Wednesday, March 09. 2011
Via GOOD
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by Nicola Twilley
Wired just posted this incredible photo, taken by astrophotographer Alan Friedman, of the International Space Station, with the space shuttle Discovery attached, crossing the sun.
According to NASA, the International Space Shuttle is about the width and length of an American football field. It took just 0.2 seconds to transit across the sun, and Friedman nearly missed it:
The transit would be visible at 2:39 on March 1 [...]. Friedman was scheduled to give a talk about astrophotography from 12:30 to 1:30 pm. As soon as his talk was over, Friedman jumped in the car with fellow astrophotographers Brian Shelton and Mark Beale and raced after the sun.
"We got set up just in time to catch it," Friedman wrote. "I underestimated the narrowness of this event…another 500 feet and we would have missed it entirely. Lucky day!"
Photo: Alan Friedman, via Wired.
Monday, March 07. 2011
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L'Islande cherche désormais à exploiter les effets favorables de ses volcans avec la vente d'énergie géothermique. [ho new/reuters]
L'Islande projette de construire le plus long câble électrique sous-marin au monde pour vendre son électricité d'origine volcanique à l'Europe, a indiqué lundi une responsable du plus grand groupe d'énergie islandais.
Après avoir paralysé les cieux européens avec d'épaisses volutes de cendres volcaniques l'an dernier, la grande île de l'Atlantique nord cherche désormais à exploiter les effets favorables de ses volcans en vendant à l'Europe de l'énergie géothermique tirée des eaux bouillantes de son sous-sol et de l'énergie hydrothermique de ses glaciers.
Pour ce faire, le groupe public d'énergie Landsvirkjun veut mettre en place un long câble électrique sous-marin afin de relier l'Islande à l'Europe. "Nous étudions entre autres le pays de destination. Les pays potentiels sont le Royaume-Uni, la Norvège, les Pays-Bas ou l'Allemagne", selon Ragna Sara Jonsdottir, porte-parole du groupe public d'énergie Landsvirkjun. Suivant sa destination finale, le câble mesurerait entre 1200 et 1900 kilomètres de long. "Ce serait le plus long câble sous-marin au monde", souligne la responsable.
Bientôt une décision
"Ce projet a commencé l'an dernier et la phase de recherches devrait être terminée d'ici la fin de cette année. Nous en saurons alors plus sur sa faisabilité", a déclaré la porte-parole, qui table sur une possible décision d'ici 4 ou 5 ans.
Le projet table sur un objectif d'exportation de 5 térawattheures (5 milliards de kilowattheures) par an, indique-elle. Cette production représente, au cours actuel de l'électricité en Europe, environ 250 à 320 millions d'euros d'exportations chaque année suivant les pays. Cela équivaut à la consommation de 1,25 million de foyers européens.
Remède à la crise
"L'idée est de répondre à la demande en Europe aux heures de pointe, ainsi qu'en partie en demande de base", explique Ragna Sara Jonsdottir, sans vouloir donner d'estimation du coût du projet. Landsvirkjun, qui appartient à l'Etat islandais, produit déjà environ 75% de l'électricité islandaise.
L'Islande, qui a traversé une grave crise économique après l'effondrement fin 2008 de ses banques jadis florissantes, cherche de nouvelles ressources pour relancer son économie, qui repose désormais principalement sur la pêche.
afp/jbu
Via BLDGBLOG
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by noreply@blogger.com (Geoff Manaugh)
[Image: "Whirlpool" (1973) by Dennis Oppenheim].
Artist Dennis Oppenheim's " Whirlpool" project, from the summer of 1973, sought to create an artificial tornado on the bed of a dry desert lake in Southern California. It was intended as a "3/4 mile by 4 mile schemata of tornado," the above image explains, "traced in [the] sky using standard white smoke discharge from aircraft."
As the Telegraph describes it:
Employing one of [Oppenheim's] characteristic quasi-scientific methods, the piece was created by issuing radio instructions to an aircraft which discharged a liquid nitrogen vapor trail. The aircraft began by flying in revolutions measuring three quarters of a mile in diameter. Subsequently the pilot was instructed to repeat this manoeuver but, with each revolution, he was made to reduce the size of the diameter of the circle and lose height—and it is no mean feat controlling a plane according to these specifications. The operation had to be repeated three times before the desired whirlpool effect was achieved.
In a short story called "The Cloud-Sculptors of Coral D," J.G. Ballard envisions a tropical atoll where the residents have learned to "sculpt" clouds in the sky, listening to Wagner over loud speakers and using specially engineered gliders and flying techniques.
