530 million years ago Earth rotated on its axis faster than it does today, but it rotated about the sun at a steady speed. At that time the year had the same amount of hours as it has today, but there were 420 days in it. According to trustworthy sources, throughout the history of mankind Earth’s rotation has been reducing its speed, Richard Stephenson from Durham University, UK, says for the Journal for the History of Astronomy.

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Labels: Geo-Sciences, Sciences

Scientists have determined that solar flares in the Sun's outer layers that causes quakes, produce strong oscillations throughout the star the same way as the entire Earth is set ringing for several weeks after a major earthquake.

Christoffer Karoff and Hans Kjeldsen of the University of Aarhus in Denmark, came out with the new theory.

According to a report in Nature News , the possibility that post-quake vibrations also occur in the Sun, was first proposed in the 1970s, but has not been demonstrated until now.

Full report from here

Labels: Astronomy, Geo-Sciences, Sciences

A sniff test of water vapor spewing from Saturn's moon Enceladus shows it is gushing with organic molecules, increasing the possibility of life existing somewhere in the Saturn system.

Scientists have been intrigued by the moon since the fountain of water was first spotted in 2005. Now they've identified a soup of prebiotic material there, similar to what's found in comets, from an analysis of data collected by the Cassini spacecraft.

Nobody really knows how life began, but astrobiologists guess it required chemicals like those tasted by Cassini, a little liquid water and some unknown spark.

Hunter Waite, a Cassini principal investigator at the Southwest Research Institute (SWRI) in San Antonio, said Enceladus' newly understood composition should stir up previous notions of Saturn and its moons.

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Labels: Geo-Sciences, Sciences

Salt power is a tantalising if distant prospect as high oil prices make alternative energy sources look more economical.

Two tiny projects to mix sea and river water - one by the fjord south of Oslo, the other at a Dutch seaside lake - are due on stream this year and may point to a new source of clean energy in estuaries from all over the world.

The experiments, which seek to capture the energy released when fresh and salt water are mixed, build on knowledge that has been around for centuries. The science at the heart of the projects is the fact that when salt and fresh water mix at river mouths, they are typically warmed by 0.1 degree Celsius. Dutch scientists say such energy at all the world's estuaries is equivalent to 20% of world electricity demand.

Full report here

Labels: Energy-Environment-Engineering, Geo-Sciences, Sciences

If nature is left to its own devices, about 7.59 billion years from now Earth will be dragged from its orbit by an engorged red Sun and spiral to a rapid vaporous death. That is the forecast according to new calculations by a pair of astronomers, Klaus-Peter Schroeder of the University of Guanajuato in Mexico and Robert Connon Smith of the University of Sussex in England.

Their report is the latest and gloomiest installment yet in a long-running debate about the ultimate fate of our planet. Only last year, the discovery of a giant planet orbiting the faint burned-out cinder of a star in Pegasus had suggested that Earth could survive the Sun’s death.

Dr. Smith called the new result “a touch depressing” in a series of e-mail messages. But “looked at another way,” he added, “it is an incentive to do something about finding ways to leave our planet and colonize other areas in the galaxy.”

Full report here

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7.59 Billion Years . . . Goodbye Earth

Labels: Astronomy, Geo-Sciences, Sciences

I was reading an interesting article (quote old by our standards, 7 years, but very new by astronomical standards)...here is the excerpt:

Experts give the sun some 7 billion years, when it will turn into a bloated red giant. Earth would be first engulfed in heat and light, then vaporized.

Well before then, things will turn real nasty. In just a billion years, the Sun could be 11-percent brighter, scientists say, rendering Earth an inhospitable greenhouse. In 3.5 billion years, the Sun could be 40-percent brighter than it is today.

With our demise so clear on the cosmic horizon, astrophysicist Fred Adams of the University of Michigan and NASA's Gregory Laughlin got to wondering in recent years how the planet might be saved by gravitational interaction with a passing star. They ran computer simulations of possible encounters over the next 3.5 billion years, finding last year that the odds of the Earth being completely ejected from the solar system are one-in-100,000.

So Adams and Laughlin, along with Don Korycansky of the University of California, began to discuss consider how human intervention might bring about a more suitable long-term orbit, one that gradually expands with the aging Sun.

Interesting! Read more from the article

Labels: Astronomy, Geo-Sciences, Sciences

For most environmentalists, the answer to reducing global warming is to keep pushing the same message harder: cut carbon and cut it now. But a few scientists are beginning to quietly raise the possibility of cooling the planet's fever directly through geoengineering. The principle behind it is straightforward — compensate for an intensified greenhouse effect by reducing the amount of solar radiation reaching the earth — but the techniques seem like pure science fiction. Just a few: using orbital mirrors to bounce sunlight back into space, fertilizing the oceans with iron to amplify their ability to absorb carbon and even painting roofs white to increase solar reflection.

Geoengineering has long been the province of kooks, but as the difficulty of reducing greenhouse-gas emissions has become harder to ignore, it is slowly emerging as an option of last resort.

Read more from this Time article

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Labels: Energy-Environment-Engineering, Geo-Sciences

The ubiquity of tiny particles of minerals - mineral nanoparticles - in oceans and rivers, atmosphere and soils, and in living cells are providing scientists with new ways of understanding Earth's workings. Our planet's physical, chemical, and biological processes are influenced or driven by the properties of these minerals.

So states a team of researchers from seven universities in a paper published recently in the journal Science: "Nanominerals, Mineral Nanoparticles, and Earth Systems." The way in which these infinitesimally small minerals influence Earth's systems is more complex than previously thought, the scientists say.

Full story here

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Labels: Geo-Sciences, Material-Sciences

Automation Drives 'Mine of the Future'

Rio Tinto, a big mining and commodities company in North American and Australia, has found a way to eliminate the stresses and strains experienced by Australian miners: automated operations. The company's chief executive, Tom Albanese, announced these initiatives on Jan. 18:

* Mine operations in the Pilbara iron ore region will be controlled 1,300 kilometers away at a new center in Perth
* Driverless trains will carry iron ore on most of 1,200 kilometers of track
* A driverless "intelligent" truck fleet will be deployed
* Remotely controlled "intelligent" drills will be used

Full story here

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Automation Drives 'Mine of the Future'

Labels: Geo-Sciences, Metallurgical-Engineering