An abandoned bowling alley finds a second life in this beautiful series of furniture by LA-based designer/woodworker William Stranger. Crafted from reclaimed strips of wood salvaged from a local defunct Tava Lanes Bowling alley, the collection springs to life in a variety of forms including a series of wall hangings and a low coffee table.
The holy grail of renewable energy is a solar power plant that continues producing electricity after the sun goes down.
A Santa Monica, Calif., company called SolarReserve has taken a step toward making that a reality, filing an application with California regulators to build a 150-megawatt solar farm that will store seven hours’ worth of the sun’s energy in the form of molten salt.
Heat from the salt can be released when it’s cloudy or at night to create steam that drives an electricity-generating turbine.
The ice atop Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania has continued to retreat rapidly, declining 26 percent since 2000, scientists say in a new report.
Yet the authors of the study, to be published Tuesday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, reached no consensus on whether the melting could be attributed mainly to humanity’s role in warming the global climate.
Eighty-five percent of the ice cover that was present in 1912 has vanished, the scientists said.
Iosa Ghini Associati has designed the Energy Belt, a sleek solar-powered monorail system for Bologna, Italy that will connect the airport to the city center. The system’s smoothly sculpted lines run above the countryside, providing great views for travelers. The monorail will also provide infrastructure for other uses, namely a pedestrian walkway alongside the tracks and a solar system that runs along the rail’s southern face
Earlier this week, Green Wavelength LLC, a bio-inspired clean energy startup, unveiled their 19-foot, prototype, small wind turbine to crowds at The Perfect Pitch 2009 entrepreneur conference. Called XBee, the turbine – unlike any that you’ve probably ever seen – was designed with inspiration from the movement of bumblebees, hummingbirds, and dragonflies.
Every year, scientists learn something new about the inner workings of lightning.
With satellites, they have discovered that more than 1.2 billion lightning flashes occur around the world every year. (Rwanda has the most flashes per square kilometer, while flashes are rare in polar regions.) Laboratory and field experiments have revealed that the core of some lightning bolts reaches 30,000 Kelvin (53,540 ºF), a temperature hot enough to instantly melt sand and break oxygen and nitrogen molecules into individual atoms.
Not quite as impressive on paper as the lithium-air battery we wrote about (which claimed 10x more energy storage than regular lithium-ion), but it might turn out to be easier to take out of the lab and bring to market.
ReVolt Technology, a company based in Staefa, Switzerland, claims that its Zinc-air battery can "store three times the energy of lithium ion batteries, by volume, while costing only half as much," and unlike other existing air batteries, this one would be rechargeable. It is planning to start by selling small ones for hearing aids and then progressively scale up to portable electronics and electric cars.
CANBERRA, Australia - A solar car made by students from Japan's Tokai University was on Wednesday named the winner of a 1,900-mile race across the Australian outback that aimed to show that green cars can also be mean.
The Tokai Challenger crossed the finish line just north of Adelaide on Wednesday afternoon after a smooth run, with one flat tire the only issue along the way.