"Lifted on the shoulders of the air above the crown of Coral D," Ballard writes, "we would carve seahorses and unicorns, the portraits of presidents and film stars, lizards and exotic birds. As the crowd watched from their cars, a cool rain would fall on to the dusty roofs, weeping from the sculptured clouds as they sailed across the desert floor towards the sun."
They are part aesthetic object, part weather system.
[Image: "Column" by Anthony McCall, courtesy of Creative Review].
Both of these came to mind this weekend when I read that artist Anthony McCall is planning to create something called "Column" in Liverpool, to coincide with the London 2012 Olympics. It will be "a spinning column of cloud a mile high," as Creative Review describes it, "visible across the North West region throughout the Olympic year."
Made of cloud and mist, this "swirling micro-climate" will be "created by gently rotating the water on the surface of the Mersey and then adding heat which will make it lift into the air like a water spout or dust devil."
We'll have to see how it actually works out, of course, but the idea that cities might soon deploy large-scale specialty weather-effects—that is, permanent climatological megastructures—instead of, say, Taj Mahals or Guggenheim Bilbaos as a way of differentiating themselves from their urban competition is a compelling one.
The future weather-architects of 2050 A.D. In-house climatologists spinning noctilucent clouds above Manhattan.
Personal comment:
Some comments and additionnal references by Geoff Manaugh about McCall's "Column" project.
Friday, March 04. 2011
Via Creative Review
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by Patrick Burgoyne
Artist Anthony McCall has unveiled plans to create a spinning column of cloud a mile high on Merseyside next year as part of the Cultural Olympiad for 2012
McCall's Column will be sited at Wirral Waters in Merseyside and be visible across the North West region throughout the Olympic year. It was commissioned by Arts Council England as part of Artists taking the lead, a series of 12 public art commissions across the UK to celebrate the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad.
Apparently, a “coherent convection” of cloud and mist, will be created by gently rotating the water on the surface of the Mersey and then adding heat which will make it lift into the air like a water spout or dust devil (see here).
A scale model of the installation is on show at McCall's current London show.
Personal comment:
Anthony McCall strikes back! I really wonder if this will work (and if it will look like the picture...), but it's a quite beautiful project nonetheless.
Thursday, March 03. 2011
Via Pruned
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by Alexander Trevi
(Original photo by Bjarne Winkler. Source.)
According to SciDev.Net, “swarming micro air vehicles” might soon be deployed over disaster areas to set up emergency wireless networks. Developed by scientists at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, these flying robots will be “emitting a wireless signal” to establish “temporary radio or mobile communication networks to coordinate the search for survivors.”
“To distribute the vehicles effectively above a designated zone,” the article goes on, the research team “took inspiration from the way ants leave chemical trails to guide colonies to sources of food. Some of the vehicles hover in small circles linked to the location of rescuers and the other vehicles navigate around these markers.”
Elsewhere and earlier, we learned from Wired that, should dictators cut off their country from the internet, there are ways to restore connectivity to the populace. The U.S. military, for instance, has the Commando Solo, a cargo plane converted into an “airborne broadcasting center” that “hypothetically” can boost Wi-Fi bars in bandwidth-denied areas to full strength. Any of the military's aircrafts can be converted into “cell towers in the sky” by attaching cellular pods to their wings or bellies.
To this arsenal, one can supposedly add the above flying robots. When the switch is turned off, they'll be released from their roost to swarm over revolutionary spaces to churn up an electromagnetic storm of Facebook schedules, retweets and Anderson Cooper's adoring visage.
(Original photo by Bjarne Winkler. Source.)
But instead of hovering over disaster and conflict areas, how about urban and rural dead spaces or in even more remote locales? And instead of drones and toy airplanes, you conscript pigeons, starlings and other flying weeds into a wi-fi network of cyborg fauna?
This network needn't be online all the time. The birds, after all, need some rest. So you simply let them loose, say, during rush hour to temporarily augment the network.
One imagines urban homesteaders converting a water tank into an aviary for their robo-starlings, next to their urban apiaries, urban chicken coops and urban farming tool shed. When they need to communicate with other urban homesteaders, either nearby or in another Detroit-like ruin pornscape, they only need to open the hatch. It's an artisanal wi-fi for networked off-grid living.
In order to lessen e-waste, each starling is equipped with a homing beacon, which will signal home should the animal die in flight. The homesteader simply has to trace the electronic beeps to collect the carcass and its outfittings. In the meantime, the beacon will be powered by the decaying organic matter.
(Also in the archives: Augmented Ethology.)
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