Citizen activists take on 'destructive' solar power plants in France's Provence region
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France24 ^
| March 6, 2024 | Cyrielle Cabot
SUMMARY: Citizen activists in southeastern France’s Alpes-de-Hautes-Provence region have been campaigning for two years against the growing number of solar power parks in a protected natural area around the Lure mountain. The
local authorities, and the parks' investors, claim the plants are “essential” projects in the fight against climate change, and in line with the ambitions of the European Green Deal. But the activists claim these projects are “destructive” for biodiversity and the landscape. A few hundred metres above the commune of Cruis, in the Alpes-de-Hautes-Provence region, Sylvie Bitterlin, a 62-year-old actress, stands in front of the security fence of...
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“Transformative” New Solar Technology Converts Manure Into Hydrogen Fuel
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https://scitechdaily.com/ ^
| JUNE 4, 2024 | UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS CHICAGO
UIC engineers have introduced a groundbreaking method for producing hydrogen gas using solar power and agricultural waste, drastically reducing energy consumption and enabling net-zero greenhouse emissions. Engineers
from the University of Illinois Chicago have developed a novel method to produce hydrogen gas from water using solely solar power and agricultural byproducts like manure and husks. This technique slashes the energy required to extract hydrogen from water by 600%, paving the way for more sustainable and environmentally friendly chemical manufacturing. Hydrogen-based fuels are one of the most promising sources of clean energy. But producing pure hydrogen gas is an energy-intensive process...
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Astronomy Picture of the Day - Solar X Flare as Famous Active Region Returns
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NASA ^
| 28 May, 2024 | Video Credit: NASA, Solar Dynamics Observatory
Explanation: It's back. The famous active region on the Sun that created auroras visible around the Earth earlier this month has survived its rotation around the far side of the Sun -- and returned. Yesterday,
as it was beginning to reappear on the Earth-facing side, the region formerly labeled AR 3664 threw another major solar flare, again in the highest-energy X-class range. The featured video shows the emerging active region on the lower left, as it was captured by NASA's Earth-orbiting Solar Dynamics Observatory yesterday in ultraviolet light. The video is a time-lapse of the entire Sun rotating over 24...
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Astronomy Picture of the Day - A Solar Filament Erupts
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NASA ^
| 26 May, 2024 | Image Credit: NASA's GSFC, SDO AIA Team
Explanation: What's happened to our Sun? Nothing very unusual -- it just threw a filament. Toward
the middle of 2012, a long standing solar filament suddenly erupted into space, producing an energetic coronal mass ejection (CME). The filament had been held up for days by the Sun's ever changing magnetic field and the timing of the eruption was unexpected. Watched closely by the Sun-orbiting Solar Dynamics Observatory, the resulting explosion shot electrons and ions into the Solar System, some of which arrived at Earth three days later and impacted Earth's magnetosphere, causing visible auroras. Loops of plasma surrounding the active...
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Smelting Steel Without Fossil Fuels: Solar Power Shatters the 1,000°C Barrier for Industrial Heating
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https://scitechdaily.com/ ^
| MAY 17, 2024 | CELL PRESS
Swiss researchers have developed a solar energy method using synthetic quartz to achieve temperatures above 1,000°C for industrial processes, potentially replacing fossil fuels in the production of materials like steel and cement. Instead
of burning fossil fuels to reach the temperatures needed to smelt steel and cook cement, scientists in Switzerland want to use heat from the sun. The proof-of-concept study uses synthetic quartz to trap solar energy at temperatures over 1,000°C (1,832°F), demonstrating the method’s potential role in providing clean energy for carbon-intensive industries. A paper on the research was published on May 15 in the journal Device. The...
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Volcanic ash proves cheap and highly effective for solar energy storage
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www.newatlas.com ^
| May 14, 2024 | Loz Blain
It's rarely great news when an area gets blanketed in volcanic ash – but University of Barcelona researchers have discovered it has a rare combination of useful properties, which make it remarkably useful as an energy storage medium. We've
written a number of times about super-cheap thermal energy storage, and a number of other times about highly efficient heat batteries operating at super-high temperatures. The cheapest of these 'brick toasters' use the most abundant of materials, and the most efficient can handle extraordinarily high temperatures using materials like liquid tin and carbon materials – but volcanic ash, as it turns...
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Solar storm 2024: What should you do to prepare?
