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I want wind power to supply my house with electricity. Sadly though, wind in our area is not reliable and I haven’t seen any efficient “backyard-type” wind generators yet. I guess I just have to wait for our government to fund huge projects like these or perhaps wait for some really rich investor to build it.

I was highly encouraged by the video here which shows how much electricity can be produced by wind turbines and knowing that the Philippines (it’s where I live just in case you didn’t know yet) is just a small country, I think wind power can solve our energy problems and lower the cost of electricity as well. You can find costing information here.

I did some searching on the net and found out that a 2MW wind turbine would cost about $3.5M (US dollar) to install. Operation I believe is relatively cheaper than any other existing form of energy production. Germany has a wind farm that generates 15GW of electricity – that’s a lot of power! I think the Philippines can afford to build wind farms that produce lots of electricity considering the vast seas and oceans we have. We can just put these wind turbines offshore where wind never stops.

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Comet Lulin will be closest to Earth on the 24th of February. Sharp-eye viewers with dark, rural, skies, will be able to spot the comet as a dim, fuzzy star. Binoculars and small telescopes however might reveal more details including a possibly striking tail.

The comet was photographed by Chi Sheng Lin using a 16-inch telescope at the Lulin Observatory at Nantou, Taiwan on the 11th of July 2007. It was however a 19-year old student, Quanzhi Ye at Sun Yat-sen University in Mainland China who first recognized the new object on three images that were taken by Lin.

At first it was thought to be an asteroid but new images taken a week later revealed the telltale presence of a faint coma.

This discovery was part of the Lulin Sky Survey project to explore the various populations of small bodies in the solar system, especially objects that possibly could pose a hazard to the Earth. As such, the comet has been christened Comet Lulin, more formally known to astronomers as Comet C/2007 N3.

This is the brightest comet since the surprising outburst of Comet Holmes more than 15 months ago and in the coming weeks will become favorably placed in the evening sky. During mid-to-late February it will probably be about magnitude 5 or 6, making it perhaps visible to the naked eye in dark, rural locations and easily observable in binoculars or small telescopes.

This image of comet Lulin was made Feb. 2, 2009 by Rolando Ligustri using the RAS Observatory in New Mexico. The green ball is the comet’s atmosphere, or coma, measuring about 311,000 miles (500,000 km) wide, or three times the diameter of Jupiter. The coma contains cyanogen (CN) and diatomic carbon (C2), two gases that glow green when exposed to sunlight. Credit: R. Ligustri (www.castfvg.it), RAS Observatory.

How to view Comet Lulin (C/2007 N3)

You’ll be best viewing Comet Lulin with a pair of binoculars or a small telescope. Look for a dark place with no surrounding lights and no obstructions. Bring stuff to keep you warm and a skymap that will guide you to the location of the comet. You can get a skymap for your specific location at Heavens Above.

This Friday’s full moon is going to be the biggest and last for 2008. But why will it be bigger? Because we will be 27,836 kilometers closer to it than the average Earth-Moon distance of 384,403 km. As a result, the moon will appear to be 14% bigger than any average full moon and it will also be 30% brighter – a perfect setting for a lovely moonlight dinner.

The moon will also be causing higher tides because its gravity’s pull on Earth’s oceans will be stronger. Watch for it rising in the East (opposite the Sun) on sunset this Friday. The moonrise will also be a good opportunity to check if the moon really is larger when its on the horizon and smaller when its up in the sky. What you can do is gauge the moon’s size using the tip of a pencil eraser held at arm’s length during moonrise then gauge it again when it’s high above the sky. Let me know what you discover afterwards.

One last fact. The moon is never really 100% full because for that to happen, the Moon, Earth and the Sun has to be in perfect alignment to each other and that only happens on a total Lunar eclipse.

Mark November 17, 2009 on your calendars because astronomers predict that the annual Leonids might put up a light show so dramatic it wasn’t seen since 1999 and 2001.  In recent years, the Leonids have put up a rather “boring” show but astronomers believe that 2009 will be different with around 500 meteors streaking across the sky every hour.

With that much meteors (a.k.a. shooting stars or falling stars), the chances of seeing a fireball such as the one taken by Arne Danielsen in the photo above back in 1999 is big so you better prepare for it.  The Leonids are basically debris left behind by the comet 55P/Tempel-Tuttle.  The reason why astronomers think that we’ll be getting many meteors in 2009 is because earth will be passing close to the center of the comet’s debris trail laid down in 1466.

What you’ll need to view this “hopefully” amazing meteor shower is a dark sky, far away from city lights and jackets/sweaters/blankets to keep from you from the cold.  A reclining chair will help in preventing that nasty stiffed-neck as well.  No need for telescopes or binoculars.

