Engineer's Daughter

takin' a shine to you

What better thing to do on this gloomy Bay Area summer morning than dream of solar energy?  This week local energy provider PG&E announced that they will be investing big in solar power, working with OptiSolar and Sun Power to construct two huge plants.  From Grist:

Together, the plants could generate 800 megawatts of electricity at peak capacity, enough to power 239,000 homes. (Perspective: The total peak capacity of every photovoltaic panel in the U.S. as of last year was 750 MW.) The largest plant will cover nine square miles with solar panels, but it will be "very visually unobtrusive," says OptiSolar CEO Randy Goldstein; with panels only three feet high, "It almost looks like a lake." Both plants aim to be up and running by 2011, dependent on state and local approval and a renewal of tax credits currently stalled in Congress. Photovoltaic power has until now been constrained to rooftops, considered too inefficient for utility-scale use; the PG&E deals are "monumental," says Julia Hamm of the Solar Electric Power Association. "I really think it demonstrates that the time for solar has come."

I know that finding the requisite surface area is an ongoing challenge for solar energy, so I'm dead curious where these plants will be going in.  Still, this is a step in the right direction for sure.

More recent science news:

1. Endangered Species Act in danger!  Dubya wants to relax the rules that require scientific oversight of federal projects so that they wouldn't necessarily have to report ecological impact.  Grrrrr.
2. Magic invisibility cloak!  Yeah OK not really, but all of this bending light the wrong way stuff that's been going on over at UC Berkeley is still damn awesome.  The urge to try to sneak into the lab is strong.

cities at sea

With global sea levels continuing to rise, a few designers and architects are starting to design living solutions that literally float.  The solidly practical Dutch have already built houses along the banks of the Meuse river that are anchored to land but rise and fall as the water does and that look pretty nifty besides.  Other visions are a little more fantastical, like Vincent Callebaut's proposed Project Lilypad (pictured right).  Beautiful in an artist's rendering, sure, but the cost of the project is prohibitive and raises questions about who would populate such cities, who would actually benefit.  From Oliver Burkeman's article in the Guardian:

Besides, it's hard to imagine that life on a Lilypad would really be such a paradise. Surely they'd soon become floating refugee camps, housing people the rest of the world would prefer to forget - prisons for an unrooted, essentially homeless underclass? Even as an elite getaway, it's not clear that a floating metropolis would be that much fun. Cruises, after all, are an acquired taste, and there's something unavoidably fake and claustrophobic about even the finest ships. On board QM2, for example, according to publicity material, "sybarites can enjoy the rejuvenating treatments of the world-renowned Canyon Ranch Spa Club... Or how about a visit to the planetarium? A wine-tasting seminar? Or a walk down history lane at the Maritime Quest exhibit? QM2 is a veritable City at Sea, with everything from virtual-reality golf [and] a basketball court to a bookshop." Now imagine living there all year round.

Images from WALL·E do spring immediately to mind.

A couple more science notes for your Thursday:

1. Water on Mars!  This mission has been so exciting, with everything actually working pretty much as planned.  And if you're not already following the Phoenix lander's Twitter, it's one of the better ones out there.
2. Thriving gorillas!  Supposedly their numbers in the Congo have doubled since the last time they counted.  I just hope it's true.

how darwin won the evolution race

Last Wednesday, June 18, was not only a full moon night but a day of many exciting and significant anniversaries.  Eighty years ago Amelia Earhart became the first woman to fly across the Atlantic as a passenger on that date, and then forty five years later Sally Ride became the first American woman to fly into space on June 18, 1983.  Perhaps most importantly, however, 150 years ago last week a paper arrived on Charles Darwin's estate from one Alfred Russel Wallace, a young ornithologist who was inspired with a new theory called natural selection during a malarial fever in Malaysia.  This, of course, was the exact same theory Darwin had spent the previous twenty years working on and gathering data about, and it was the devastation he felt upon reading Wallace's missive that spurred him to finally sit down and put his ideas to paper.  Who knows if he would have otherwise published On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, a book that occupies its own spot of importance not only in the annals of science but also on my bedside table.  In yesterday's Observer Robin McKie describes the large role that chance played in Darwin's career and gives a brief history of evolution and the four key parts of Darwin and Wallace's theory.  McKie also talks to David Attenborough, who has some choice words for fundamentalists who continue to argue for creationism and intelligent design:

'Opponents say natural selection is not a theory supported by observation or experiment; that it is not based on fact; and that it cannot be proved,' Attenborough says. 'Well, no, you cannot prove the theory to people who won't believe in it any more than you can prove that the Battle of Hastings took place in 1066. However, we know the battle happened then, just as we know the course of evolution on earth unambiguously shows that Darwin was right.'

As for me, I am living proof faith and science need not be mutually exclusive, and that they actually enrich each other quite a bit when a person has a curious and inquisitive mind.  Darwinist Christians, unite!

the hyperbolic crochet coral reef

While I was at the Hayward Gallery reveling in the awesome Psycho Buildings exhibition on Friday, I also popped upstairs into their Project Space to see the legendary Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef with my own eyes.  Back in 2006 twin sisters Margaret and Christine Wertheim noticed that some of the warped crocheting they'd been experimenting with looked an awful lot like coral, and decided to do an entire reef.  There have since been all sorts of overblown connections to hyperbolic space and global warming, but it doesn't diminish the fact that the reef is pretty darn cool in person.  I think the link between art and science is most effective in some of the newer sections that incorporate plastic scraps and other garbage in an attempt to call attention to real-life environmental damage:

Although Wertheim is thrilled that galleries are queuing up to display the work, she hopes one day to find a permanent home for it, preferably not in her own sitting room. As she explains to the group in the Festival Hall how the Great Barrier Reef is slowly dying, you start to wonder whether the crochet homage might one day be all we have left, physically, to remind us of the real thing.

If you can't visit the reef yourself the Guardian has some nice shots of it here.  It's enough to inspire me to finally learn how to crochet, not to mention knit.  I've been saying I want to learn for a while now though.  It's a time management issue.