If humans were forced to vacate Earth, where is the next best place in our solar system for us to live? A study by the University of Puerto Rico at Arecibo has provided a quantitative evaluation of habitability to identify the potential habitats in our solar system. Professor Abel Mendez, who produced the study also [...]

Dark energy is the deus ex machina of cosmology, able to save even the most inflation-prone calculations from destruction or – worse – being provably wrong.  But while we’ve been busy watching the X-energy apparently accelerating all of creation while hiding in plain sight, some believe it’s responsible for much more than that.  It didn’t [...]

Like a wounded Starship Enterprise, our solar system’s natural shields are faltering, letting in a flood of cosmic rays. The sun’s recent listlessness is resulting in record-high radiation levels that pose a hazard to both human and robotic space missions. Galactic cosmic rays are speeding charged particles that include protons and heavier atomic nuclei. They [...]

That’s because electricity is nonexistent in Gathungu’s hometown of Njoro, in northwest Kenya. Landlines and other forms of communication are not as efficient, so Gathungu and millions of others in emerging nations rely on mobile phones. Charging the phones can be a headache in towns and villages where electricity is scarce. Gathungu’s troubles may soon [...]

Bill Gross is nothing if not an enthusiast, which makes him a great salesman for whatever it is he happens to be selling. A lifelong entrepreneur, a longtime evangelist for solar energy and the CEO of eSolar, a Google-funded startup that designs and develops concentrating solar power (CSP) projects at utility scale, Gross is one [...]

Although electric vehicle use is on the rise, we’re certainly not out of the woods yet in terms of providing them with a steady supply of clean energy – that’s why designer Neville Mars has conceived of an incredible EV charging station that takes the form of an evergreen glade of solar trees. His photovoltaic [...]

The U.S. Army is about to start building a 500 megawatt solar thermal plant in the California desert. When it’s done, the facility will be one of the largest renewable energy plants in the world. Which is kind of ironic, since the Army doesn’t pay all that much attention to climate change. Turns out, sustainable [...]

A leaked early version of the Indian Government’s national solar energy plan indicates that India may be thinking more ambitiously about a “clean energy” road map than was previously anticipated. The draft strategy, first published in The Hindu, outlines plans for a national target of 200,000 megawatts of solar generation capacity by 2050. This is [...]

Infrasound refers to extreme bass waves or vibrations, those with a frequency below the audibility range of the human ear (20 Hz to 22 kHz). Even though these waves can’t be heard by us, they can be felt and have been shown to produce a range of effects in some people including anxiety, extreme sorrow, [...]

On a vacant piece of land near Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada, the promise of solar energy has collided into the demands of military training. And a solar project that would have featured a vast field of mirrors, a molten-salt storage facility and a 600-foot “power tower” appears to be heading for defeat. In [...]