Daily Archives: 2008-08-09

Doctor Who Basics

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By Jennifer :
Doctor Who is a science fiction series from 1963. It follows The Doctor, a Time Lord from the planet Gallifrey, on his journeys through time and space in his TARDIS (Time And Relative Dimensions In Space) a spaceship that looks like a blue police phonebox (it only looks like that because the “chameleon circuit” is broken, it would normally be able to look like practically anything). He normally has a companion, most often a female, whom he shows the wonders in space and time. The show had a pause, but restarted in 2005 with Christoffer Eccleston as the Doctor (he has now been replaced by David Tennant, the current and 10th Doctor) and Billie Piper as his companion, the human Rose Tyler (she left the show in 2006).

The Doctor himself: The Doctor is, as mentioned earlier, a Time Lord from the planet Gallifrey. Sadly, he had to destroy his home planet, and with it all of his own race friends as well as family, during a great Time War (the last of these), because this was the only way to save the universe from the greatest enemy of the universe, The Daleks. A cold hearted race of robot like creatures, they have no feelings except hatred and live for the goal to rid the universe from anything that isn’t “of Dalek design”. So now the 900 year old Doctor wanders the universe and on more than one occasion saves the Earth along with other planets.

Some Thoughts on Solar Energy

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In the light of the previous post : “Breakthrough in Solar Energy ?” I would like to express some thought about generating and using energy.

I have, for some time, been thinking of how we could make better, more efficient use of the energy we have, one point being that distribution of energy over large distances is rather inefficient, and the energy should be harnessed more locally. For example, combine the energy generation for every house with regionally a generated reserve.

First of all, building the infrastructure, power lines, gas pipes, is expensive and energy consuming in itself.

Further, reliability. Local energy generation would make society less vulnerable to failures of the energy infrastructure (for any reason whatsoever).

Personally I would like to be at least partly self-sufficient when it comes to generating energy. and solar is the only viable energy form in that respect.

OK, we have to look into the energy efficiency of using solar cells, since the production of those use up a lot of energy.

I would think that a combination of solar cells and wind turbines would be the best for local energy generation.

More about this later ….

Breakthrough in Solar Energy ?

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It looks like we have come one step closer to harnessing solar energy more efficiently. The article :

‘Major discovery’ from MIT primed to unleash solar revolution

caught my attention today. It concerns a new catalytic material making the electrolysis of water into hydrogen and oxygen in a very efficient way, storing the solar energy collected during the day, for use at night.

The process mimics photosynthesis, the way plants store energy from the sunlight.

According to the article the technology is so simple that it could be implemented within 10 years, imagine every house generating solar electric power during the day and using the stored surplus energy duing the night.