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The Hill ^
| 05/09/2024 | ALIX MARTICHOUX
NEXSTAR) – It’s been almost 20 years since we’ve seen a geomagnetic storm as strong as the one heading our way this weekend. Power
operators and other groups that maintain critical infrastructure are preparing for what might happen when the coronal mass ejections, or CMEs, hit Earth. But is there anything you should be doing? A G4-level solar storm, such as the one expected to hit as soon as Friday evening, can cause issues with the power grid, radio communications and the accuracy of GPS.
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Rare solar storm to make northern lights visible to most of US: Here’s how to see it
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https://nypost.com ^
| 5/10/2024 | Ronny Reyes
A powerful solar storm will make the northern lights visible to most of America — including the New York City area — Friday night, but you’ll need to get out of the city if you want a chance at seeing the auroras. The
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has upgraded the looming geomagnetic solar storm to a level 4, which is capable of disrupting America’s electrical grid and making the northern lights visible as far south as Alabama. The key to witnessing the natural phenomena will depend on the amount of cloud coverage and light population, making upstate New...
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NOAA says tonight's 'cannibal' solar storm could be worst in 165 YEARS and cause GPS and power outages - as they reveal exact time it'll hit
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Daily Mail ^
| 5/10/24 | Stacey Liberatore
Earth could suffer the worst solar storm in 165 years as six streams of plasma that erupted from the sun this week are set to make crash into our atmosphere tonight. The
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) revealed Friday that the worst-case scenario would be what happened during the 1859 Carrington event, which set telegraph stations on fire, cutting communications worldwide. In our modern-day society a geomagnetic storm - a major disturbance of Earth's magnetosphere- of that magnitude would cause widespread electrical disruptions, blackouts and damage to critical infrastructure.
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SIX SOLAR STORMS ON THEIR WAY TO EARTH
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Space Weather News via X (formerly Twitter) ^
| 05/10/24 | Sun Weather Man
SIX SOLAR STORMS ON THEIR WAY TO EARTH (3 minute and 51 second video in link below)https://twitter.com/SunWeatherMan/
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South Korea Plan for Space Based Solar for More Than All US Nuclear Power
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https://www.nextbigfuture.com/ ^
| May 1, 2024 | Brian Wang
Two Korean research institutes are designing a space solar power satellite project with the aim of providing approximately 1000 TWh of electricity to the Earth per year. The
95 gigawatts of nuclear in the US generates 800 terawatt hours per year. Spaced based solar at 120 gigawatts would generate 1000 terawatt hours. This is an improved proposed Korean Space Solar Power Satellite (K-SSPS) project. It is a conceptual design of the satellite, its end-of-life disposal method, and a first pilot system and experiment. The proposed system would use 4,000 sub-solar arrays measuring 10 meters × 270 meters and comprising thin...
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Yes, Aratina Solar Project Will Down Iconic Joshua Trees in Southern California
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Legal Insurrection ^
| 7 May, 2024 | Leslie Eastman
The solar project is destroying the Joshua trees…to save the Joshua Trees from “climate change.” There
are a lot of essential lessons real environmentalists can learn from this post. I have offered post after post proving that the Earth’s climate has continually changed. Any temperature rise observed from reliable temperature stations is likely cyclic and part of the world’s warming after an intense period of glaciation. I have noted repeatedly that carbon dioxide is a life-essential gas in trace amounts, and data shows it has no significant role in global warming. I have highlighted that fossil fuels and nuclear energy...
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Astronomy Picture of the Day - A Total Solar Eclipse from Sliver to Ring
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NASA ^
| 6 May, 2024 | Video Credit & Copyright: Reinhold Wittich; Music: Sunrise from Also sprach Zarathusra (R. Strauss)
Explanation: This is how the Sun disappeared from the daytime sky last month. The
featured time-lapse video was created from stills taken from Mountain View, Arkansas, USA on 2024 April 8. First, a small sliver of a normally spotted Sun went strangely dark. Within a few minutes, much of the background Sun was hidden behind the advancing foreground Moon. Within an hour, the only rays from the Sun passing the Moon appeared like a diamond ring. During totality, most of the surrounding sky went dark, making the bright pink prominences around the Sun's edge stand out, and making the amazing...
