energy

Atmospheric electricity

Last night, I stepped out on the balcony to enjoy the thunderstorm. It wasn’t too windy or too rainy, but the lightnings and thunders were rather violent. In the middle of the night, long strikes across the whole sky were lighting the city as bright as midday. That was something!

And that also got me thinking. There is so much energy up in the sky, is there any way to extract it and use it? I’ve heard that there was some work done on the issue. And, given that I wasn’t the best student at school, but I still remember the fact that most of the lightning energy is spent on the actual light and on warming up the air. But, I thought, one day we’ll find a way to catch lightnings before they happen, and collect all that energy. That would be very useful, even though it would probably destroy the magnificence of the thunderstorm.

This morning I went online to see if I can find anything interesting on the subject. There are plenty of resources out there, but nothing special has caught my attention yet. Here’s the obligatory Wikipedia page:

There is always free electricity in the air and in the clouds, which acts by induction on the earth and electromagnetic devices. Experiments have shown that there is always free electricity in the atmosphere and that it is the quickest electricity connection, which is sometimes negative and sometimes positive, but most generally positive, and the intensity of this free electricity is greater in the middle of the day than at morning or night and is greater in winter than in summer. In fine weather, the potential increases with altitude at about 30 volts per foot (100 V/m).

The atmospheric medium, by which we are surrounded, contains not only combined electricity, like every other form of matter, but also a considerable quantity in a free and uncombined state; sometimes of one kind, sometimes of the other; but as a general rule it is always of an opposite kind to that of the Earth. Different layers, or strata, of the atmosphere, located at only small distances from each other, are frequently found to be in different electric states. The phenomena of atmospheric electricity are of three kinds. There are the electrical phenomena of thunderstorms and there are the phenomena of continual electrification in the air. The phenomena of the polar auroras constitute a third branch of the subject.

Fukushima butterflies mutations

Genetic mutations have been found in three generations of butterflies living near Japan’s crippled Fukushima nuclear plant. The gruesome discovery has led scientists to fear that the leaking radiation could affect other species.

The study was published by Scientific Reports. Researches said that around 12 per cent of pale grass blue butterflies that had been exposed as larvae to nuclear fallout developed abnormalities, including broken or wrinkled wings, changes in wing size, color pattern changes, and wider-than-normal variations in numbers of spots on the butterflies.

Though the insects were mated in a lab well outside the fallout zone, about 18 per cent of their offspring displayed similar problems, said Joji Otaki, an associate professor at Ryukyu University in Okinawa, in southwestern Japan.

That figure rose to 34 per cent in the third generation of butterflies – even though one parent from each coupling was from a group unaffected by radiation.

Researchers also collected another 240 butterflies in Fukushima last September, six months after the disaster. Abnormalities were recorded in 52 per cent of that group’s offspring – “a dominantly high ratio,” Otaki told AFP.

Atomic physics resources

Doing my duty in promotion of knowledge and science, I bring you this collection of resources on atomic physics. With the way the world goes, who knows when you’d need a quick reference to some research. And, in case you are a bit rusty on what atomic physics is, here is a quick quote for you from the Wikipedia.

Atomic physics (or atom physics) is the field of physics that studies atoms as an isolated system of electrons and an atomic nucleus. It is primarily concerned with the arrangement of electrons around the nucleus and the processes by which these arrangements change. This includes ions as well as neutral atoms

[…]

The term atomic physics is often associated with nuclear power and nuclear bombs, due to the synonymous use of atomic and nuclear in standard English. However, physicists distinguish between atomic physics — which deals with the atom as a system consisting of a nucleus and electrons — and nuclear physics, which considers atomic nuclei alone.

As with many scientific fields, strict delineation can be highly contrived and atomic physics is often considered in the wider context of atomic, molecular, and optical physics. Physics research groups are usually so classified.

Is Cyprus ready for the oil and gas exploration?

Cyprus Mail reports that “President will not be put off drilling for gas“:

“We have decided that Noble Energy will proceed in the forthcoming period with the exploratory drilling to find out the quantity and the quality of hydrocarbons,” he said.

The president added that drilling would provide clear evidence of whether potential deposits exist, something for which geological surveys have shown “the probability is very high”.

Christofias highlighted it was Cyprus’ sovereign right, based on international law and the Law of the Sea, to start gas exploration in its EEZ, underlining that “all our decisions and actions so far, stem from international law and strictly fall into this parameter”.

Given how the President handled the Mari naval base explosion, I wouldn’t trust the guy with the keys to my car, let alone drilling for gas. I mean, I am for Cyprus benefiting from these resources and all. But a project like that is legally, technically, financially, and politically huge. Someone has to organize and manage that. And current President haven’t shown any particular talent in managing anything yet. Even of a much smaller and simpler scale. The potential for disaster is huge here, and I don’t think Cyprus needs another one of those. Not now, not ever.

Cyprus crude oil production by year

All the recent hype about oil and gas reserved discovery and exploration off the shores of Cyprus got me digging into the subject. Here is one of the first graphs I found, which helps so much in understanding the current state of affairs. Courtesy of Index Mundi website.

Just in case you prefer it in a table with raw data form, they have it for you there as well.