Jack C tells us about neo shields

Neo-Shield

Neo-Shield is a group of scientists who want to protect the Earth from any near comets, asteroids or any objects heading for the Earth. Germany, Britain, France, Russia and the US will all take part in experiments to find a way of protecting us from harmful objects. They will also use the different types of architecture to find which one will actually deflect the object, although some scientists will have to discover some new telescopes to find the oncoming comet as using the current ones will result in global disaster because they can’t see as far as we need them to for us to know that there’s something there to be able to prepare. One of their first ideas is to use an unused spacecraft to “pull” the asteroid off trajectory using gravity but different rocks will need different experiments to find which way is best to get them away from our planet. Another idea is to “blast” it away from us by using a nuclear bomb on the surface or near the object. This may cause the asteroid/comet to break up and hit us with little pieces instead of a large piece and this idea will be pursued by the Russians. People have recently said that this is going to be difficult to place the right device at the right time and after that the outcome won’t even be guaranteed to save us. In some extreme cases 2 ideas will have to be used as one may not work as well as it should do.

This blog is brought to you by Jack Charlesworth

Rowan's planet!

Saving our planet

Alternative to fossil fuels

Scientists have created a new genetically engineered microbe that turns algae into low carbon bio fuel. This means that instead of using fossil fuels such as coal we can use other more sustainable sources that don’t affect our planet’s enviroment as much.

Seaweed farming could be the answer to our energy dilemma. Seaweed grows 10

times faster than normal plants and are full of sugars, until recently it has been very hard to make ethanol by conventional fermentation as is already used to convert land crops such as corn and sugar into bio fuels.

New microbe research recently published in the leading journal Science, talks of “a critical technological breakthrough” that may overcome the fermentation problem.

Seaweed has been farmed for over 1000 years in China and Japan,

So adapting these into bio-fuel factories is a serious viable proposition.

The EColi microbe that is currently used on corn and sugar is ineffective on seaweed. A new microbe had to be engineered and it is this breakthrough that has got people excited.

The challenge now is to find a low carbon way of farming the seaweed that will make seaweed fuel  commercially viable and affordable for all of us.

Found on the guardian,

References taken from guardian.co.uk

Tamsin Baker takes on sport

I read this (https://owa.learnsheffield.com/OWA/redir.aspx?C=fd7c3e3e19414176bb74918294effb0a&URL=http%3a%2f%2fwww.bbc.co.uk%2fnews%2fscience-environment-16630588) article about how the Olympic anti-doping lab has been unveiled as the most high tech ever. I chose to read this article as I'm a keen lover of sport, so it caught my eye and I decided that it'd be a good idea to write a blog entry about. As a lover of sport, I think that all sports and all sports people, should be honest and be trusted not to take steroids or any other drug, but that isn't always possible, so they've unveiled a lab in Essex that's the size of about seven tennis courts, that they're going to use to try and stamp out drugs and banned substances in the games. I think that having this lab, will be of great use during the Olympics because the owners and sponsors GlaxoSmithKline who have donated £20 million so that the lab can be open and running twenty four hours a day. I think this is a really cool science article because it's showing that one hundred and fifty anti-doping scientists will be flown in from all over the world, just so that it's all done fairly and equally. I also liked the article because even though it doesn't say what's going to happen with the lab after the Olympics, it still shows that England is doing it's best to stamp out the substances and they're not over exaggerating that there won't be any people caught at all, they're saying that there will most likely still be people who do take the banned substances, but they'll be able to find more of the people who do it and more of the athletes whether they've won or not will be tested. Tamsin Baker :)

Underwater sounds site from Matt F

http://listentothedeep.com/acoustics/index.html

Well worth a look. Very interesting!

Listening to the Sea-Matt F

Listening to the sea…

A group of scientists from the university of Victoria in Vancouver Canada have ran a cable stretching 500miles out and back again to listen to the ocean’s animals and secrets, the US navy is not happy about this for reasons obvious. The wire runs from Vancouver Island out to connect a bunch of scientific instruments some as deep as 1.5miles the scientist are collecting huge amounts of information such as water pressure readings in hope to give them a better understanding of the world’s  oceans. But their microphones also pick up sounds from whales and shipping to the activity of the tectonic plates. It is also available to anyone with an internet connection. The scientists have placed the wire at the top of the Atlantic because of where the university is and that sound travels 5 times faster underwater so sound can travel for thousands of miles. The scientists have launched a website called listentothedeep.com which streams live sound from Vancouver and 14 other observatories across the world to your home PC. But for years the sounds of the deep sea have been observed purely by the military and were considered top secret during the cold war. The US NAVY struck a deal with the Vancouver scientists which allows the navy to censor any US NAVY operations or plans. During the cold war the US NAVY set up similar instruments across the sea bed to track soviet submarines and other possible threats to the US’ national state of security.  

Our second year 9 news story. Yippie!

Clock moves one minute closer.

The Doomsday Clock, a symbol to represent nuclear danger, has moved one minute closer to midnight from last Tuesday. This now makes the clock 5 minutes to midnight. The clock, created in 1947, has been said it moved forward due the nuclear weapons in many countries, particularly in the Far East. Although Russia’s nuclear problems are improving, in places such as the US, China, Egypt, Iran and Pakistan have not met the guidelines. Furthermore, North Korea has not stopped producing nuclear weapons which continues to put the world at risk.

In addition, they also have blamed Global climate change. Atomic scientists have said that they need countries to agree to reduce carbon emissions and to invest in more renewable energy sources. They have also said that soon if we do not change our ways, there will become a point in which we cannot resolve the Earth’s atmosphere. This would become a massive problem as if the atmosphere is too warm, ice caps will melt and sea levels will rise. If the sea levels rise, it will increase the change of places having floods, a lot more drastic and serious ones too. This will make places with flat land eventually go under the water altogether, damaging animals’ habitats- and ours.

Also, the Japanese tsunami was also to blame for the high nuclear energy in the world, as it hit the Fukushima nuclear plant, causing dangerous leaks across Japan, heading towards the capital, Tokyo. The last time the clock was changed was in 2010, when it was taken back 1 minute, but it now got moved back again by a conference in Washington DC.

Moving lakes-our first post....horray!!!

Moving Antarctic Lakes

A bizarre group of 11 Antarctic lakes are moving at half a kilometre a year in the opposite direction to the ice shelf itself. They are also seemed to be moving faster than the ice shelf they are on top of. The lakes are on the George VI ice shelf which is sandwiched between the Antarctic Peninsula and Alexandra Island which were first spotted in the 1970s but this amazing knowledge was only just given to us last year.

Some scientists believe that this happens because of where George VI is positioned, trapped between both the Antarctic mainland and Alexandra Island. As the banana-shaped ice shelf squeezes through the channel between the mainland and the island, its outer edges buckle into troughs and the lakes sit in each of the troughs. The ice shelf pushes into Alexandra at an unusual angle causing the end of each lake gets dragged across the coast. This can be proven by using satellite images of the Antarctic area   

Standing water on an ice shelf suggests that the ice shelf is close to collapsing as the water widens the cracks of the ice, but a scientist believes that this will not happen with George VI anytime soon because of its positioning which stabilises it by the rocky edges of the channel surrounding it, but it might eventually collapse from global warming. Causing the loss of something different and interesting forever.

This article is written for you by Hannah Camm

Group 9 blue.    

Year 9s to start posting their take on Science news stories

To try to encourage our pupils to start looking at Science news stories, our year 9 blue group are going to start putting their take of current stories onto the blog. Should be good. More to follow next week.