The Word Is Graphene

The hottest, thinnest, toughest new material in physics and nanotechnology is graphene: a remarkably flat molecule made of carbon atoms arranged in hexagonal rings much like molecular chicken wire. You are likely to hear a lot more about it. Graphene is 10 times stronger than steel and conducts electricity better than any known material at room temperature. These and graphene’s other exotic properties have attracted the interest of nanotechnologists, who want to exploit them to make novel electrical and mechanical devices.
“There are two features that make graphene exceptional,” says Kirill Bolotin, assistant professor of physics and astronomy at Vanderbilt University. “First, its molecular structure is so resistant to defects that researchers have had to hand-make them to study what effects they have. Second, the electrons that carry electrical charge travel much faster and generally behave as if they have far less mass than they do in ordinary metals or superconductors.”

Pictures of the Earth —Free!

NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey has put the finishing touches on a new collection of mapped images covering the entire land surface of the Earth and has made them available to anyone, anywhere in the world. For free. The Global Land Survey 2005 features around 9,500 images from NASA’s Landsat satellites captured between 2004–2007. The images are detailed enough to make out features as small as 30 meters (about one-third the length of a football field), they have been carefully screened for clouds, and each one shows the landscape during its growing season. Before you think about ordering it, however, consider this: to view the entire thing at full size, your computer screen would need to be as big as the Hoover Dam.

YOU DO WHAT WITH MUSHROOM ROOTS?

It could be that the Green Revolution will, among other things, offer you insulation and shipping packaging made of mushroom roots and ag wastes such as rice hulls and cotton gin trash—all devised through a manufacturing process that uses about ten times less energy per unit of material than the manufacture of synthetic foams using fossil fuels. That, at least, is what Eben Bayer and Gavin McIntyre, co-founders of a startup called Ecovative (not Evocative) Design, figure. The company copped the top award at the 22nd Clean Energy Growth Forum sponsored by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. And unlike other green packaging, Ecovative’s product can be custom-molded while also offering thermal protection. Some 600 investors attended the forum and not a few of them were clustering around Bayer and McIntyre.

THE MONEY IS FLOWING FROM ARPA-E

If you had $150 million to spend on boundary-busting energy research, where would you put the cash? The Department of Energy's Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy has committed that amount this year, with one lofty aim: to transform the planet's energy future. But which technologies are its best bets? ARPA-E knows it's taking some huge gambles: it fully expects that many of the 37 projects it picked will fail. "Our model is to look for risky, high-potential technologies that don't currently have a means of funding to see if they will work," says ARPA-E's deputy director, Shane Kosinski. The initial announcement that funding was available resulted in a flood of over 3600 grant applications. A team of 400 leading energy researchers helped whittle down the list. The fine details of the projects chosen remain sketchy, however.
Topping the grant allocation list was drilling company Foro Energy of Littleton, Colo. ARPA-E has says that the grant will help to develop a hybrid thermal-mechanical drill system capable of quickly cutting through ultra-hard rock formations deep underground, potentially unlocking vast new stores of geothermal energy.
The second-largest grant went to DuPont and biofuel startup Bio Architecture Lab of Seattle, which will split $9 million to develop technology to obtain biobutanol from algae. The project aims to make biofuels a more viable energy source.

Team Germany Wins the Solar Decathlon

Rain usually spoils a solar power contest. But three days of showers — and thin-film photovoltaic technology — actually helped Team Germany win the 2009 Department of Energy's Solar Decathlon held on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. Team Germany's Cube House was one of the most technologically advanced among the 20 clean energy prototype designs on the National Mall. Every exposed face of the building was covered with power-generating panels. The combination system was expected to produce 200 percent of the energy needed by the house. The thin film panels, while less efficient than conventional silicon, were projected to perform better in cloudy weather than silicon. Team Illinois' house finished a close second, emphasizing energy efficiency over power production.