Diagram courtesy of Solar Impulse

With 12,000 solar-cells attached to wings the size of a standard jet, and with a body as light as a car, the Swiss made HB-SIA solar plane has finally left the runway for it’s 24 hour flight to test its ability to fly in darkness.

Being the first of two vehicles of the Solar Impulse Project, led by pilot Andre Borschberg and Bertrand Piccard, who gained fame for making the first trans-global flight in a hot air balloon in 1999, the HB-SIA has already accomplished a full day flight back in early April. “For seven years now, the whole team has been passionately working to achieve this first decisive step of the project,” Borschberg said before taking off on the flight. He’ll bring the experimental plane on a climb to 27,900 feet before starting a slow descent, flying the plane with the stored solar energy until Thursday morning’s sunrise. 

“If this mission is successful, it will be the longest and highest flight ever made by a solar plane,” the SIP team said, eyeing the future HB-SIB – a larger version of the current prototype with upgraded avionics and a pressurized cabin. The HB-SIB will be used to make the first solar-powered manned-Trans-Atlantic flight in 2012, and with a Trans-Global flight pre-scheduled for 2013. 

Though for now, they’ll settle for the excitement of a successful nighttime flight, as it will prove the practical benefits of solar power in the aviation industry, as well as acting as the “poster child” for the use of solar power in many other industries.

Photo courtesy of AP

When asked about volume with regards to anything the non-statistician/“normal Joe” usually answers, “Tons!” when it’s a large amount or, “Not much,” when it is indeed not much. I would think that most people who are seriously concerned over the situation right now in the Gulf of Mexico would answer, “Tons!” because a precise figure is needed only by those who have either given up hope, and so now think it would be interesting to find out exactly how much of BP’s crude continues to flow into the waters of the Western Hemisphere, or by those who have forgotten how to think about the “here and now”.

On Sunday, 54 days into what is amounting to a global disaster, engineers from British Petroleum deployed deepsea sensors so they could produce a more accurate number of how much oil continues to flow into the Gulf of Mexico. Initially BP officials measured the daily flow-rate between 1,000 and 5,000 barrels (42,000 and 210,000 US gallons respectively). It wasn’t long before “outside experts” got involved for that number to be pushed aside, however, and the tally has continued to grow ever since. For a long time it was nothing more than a guessing game, factored largely by the video captured of the endless spew from the broken pipe one mile beneath the water’s surface.

At the start of last week BP had pinpointed a number as the collection cap was securing the oil at a rate of 630,000 gallons a day. A sense of relief rippled, even through the relentless statisticians. But the measure was short-lived, however, as an unknown amount was still seen leaking from around the capture point of the broken pipe. From this point new estimates of the “new” amount being leaked came in, registering at approximately “hundreds of thousands” of gallons per day. Of course, the vague figure still left the curious-minded without that precise figure.

The most recent estimate reported between 760,000 gallons to 1.8 million gallons continues to pump from the broken pipe each day. Though with the assistance of these deepsea sensors – that seemingly have been left to sit in storage up to this point, perhaps along side of some contraption also idly awaiting to be put to use, called a Miracle Plug – we’re finally going to have an accurate number of gallons, or barrels still leaking from the floor of the Gulf. As if it really matters.

In 1992, the city of Chicago experienced a flood in which 250 million gallons of water leaked into a tunnel that was once used in the early 1920’s for the transportation of coal. It happened when construction workers were driving new pilings into the Chicago River. The hammering caused a weakening of the tunnel walls which cracked under the pressure, and resulted in the flooding of the intricate network of tunnels, passageways, and basements throughout Chicago’s downtown “Loop”.

In both cases, the errors were the fault of humans wholly ignorant to what effect their operations were having on the surrounding workspace. The difference in reaction was drastic, however, in the sense that the officials in Chicago knew they needed to focus on nothing but plugging the hole. They called in truckloads of cement, rocks, and dirt in their hasty attempts at stopping the leak. At one point they even tried closing off the hole with truckloads of mattresses. Yes, it sounds silly, almost comical that people would take the tampon method of plugging the leak, and figure that a mass amount of mattresses might do the trick, but we have to give them the utmost credit, simply because they spared nothing in their attempts to plug the hole. The point is, nobody sat around trying to figure out the flow-rate of the water as it passed through the city’s underground, only how to stop the flow completely.

