A Legend Immortalized

For any heavy metal or rock fan, the news that became public the 16th of May, 2010 must have been terrible to hear. Ronnie James Dio died. The singer lost his battle against the stomach cancer with which he was diagnosed last November. The heavy metal legend is considered by many to be one of the most pivotal and influential of the genre, and rock in general. Ronnie James Dio played in bands such as Elf, Rainbow, Black Sabbath, Dio and Heaven and Hell. The singer died at 67 years of age, but in the words of Guns N'Roses guitarist Slash "[Dio's] music will live for eternity." Several tributes have been given to Dio following his death, but for now, his family wishes to remain undisturbed in order to cope with his death.

Hail Storm

Just recently, a hailstorm has hit part of the state of Oklahoma, but this hailstorm is extremely powerful and intense, not only resulting in baseball-sized ice projectiles, but also resulting in an unusually dense barrage of hail. A video of this amazing storm has been posted on the Internet, and people are bewildered at just how powerful this storm is. This hail storm would most certainly result in the death of anyone caught outside, and this video illustrates just that. The link posted at the end of this article will let you see this video. Though at first the hail seems moderate, the storm begins to get much worse around the 1: 20 mark, and it doesn't stop. This just demonstrates the power of nature and it is truly awe-inspiring to see. http://news.yahoo.com/video/us-15749625/hail-storm-hits-oklahoma-19917666

To Make a Star on Earth...

Scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory are attempting to create a miniature star in order to fix solve the world's energy crisis. This star would be created after 192 individual laser beams are turned on simultaniously on the same point of matter- in this case deuterium and tritium. This would create a tiny star, which would be hotter than our sun, and by capturing this energy, which would be produced during the star's 2oo trillionths of a second lifespan, the team hopes to induce the era of nuclear fusion. However, this technology has a very high chance of failure, and it would take over 20 years to commercialize, which is too late in order to stop the climate change that this world is experiencing- after all, that's the scientists goal: to help the earth in its energy crisis in an environmentally friendly fashion. There are several other attempts at soving the world's energy crisis at this moment, such as the plasma generator in France, but it seems that all of these technologies will arrive too late to curve the global climate change, and will probably arrive after the oil supply fails to meet public demand. That could be a problem.

BP with yet another attempt...

BP is now trying to insert a new section of pipe into the top of the undersea well that is spewing out hundreds of thousands of gallons of oil. After a failed attempt at trying to seal off the leak of the underwater platform with a containment dome, BP hopes that this pipe will be able to be attached to the top of the underwater well and channell the oil to surface ships. If this strategy fails, the company will try to use a "top hat", which is a smaller version of the cointainment dome that failed at stopping the leak. The company hopes that because of its smaller size, the "top hat" will not gather ice crystals which doomed its larger predecessor. If this new attempt fails at containing the leak, hundreds of gallons of oil will be added to the 210,000 gallons already afloat in the Gulf of Mexico.

The Underwater Kites

A new type of tidal turbine has been developed, and are very close to becoming commercially available. These new turbines, being described as "underwater kites", take advantage of the tidal currents, capturing energy from these currents at ten times the actual stream velocity, in order to generate over 500 kilowatts of power. The advantages of these underwater turbines is that they are "cheap" and very small, allowing for the deployment of several turbines in a given area, and their versatillity which allows them to adapt to differing depths allows them to be deployed at a myriad of differing locations around the world. This is a great and practical step in which the world is moving towards greener forms of energy.

The Oily Gulf

After the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, a desperate final attempt at stopping the ongoing oil spill of the underwater pipe is underway. A prototype chamber has been built- of which there is only one- and will be lowered down to the section of the pipe that is leaking in order to contain the still-leaking oil. After the chamber is lowered, which should take about two days, a pipe will be connected to the top of the chamber, which will absorb and direct the oil into containment vessels on the surface. As for the oil already in the ocean, the cleanup is likely to continue for a very long time, and the damage that it has had and will have on the ecosystem of that region is most likely devastating. In order to illustrate the damage that an oilspill has on the ecosystem, one can turn to the 1898 oil spill in Alaska- the area of the oilspill has yet to recover from the oilspill, both in terms of the ecosystem and of the economy of the local fishing villages.