The Cheesegrater is a beautiful glass wedge of a building that rises over 700 feet into the London skyline. It unfortunately has some safety problems. This week, its owners revealed that a third bolt of high-strength steel snapped because of “hydrogen embrittlement”—an obscure term, but one that ” causes fear among engineers .” Read more…
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Damn, Another Arm-Sized Bolt Fell Off London’s Cheesegrater Tower
When the Miami’s Patricia and Phillip Frost Museum of Science opens in 2016, it’s going to have an absolutely bonkers aquarium—imagine a giant camera lens, tilted on its side, that lets visitors walk below the tank and look up into it. Building it, as you might expect, entailed a feat of perfectly-timed engineering. Read more…
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It Took 25 Hours of Continuous Concrete Pouring To Build This Aquarium
Lucas123 writes: The cost of rooftop solar-powered electricity will be on par with prices of coal-powered energy and other conventional sources in all 50 U.S. states in just two years, a leap from today where PV energy has price parity in only 10 states, according to Deutsche Bank’s leading solar industry analyst. The sharp decline in solar energy costs is the result of increased economies of scale leading to cheaper photovoltaic panels, new leasing models and declining installation costs, Deutsche Bank’s Vishal Shah stated in a recent report. The cost of solar-generated electricity in the top 10 states for capacity ranges from 11-15 cents per kilowatt hour (c/kWh), compared to the retail electricity price of 11-37 c/kWh. Amit Ronen, a former Congressional staffer behind legislation that created an investment tax credit for solar installations, said one of the only impediments to decreasing solar electricity prices are fees proposed by utilities on customers who install solar and take advantage of net metering, or the ability to sell excess power back to utilities. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Rooftop Solar Could Reach Price Parity In the US By 2016
Did you know Yosemite Valley used to have an identical twin? It was dammed in the early 1900s to provide San Francisco with water it relies on to this day, but recently, conservationists have been calling for its restoration. http://gizmodo.com/how-san-franci… Read more…
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How San Francisco’s Clean Drinking Water Destroyed The 2nd Yellowstone
This is the USS Iowa, the first of the largest, most powerful battleship class ever in the United States Navy, equipped with nine 406mm cannons that could fire nuclear shells —the only American ship in history with this capability. This photo series is old but still stunning. Read more…
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Spectacular photos of the US Navy’s most powerful battleship ever
Arsenic-contaminated water is a massive problem in the developing world. But, even when you filter it out, the toxic sludge that the process produces often gets dumped right back into the water supply. It’s tough to dream up a use for arsenic soup, but one research team finally has: They’re making bricks out of it. Read more…
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Scientists Make Bricks With Sludge Filtered From Arsenic-Laced Water
cartechboy writes: “One of the arguments for electric cars is that we are reducing greenhouse gases and emitting less CO2 than vehicles with an internal combustion engine. But Mazda says its next-generation SkyActiv engines will be so efficient, they’ll emit less CO2 than an electric car. In fact, the automaker goes so far as to say these new engines will be cleaner to run than electric cars. Is it possible? Yes, but it’s all about the details. It’ll depend on the test cycles for each region. Vehicles are tested differently in Europe than in the U.S., and that variation could make all the difference when it comes to these types of claims. At the end of the day whether future Mazdas with gasoline-powered engines are cleaner than electric cars or not, every little bit in the effort to reduce our carbon emissions per mile is a step in the right direction, right?” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Mazda Says Its Upcoming Gas-Powered Cars Will Emit Less CO2 Than Electric Cars
We’ve known that most critters try to avoid power lines, but until recently, scientists were pretty much in the dark when it came to why . Now, it turns out that to animals, power lines and pylons look like terrifying bands of glowing, flashing bursts of light . Read more…
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Animals See Power Lines as Terrifying Bursts of Light
A 65-foot deep shaft being dug for Los Angeles’s newest subway line is filled with buried treasure. The so-called Subway to the Sea is still nine miles from the beach, but excavation has already revealed some creatures from the ocean floor… the prehistoric ocean floor! Read more…
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Ice Age Fossils Are Being Unearthed By L.A.’s Subway Construction
An entire drowned city has become the world’s most mind-boggling scuba-diving attraction. Consider booking a trip to Qiandao Lake, China, where you can wreck-dive a 1, 800-year old flooded metropolis. Read more…
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Your Next Scuba Destination Is An Entire Drowned City in China