It’s still 11 months from now but early is always better.  Viewers in Asia are favored and probably even North America.

The Hubble Space Telescope has been taking pictures of the Universe since 1990.  It has gone through many problems but scientists and technicians managed to keep it up in space taking photos so clear it re-defined our idea of what space is.  Throughout these years, Hubble has taken thousands of photos and has discovered new galaxies so far we didn’t knew it existed before.

Now, it’s time for you to feast your eyes on them.

The Hubble Heritage Image Gallery

Awesome Hubble photos huh?  Well, I’ve been amazed by them for years and I never get tired looking at them.  Too sad Hubble will be decommissioned soon but don’t fret.  A new and better space telescope will replace it called the James Webb Space Telescope.

Ever wonder why older men move slower than the younger? Ask this question to a bunch of people and the most common answer is because old men have arthritis while younger men do not. While there is some truth to that, it’s not really the entire story.

Another factor discovered by scientists is a a fatty sheath of insulation in the brain that coats nerve axons which also allows for signaling bursts called myelin. What scientists did was gather a group of men from age 23 to 80 and asked them to tap their fingers as fast as they can. At the same time, the researchers also did brain scans to measure the amount of myelin in each subject’s brain.

Guess what? Lower levels of myelin go hand-in-hand with slower tapping speeds. They also found that the amount of myelin reduces dramatically after age 39.

The findings are detailed in the online version of the journal Neurobiology of Aging.

Did you know that the lowly sponge is that looks like an underwater plant is actually an animal? Yes, odd as it is, the sponge is a primitive animal which lacks many of the things that we expect from well, animals. Primitive as they are though, scientists recently discovered that the nerves found in modern animals can be traced back to sponges.

“We are pretty confident it was after the sponges split from trunk of the tree of life and sponges went one way and animals developed from the other, that nerves started to form,” said Bernie Degnan of the University of Queensland. “What we found in sponges though were the building blocks for nerves, something we never expected to find.”

Nerves are an essential part of human and animal bodies as they deliver signals to and from the brain. Without nerves, we won’t be able to do a thing as the instructions from the brain can’t be sent to the other parts of the body. Nerves are also important in sending feedback from our senses to the brain so the brain can process the information and do whatever needs to be done.

When researchers found these building blocks for nerves or proto-neurons in sponges, they were totally surprised. Even more surprising though is that these proto-neurons developed into functional neurons when they were extracted and implanted into frogs and flies.

Seeing a star explode in the sky is something that not all humans will see in their lifetime. Sometimes, a star explodes so bright that it can be seen even during the day but sometimes it explodes just bright enough to be seen with the naked eye. One such Nova explosion occurred last July 5 2007 but sadly no-one noticed it. The star, now called V598 Puppis which can be found in the constellation Puppis is a white-dwarf star that gathered enough gas to cause an explosion.

It took three months before scientists noticed the explosion but this time the star was already fading. What they saw through the XMM Newton telescope was an unusual X-ray burst that wasn’t in any cosmic X-ray catalog. They worked quickly to check what was causing it and eventually pinned it down to a star known only as USNO-A2.0 0450-03360039. They eventually agreed that it was a Nova explosion and so started working on the tons of data collected by another telescope, the 6.5-meter Magellan-Clay telescope, and found that the star shined 600 times brighter than normal previously.

It “sucks” to know that such an event occurred in our lifetime without us actually seeing it. I just hope I come to see another such even before I die.

I’ve just read this over at Livescience.com and I found it to be quite interesting. The Garra Rufa fish also known as Doctor Fish or Nibble Fish is fast becoming a staple in foot spas worldwide especially in Turkey and in some Asian countries. I’ve yet to see one here in the Philippines though. I’m sure there’s a spa here that offers the service.

According to stories I’ve seen on the net here, here and here, the fish does a pretty good job in eating away the dead skin cells found on the feet. Some even have the fish nibble on their entire body.

The fish are toothless so they can only eat away the dead skin cells and can’t harm the living ones. In any situation, the fish leaves behind skin that looks much younger than before. I’d really love to have one of these cool spa treatments – and maybe start a business of my own too.

The Livescience Article can be found here.

Have you ever thought of the possibility that eating can actually help you reduce your weight? Studies have shown that eating a big breakfast actually helps in weight loss and here’s how it works.

Eating little breakfast or no breakfast at all results to more food craving at a later time in the day while eating a heavy breakfast gives you satisfaction for a longer period of time. The trick is to eat a big breakfast filled with carbohydrates and protein then eat low-carb, low-calorie diet at the rest of the day according to a new research from Venezuela and Virginia Commonwealth University.

The whole idea is to satisfy your body early in the morning so that it doesn’t long for more afterward. After all, you can’t really beat millions of years of craving for food.

More on this can be found at: ivanhoe.com