To this point we’ve watched high definition video of the flow coming from the floor of the Gulf, and now we know we can do a fairly decent job of surgically manipulating the area as we witnessed a submersible clip the pipe with a fixed set of shears. We’ve watched BP set “hats” and “caps” on top of the pipe, and all the while oil flows steadily toward the shores of the United States and beyond, yet they still can’t seem to find the urgency in which to drop in everything that isn’t buoyant to try plugging the leak.

There’s a point when we should be able to discount the priorities of someone who seemingly lacks the urgency necessary to quell a situation, and simply shove them out of the way. These people who need an exact figure to measure whether or not we need to take immediate action in any potential dire situation, should be forced to remain sidelined until the situation has been remedied. It seems too often they need to be reminded of the situation at hand, and what is most important. Sure, we can keep them at the sidelines where they could be used to simply answer questions such as, “Have we tried stuffing it full of mattresses?” In the meantime, take a backseat while we panic our way to dumping everything including the kitchen sink to dam the flow from the hole BP punched into the earth, where really no human should be allowed to play.

A team of American scientists, led by Dr. Craig Venter of the J Craig Venter Institute in Maryland and California, have successfully developed the first synthetic “living” cell, and have set what many are calling a “scientific landmark”.

By injecting what the scientists referred to as synthetic “software” into a host cell, the cell’s qualities take on the role of whatever the software is commanding. Because the cell is self-replicating copies are innumerable; eventually becoming programmable bacteria. The bacteria can be programmed to suck Carbon Dioxide from our air, or to turn into a biological agent to be used in a bomb. It could be fashioned to become fuel, and we can imagine that it won’t take long before they formulate cancer-cell seeking creatures.   

As expected, the news immediately released a backlash from the “bioethics” community, and rightfully so. Not for any reason that “ethics” can even come into play – it shouldn’t be about duelling morality, but about the many instances where we’ve seen scientific means used to quell natural problems fail miserably.

France once introduced foreign plants called Spartina Alterniflora to strengthen their shorelines and protect them from erosion, only to see them flourish to an unmanageable amount. The plants decimated the marine life, and they have been struggling to find a solution to the problem ever since. Many people have a valid argument against vaccinations, for the fear that injecting our children with Polio does nothing more than keep Polio around, and those vaccines that contain mercury, and its potential relation to Autism. There’s the Cane Toad in Australia, and the Tall Fescue. The introduction of invasive species was never the intention. But the intentional introduction of invasive species is exactly the end result.   

Have scientists taken one step closer to inventing computerized worker bugs, or Dr. Frankenstein’s monster? The answer to that is yet to be realized. In the meantime, we should probably demand the invention of the Off switch.

photo courtesy of NASA

NASA scientist William Boynton announced the find after the Phoenix Mars Lander “touched and tasted” Martian water on Wednesday. With a robotic arm the lander was able to dig a soil sample and place it in a heating mechanism which captured the water vapors. With this they were able to claim they have definitive proof that water exists on the Red Planet, and have extended Phoenix’s mission by five weeks to try to find if it was ever capable of harboring life. “Cupboard” and “Neverland” will be the upcoming dig sites where the scientists hope to find evidence of microbial life, and with their discovery of water and ice now behind them, the possibility has climbed sharply.

Maybe it isn’t all that strange that NASA named the craft, that’s responsible for finding water where it was never believed to have existed, Phoenix.

In September 2010 NASA’s Space Shuttle Program will be closing down, and its three remaining ships put to rest. The maiden launch of Columbia in 1981 brought fame to the shuttles as being the first re-usable space vehicles. Since, we’ve seen two tragic missions when in 1986 Challenger exploded soon after launching, and again in 2003 when Columbia was destroyed upon re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere. 14 astronauts lost their lives in the two missions combined, and NASA has now decided to scrap the program so they could focus on the construction of the International Space Station.

The three remaining ships, Endeavor, Atlantis, and Discovery, have been successful in 85 missions so far, and will have upped the tally to 95 by the closing of the program. With the final mission scheduled for launch in May 2010, Endeavor will be headlining as it will take critical supplies to the International Space Station before passing off the wand to their successor-ships in the Constellation Program, including Orion and Ares.

