Advanced Invention

US automaker General Motors said Tuesday it will equip the roof of its factory in Zaragoza in northeastern Spain with solar panels to create the world’s largest rooftop source of power from the sun.

A solar thermal electric power plant in Sanlucar La Mayor, Spain in mid February. US automobile giant General Motors is set to announce that it will build the world’s largest rooftop solar power station at its biggest factory in Europe.

Plans are afoot to reuse spent reactor fuel in the U.S. But the advantages of the scheme pale in comparison with its dangers

• Spent nuclear fuel contains plutonium, which can be extracted and used in new fuel.
• To reduce the amount of long-lived radioactive waste, the U.S. Department of Energy has proposed reprocessing spent fuel in this way and then “burning” the plutonium in special reactors.
• But reprocessing is very expensive. Also, spent fuel emits lethal radiation, whereas separated plutonium can be handled easily. So reprocessing invites the possibility that terrorists might steal plutonium and construct an atom bomb.
• The author argues against reprocessing and for storing the waste in casks until an underground repository is ready.

Some 3000 ft. below the surface of Japan, the Super-Kamiokande detector is on the lookout for faster-than-light Cherenkov particles that might signal a supernova.

The fact that you may have heard of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is a landmark achievement in hype. This superstar among particle accelerators, buried hundreds of feet below Switzerland and France, is the rare scientific undertaking that arrives in a frenzy of publicity. This summer, protons will begin colliding in the LHC’s 17-mi.-long circular tunnel. If everything goes according to plan, the accelerator could supply some of the biggest, most elusive pieces of the cosmic jigsaw puzzle, from details on the elusive mass of dark matter that physicists have long sought, to the framework for a Grand Unified Theory. This would explain the relationship between electromagnetism and strong and weak nuclear forces, three of the fundamental forces of nature. (The collider could also create an earth-swallowing black hole, solving both the world credit crunch and the glut of Hannah Montana-branded goods, but that possibility has been overstated, according to scientists.)

A massive neutrino observatory deep underground near Sudbury, Ontario, Canada

Some have been heralded as the largest undertakings since the building of the pyramids.

Others have been likened to a new set of wonders of the world.

From a science perspective at least, here are our picks for the largest projects on Earth: running, under construction, and on the drawing-board…

1. Large Hadron collider at CERN

Billed as the world’s largest science project, the LHC was unveiled to unearth the so-called “God particle”. Early blogs and articles surmised that the device wielded so much energy that it might create a black hole (though scientifically inaccurate, it hinted at the awesome energy waiting to be unleashed.)

Here’s how it works: Two beams of subatomic particles called ‘hadrons’ (protons or lead ions) travel in opposite directions inside the circular accelerator, picking up more and more energy with every lap. Physicists from around the world will then use the LHC to recreate the conditions found just after the Big Bang by smashing the two beams head-on at very high energy and they analysing the collisions. (more…)
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2. Next-stop, cold fusion?: The International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER)

This first-ever demo-level fusion reactor will be built in southern France and promises to deliver the world’s first sustained fusion reactions; In layman’s terms: more bang for your buck. And at a projected cost of CDN $14.4 billion, it better.

When the eight-year construction project is complete (scheduled for late 2015), ITER will generate 500 MW of fusion power for extended periods of time.

For those not in the physics know-how, fusion is exceptionally difficult to achieve - and is the subjects of many controversial experiments. That fusion reproduces our sun’s energy, without the greenhouse gas emissions and radioactive waste of other methods.

3. The finished International Space Station, circa 2011

When completed in 2010 (though that will likely slip to 2011) the International Space Station will be the largest multinational engineering project of all time.

With an estimated final pricetag of a tenth of a trillion dollars, the finished structure - with its outstretched solar arrays - will be the size of a football field. A far cry from the Mir space station, which had interior space comparable to the space shuttle.

Though pundits have cast doubts in recent years over the ISS’s ability to perform useful science experiments, the addition of the outpost’s second major lab (the Japanese Kibo module, along with the U.S. Destiny lab) will allow a crew of 3-6 people to conduct experiments only possible from orbit that will benefit life on Earth, as well as serving as a jumping-off point for missions to the Moon and, eventually, Mars.

4. A 3,000-foot-tall “Solar tower” in the Australian outback

Dubbed the “Solar Mission Project”, this scientific feat takes solar energy to new heights.

Solar tower technology employs the sun’s radiation to heat a large body of air, which is then forced by laws of physics (hot air rises) to move in the form of a hot wind through large turbines to generate electricity.

When complete in the far western New South Wales region of the Australian outback, it will stand a full-kilometre (3,280 feet).

When fully-functioning, will generate up to 200 MW of clean emission-free electricity - enough to power about 200,000 homes.