“I seem to be having difficulty…

…with my paragraph breaks.” with apologies to Douglas Adams.

Update – fixed. I suspect a problem in Safari (used for the original posts) as the edits I’ve made using Firefox are sticking. Hmmm…

Iron-fertilized, carbon-eating oceans

Regardless of whether the oceans boil away in 7.6 billion years or not, we have a real-life crisis developing right now in the form of global warming. Or, as some would rather: ‘climate change’. Doesn’t sound so scary then…

One set of techniques to combat the rise of greenhouse gases is geo-sequestration – basically, sticking the CO2 underground – and there are lots of different ways proposed to accomplish this.

A series of articles is currently being posted that explains the process, benefits and side-effects of a geo-seq method called ocean iron-fertilization which uses excess iron in sea-water to promote the growth of plankton that use CO2 (like plants) and drag it down to the ocean bottom in an organic form.

The articles are long and can get a bit technical – although there are some fantastic diagrams to help along the way – so I’ll leave the final word to a better journalist than I:

You need to know three things … One, putting iron in the ocean does increase plankton numbers. Two, scientists don’t really have any idea how much of the carbon the organisms eat actually drops from the surface into the depths, which is the key to sequestration. It could be anywhere from 2-50 percent, which is almost like saying, “It could work or it could not work.” Three, the leading scientists in the field don’t have enough confidence to say that ocean iron fertilization could have any real impact on stopping or even slow climate change.

Still looking for a solution, then.

What happens in 7.6 billion years time?

Well, according to these articles arising from work done at Sussex Uni our sun will have swollen to a size greater than the Earth’s current orbit and swallowed it up.

No need to worry, though: life will already be gone long before then as the approaching surface of the sun boils the oceans away and blasts it into space on solar winds.

On the up side, however, the sun will lose mass during this process and its gravitational influence on our planet will be diminished. It is possible that this phenomenon, together with ‘nudges’ from passing asteroids, might allow the Earth to move further away from the sun – to increase the radius of its own orbit – and escape being engulfed.

But there still won’t be any oceans.

Wow. Just… Wow!

Can someone explain to me how this optical illusion works?

Australian Crawl. Not.

Ars Technica has caught hold of the article in The Age on an apparent breakthrough in wireless data transmission. National ICT Australia (NICTA), based in Melbourne, claim to have produced a wireless chip that can transfer data at around 5 gigabits per second at a range of 10 metres.

At less than $10 a chip, this might give rivals bluetooth and wireless USB some serious competition in applications requiring computer to computer transfer. However, it looks like the power requirements are bit steep for the average handhed device.

Still, just as wireless tech is constantly improving, so is battery tech. An iPod that can transfer a HiDef movie in a matter of seconds to and from your computer sounds pretty cool to me.

Remembering Christopher Wren

Today marks the death, in 1723, of Christopher Wren – architect, inventor, urban-planner (before the term was invented), astronomer, mathematician and father.

Wren’s most famous work is St Paul’s Cathedral in London, but his mathematical and scientific works were extraordinary as well. For instance, he is credited with performing one of the earliest known successful blood transfusions (between 2 dogs)!Wired.com has an excellent overview of this man’s amazing work.

Out for a while – back now, and swinging!

Back again after a week at a school camp. No web access is a real killer. I wonder when it will be regarded in the same way as running water and electricity?

The biggest consumer tech news last week was the complete and utter capitulation of HD-DVD’s main manufacturing backer, Toshiba, in what had been touted as the HD Format War.

Following declarations by the major movie studios that they planned to exclusively embrace HD-DVD’s competitor, Blu-ray, Toshiba decided not to throw any more good money after bad abandoning HD-DVD and leaving a single format for physical HD media. And until broadband web access in homes is fast enough to support a market in downloadable HD content Blu-ray is unlikely to feel much pressure from competition in the near future. Here in Australia, I can see that taking a very long time…

In other news, a failing US satellite was successfully shot down by a sea-launched missile. Nice shooting. Glad to see all those billions of dollars are good for something. However, an alternative was suggested: catching satellites on re-entry in a ‘blanket’ that would allow for a more controlled destruction or even retrieval after the event.

Then there was talk of self-healing rubber; an attempt to sail a wave-powered boat from Hawaii to Japan; implantable, blood-powered communication devices and efforts to make fuel from algae. A big week indeed.