To many of us, the program’s initial launching of Columbia was as awe-inspiring as Neil Armstrong’s ”giant leap for mankind” was to our parents, and watching them retire will most likely produce some sentiment similar to what my father felt toward the death of the Studebaker. 

“Floodlit in the hazy distance
The star of this unearthly show
Venting vapours, like the breath
Of a sleeping white dragon”
– Neil Peart

By Brian A. Burns

John Freshwater’s heinous act of branding a cross on the arm of his middle-school student in Mount Vernon, Ohio should not be very shocking to us. Though it brought much media attention, as “shock stories” tend to do, the thought of an uncompassionate Christian willfully harming others seems to be all too common these days. From the child molestation problems in the Catholic church, to the war in Iraq – brought to you by the likes of the Christian Coalition, Focus on the Family, and all of those “holier than thou” that continue supporting the slaughtering of innocent civilians by voting for their favorite Republican war-monger. Those who consider themselves “compassionate Christians” are often the most violent offenders of human rights. They enact laws against the freedom to choose how we want to live, and die. They uphold the law that forces a person to suffer a tortuous death until their affliction consumes them, without having the option of shutting off the device and being left to die in peace. With that said, we can take the news of John Freshwater as just another drop in the bucket. Although, from the very same occurrance in Mount Vernon, Ohio, we were given the gift of insight to the true intentions of those who fear science – those who simply write off our entire universe as an “intelligent design”.

It was during the heat of the Mount Vernon moment; when the vans congregated and the reporters and their crews raced like rats to the cheese. The cheese they came across was the friend of the ’science teacher’, Dave Daubenmire. Daubenmire was intelligent enough to understand that it was wrong for Freshwater to burn a cross on to his student’s arm. But he muttered his support for the other heinous act Freshwater was committing – teaching his science class that the Judeo-Christian God is the reason for our universe, and that science cannot be trusted. Daubenmire told us all what ID supporters have been trying to tell us all along, “I believe John Freshwater is teaching the values of the parents in the Mount Vernon school district.” In fact, Freshwater was doing just that – using his job as a science teacher to teach against science.

The reason so many citizens, religious and non-religious, are up in arms against teaching Intelligent Design in the science classes of our public schools is due to the fact that there is no science in the belief of gods. The study of omnipotent beings would fall under the social studies category where it is already taught as mythology. The study of Intelligent Design could be taught as “Flash, and it was there!” and it would be the shortest and most hollow of all courses, but with great reading from the origins of fiction. Of course, many religious folks would be offended at their views of their universe being cast aside as mythology, but so too are the scientists who devote their lives to their work which is then mangled and fed to our children as being false simply because some of us don’t want to believe in the facts of science.

John Freshwater was being paid with our tax dollars to teach our children the updated information coming from our community of scientists and researchers. He was not being paid to teach “the values of the parents in the Mount Vernon school district”. Classes in values are being taught at the local church, mosque, synagogue, and temple – or better yet, values are taught at home. And it is most important to note that in the case of Evangelical Christians there are quite a few ‘values’ that are being completely overlooked. Two of which are Honesty and Integrity.

There is no honesty behind teaching children that the Earth is 10,000 years old, that carbon dating is inaccurate, and the factual information coming from evolutionists is false. And there certainly is no integrity behind stealing the information and tagging it with “God was here.” The more evolutionists learn by way of testing the more Christians steal by way of fear and prejudice. They take all that is given and sum it up with two words – intelligent design, and sadly enough, they’re the only side in the battle who feel the need to place finality on the beliefs of our origins. Evolutionists aren’t telling the public that there isn’t a god as much they are telling us what their observations and experiments prove. If their findings further negate the presence of a god then it should only be seen as a byproduct of the hypothesis as opposed to it being the intentions behind the experiment. Evolutionists aren’t looking to disprove gods, but only to discover where everything ultimately came from.