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Storm destroys the world's largest floating Solar Panel Farm
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Twitter / X / Citizen's Free Press ^
| May 5th, 2024 | Staff
AL GORE please pick up the red emergency phone. Storm
destroys the world's largest floating Solar Panel Farm. What Valedictorian engineer signed off on this stupidity. VIDEO AT LINK...................
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Researchers just found more than 1,000 new solar system objects hiding in plain sight
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Live Science ^
| April 29, 2024 | Harry Baker
Our cosmic neighborhood is littered with asteroids. Scientists
have already discovered more than 1.3 million of the space rocks, most of which lie in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, according to NASA. There are likely hundreds of thousands if not millions more asteroids waiting to be discovered. However, these remaining space rocks are likely the smallest and therefore faintest bodies in the solar system, which makes them very hard to spot.In the new study, published March 15 in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics, researchers highlighted 1,031 previously uncategorized asteroids from archival Hubble data. They were identified by artificial...
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White House Slashes Environmental Restrictions for Biden's Pet Projects - Wind and Solar
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Hotair ^
| 05/04/2024 | Jazz Shaw
Back in 1969, Congress passed the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), mandating environmental reviews for all major projects to determine their environment impact and allowing for periods of public comment. This
has generally been beneficial, but it opens the door to lengthy lawsuits from environmental activists that can tie projects up in the courts for years. There may be some significant changes coming to the process, however, but only for certain types of projects. The White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) has just finished what's being described as a "rule change" that will remove many delays and "streamline" the...
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The intermittency of wind and solar power could be worse than originally thought, experts say
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Just the News ^
| May 2, 2024 | Kevin Killough
"Wind Droughts": A 15-state region produced less than 10% of its potential 22 gigawatt wind output over an 82-hour period. For
42 hours straight within that period, the wind output was only 1.5% of the total.. Last month, multiple news outlets reported on the record-smashing year the wind industry had in 2023. The Global Wind Energy Council released its latest report showing the world installed 117 gigawatts of capacity. The Associated Press called 2023 a “record year for wind installations,” and Reuters noted that the U.S. was among the top five markets for wind installations. The U.S. Energy Information Administration...
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Sun unleashes near X-class solar flare: M9.5 eruption sparks radio blackouts across the Pacific (video)
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Space.com ^
| May 1, 2024 published 2 hours ago | Daisy Dobrijevic
The solar flare is the most powerful eruption from sunspot region R3654 yet. Last
night (April 30), the sun released an extremely powerful solar flare triggering widespread radio blackouts across the Pacific region. The flare peaked at 7:46 p.m. EDT (2346 GMT) and ended shortly after at 7:58 p.m. EDT (2358). Solar flares are eruptions from the sun's surface that emit intense bursts of electromagnetic radiation. They are created when magnetic energy builds up in the solar atmosphere and is released. Solar flares are categorized by size into lettered groups, with X-class being the most powerful. Then there are M-class...
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As solar capacity grows, some of America's most productive farmland is at risk
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Reuters ^
| April 27, 2024 | P.j. Huffstutter and Christopher Walljasper
JASPER COUNTY, INDIANA - Dave Duttlinger's first thought when he saw a dense band of yellowish-brown dust smearing the sky above his Indiana farm was: I warned them this would happen. About
445 acres of his fields near Wheatfield, Indiana, are covered in solar panels and related machinery – land that in April 2019 Duttlinger leased to Dunns Bridge Solar LLC, for one of the largest solar developments in the Midwest. On that blustery spring afternoon in 2022, Duttlinger said, his phone rang with questions from frustrated neighbors: Why is dust from your farm inside my truck? Inside my house?...
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SOMETHING IS AFFECTING GRAVITY IN OUR SOLAR SYSTEM, AND ASTRONOMERS SAY IT COULD BE AN UNKNOWN PLANET
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The Debrief ^
| APRIL 24, 2024 | MJ BANIAS
In the far reaches of our solar system beyond the orbit of Neptune, a mysterious and yet-unseen world may be lurking in the darkness. Dubbed
“Planet 9,” this hypothetical celestial body has been the subject of intense scientific debate and speculation since its existence was first proposed in 2016. Now, a new study published to the arXiv pre-print service by a team from the California Institute of Technology, Université Côte d’Azur, and Southwest Research Institute has provided compelling evidence supporting the presence of this enigmatic planet. The origin of the Planet 9 hypothesis stems from the peculiar alignments in the...
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