Ecomagination Challenge: Powering the Grid

GE’s Ecomagination Challenge: Powering the Grid is an open call to action for businesses, entrepreneurs, innovators and students seeking breakthrough ideas to create a cleaner, more efficient and economically viable grid, and accelerate the adoption of smart grid technologies and just might get funded.

The Challenge invites people to come together to take on one of the world’s toughest challenges - building the next-generation power grid to meet the needs of the 21st century.

Selected Ecomagination Challenge entrants will be offered the opportunity to develop a commercial relationship with GE through:
Investment ( $200 million capital pledge of GE and its partners will be invested globally into promising start-ups and ideas), Validation, Distribution, Development, Growth

Here is the visualization of ideas ranked by votes and comments. Check it out which idea going to get $200 million.

via www.ge.com
(Click here for an interactive graphics)

Modern Science Map

Crispian Jago makes completely transparent attempts to get linked from blogs. This time it’s a metro-subway-style map of modern science was created to celebrate the achievements of the scientific method through the age of reason, the enlightenment and modernity showing scientists of the past 400 or so years.

Despite many of the scientific disciplines mapped having more ancient origins, He have restricted the map to modern science starting from the 16th century scientific revolution.

via crispian-jago.blogspot.com

Hypergiant: VY Canis Majoris

VY Canis Majoris is a red hypergiant star located in the constellation Canis Major. At between 1800 and 2100 solar radii (approx 2.7 billion km), it is currently the largest known star in terms of relative size to our own sun (although not in terms of mass).

The size is beyond comprehension.

If you Canis replaced our own star, it would engulf everything up until Saturn.

It's width, as compared here, is just short of all the planets to Uranus.

It's BIG!

via www.flickr.com

Scaling Fallacy

The scaling fallacy is a tendency to assume that a system that works at one scale also works at a larger or smaller scale. Different scales bring with them a new set of challenges that require a new solution.

We often neglect to realize that when on object is scaled, the working stressors on the object do not change at same scale. Like this ant, object at small scales are pushed down upon by a minimal amount of gravity. At larger scale, the load of gravity is at full force. So it is a lot easier for a normal ant to carry 50 times its weight than it is for you and me.

by Christopher Jones

How Big Is the International Space Station?

Essentially a laboratory that orbits Earth, the International Space Station (ISS) is now 98 percent complete, and the countdown is underway for the liftoff of space shuttle Atlantis as it prepares to deliver a new science module to the ISS.

Here's how it compares to other notable objects both real and fictional, all drawn to scale.

via www.lifeslittlemysteries.com

What Would Happen If the Earth Stood Still?

The following is not a futuristic scenario. It is not science fiction. It is a demonstration of the capabilities of GIS to model the results of an extremely unlikely, yet intellectually fascinating query: What would happen if the earth stopped spinning? ArcGIS was used to perform complex raster analysis and volumetric computations and generate maps that visualize these results.

via www.esri.com