Babu Ranganathan, a Christian writer from Bob Jones University, is one of the people so angry at the hypotheses of scientific experimentation that he’s gone to war against reality and factual information, only to retain the selfish belief that his god can be the only answer. He took the belief that life on Mars might’ve originated there after being blasted into outer space from Earth being impacted by comets, and turned that to mean that the Judeo-Christian god is responsible. An obvious question would be, “Why wouldn’t God just form life on Mars, as opposed to relying on blasting it there from Earth?” But the science behind the belief was never intended to prove a god’s existence or inexistence. It was only noted from Kenneth Nealson of the NASA Astrobiology Institute, “We think there’s about 7 million tons of Earth soil sitting on Mars.” This news was sweet-music to Mr. Ranganathan, as now he had a biblical answer for the day scientists possibly announce the discovery of Martian microbes.

The textbook for Biological studies at Bob Jones University is titled Biology for Christian Schools. It is truly not a resource on biological studies for the simple fact that on the first page it is quoted, “If [scientific] conclusions contradict the Word of God, the conclusions are wrong, no matter how many scientific facts may appear to back them.” It also states, “Christians must disregard [scientific hypotheses or theories] that contradict the Bible.” Instead the book is only a guide on how to turn a blind eye to progressive mentality, and factual information.

So the next time you hear one of our politicians wondering why there’s an absence of scientifically minded indivduals graduating from our nation’s high schools, you can blame those who openly steal the subject and drape it in vestments. As the 9/11 hijackers snuck into our flight-schools to learn how to use our jets against us, so too the John Freshwaters and Babu Ranganathans have invaded the realm of science only to hijack facts and wage war against the education of our children.

It wasn’t a very good week for religion. First we were introduced to pseudo-science teachers who brand their students with crucifixes, and now we have proof of the existence of the ’selfish’ gene. Initially introduced to us in 1976 by the famed biologist and author of The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins, the idea of a ’selfish’ gene was one in which our genes carry an independent drive to survive and carry on into future generations.

In a study involving the reproductive behavior of honey bees, University of Western Ontario biology professor Graham Thompson, with help from the University of Sydney’s Peter Oxley, has discovered the location in which a genome harbors the ’selfish’ gene. As somewhat of an extension to the Honey Bee Genome Project of 2006, Thompson noticed the ’selfish’ behavior of the worker bee’s genetics as all of the females are sterile. This led him to the discovery which has been considered a key element in the process of evolution.

This new stamp of evolutionary proof not only adds to the resoundings of Charles Darwin’s works, but as Thompson says, “…provides a validation for a huge body of socio-biology.”

Yesterday at the 108th General Meeting of the American Society for Microbiology in Boston, researchers reported some staggering numbers – the ratio of bacteria in our bodies to our human cells is 10 to 1. One scientist was able to estimate approximately 500 different species of bacteria living on our skin alone. This has led other researchers to tackle individual body parts to study possible correlations with their ailments. One is studying the bacteria in the human digestive tract to see if there may be a relationship to Crohn’s disease, while another is studying the bacteria residing in the digestive tract to see if there’s a correlation to obesity.

Click here to read about those we unknowingly play host to, and their ecosystem within us.

image courtesy of Nicolle Rager-Fuller/National Science Foundation

It isn’t so surprising that life is constantly being formed in our oceans. Considered the “Garden of Eden” to Evolutionists, it is where the chemistry of life forms single-celled organisms which then split. Eventually we have all of the living creatures we have today. Though even Evolutionists are wrong once in awhile; not by their belief that life came from the primordial muck of the oceans, but by how much proof they have that life is still being formed in those very oceans.

Click here to read more about those at the top of our family tree.

It is known that oil extracted from algae can be used for fuel. Currently, there are algae farms in various parts of the United States that are testing how viable an alternative this fuel source could be. Scientists have come to the conclusion that if one-tenth of the state of New Mexico was sectioned off and built up with algae farms it would produce enough fuel to cover our transportation issues.

After testing various fuel sources they have come to conclusion that Ethanol is perhaps the worst alternative, since the ratio of yield to the power consumed in its manufacturing pales in comparison to other sources. Not to mention that the higher the demand for corn becomes, the less other vegetables will be grown, thus the higher prices we’ll have to pay at the grocery.

Click here to read why soon we may be herding fun-guys. Wait, what?