Tuesday, May 11, 2010

Links today

Our first link today is a commentary on various chemical methods to assist in the oil spill clean up. This blog entry talks a little about how the chemical dispersants intended to break down the oil slick into smaller droplets so as to dilute the spill and make it (somewhat) less hazardous to marine life work; it also points out what problems there are (lack of enough mechanical energy, for one) and mentions some areas in which basic scientific research is still lacking to help.

The second link is a bit dated; it's from February. Chemical element #112, discovered last year, (by "discovered", we mean "synthesized, remained stable for a few nanoseconds, and identified by the particle shower it generated when it broke apart") is named "Copernicium," symbol Cn.

Finally, a Swedish/UK company, Minesto, is developing an underwater tidal power generator, named Deep Green. What's innovative about this is that the generator is supposed to be able to work with low velocity currents, and in deep water. So you can scrape bits of tidal current energy previously unusable, and put the scrapers in the deeps, out of the way. Investigations into the effects on marine life to start in 3... 2... 1...