Woolsey Life

An article at Smithsonian.com reports that scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge have recently attained a record low, 810 trillionths of a degree F above absolute zero! Be warned, science content lies beyond this point. Crazy things happen at this temperature, electrical resistance of materials becomes negligible allowing what is known as super conductivity. Super fluids begin to emerge that are able to pass through containers that would be able to otherwise safely contain fluids at warmer temperatures. You can read all about it in this interesting article about experiments with super cold temperatures.

People are always looking for ways to do things like purify water or generate electricity in a smarter, more efficient way. One advantage to this quest is that new technologies can be used in impoverished areas of the world to help raise the standard of living in those places. Well, I Stumbled this little video from Popular Mechanics and was impressed with the ingenuity. I would like to see some more discussion revolving around scalability. That being said this is fun, you could probably build one yourself!

These are the kinds of stories I like: sending up an array of solar panels that will collect pure, unobstructed solar energy and then beam it down to a relay station on the surface of the Earth. It has its technical and political challenges, but its a little bit of outer space fiction coming to life on a drawing board.

The good news? Beaming all the solar energy we could ever need down to Earth from space appears more feasible than ever before. The bad news? It’s going to take a lot of money and political will to get there.

Click here to read about it at Green Options.

The Twinkie was invented on April 6, 1930 by bakery manager James Dewar.  The way it is been made is a result of years of revisited recipes and growing efficiency in production.  Perhaps its not fair to pick on the Twinkie but its a good example of the downfall of the American (and international) diet over the years.  This article by Kate Thorp at Divine Caroline (StumbleUpon Find!) takes a quick look at the ingredients in the Twinkie and their origins on an international market.  The Twinkie just might embody where the nutrition of our nation has gone.  Mine is a generation that is fast racing towards minimizing, localizing, naturalizing and conserving, I wonder if things like this amazingly processed confection will have a place when my kids are old enough to pay attention…I hope not.

So, this is the first time I have ever put something like this on a blog, but I think its really fun. I am a science guy, in fact I consider myself a scientist. I think fundamental sciences should be something that everyone has a grasp of. I stumbled across this little test and thought that a lot of my friends might be interested in taking a stab at this test. So, go ahead and take the test and let me know what you get.