The Sun rises and falls every day, giving us plenty of opportunities to see it. From Earth, we can’t really make out what it is since it’s an ultra-bright blob in the sky that will literally damage your eyes if you stare at it for too long, but scientists have tools that can view our …
Spotting the Sun is easy on a cloud-free day, but scientists hoping to learn more about our nearest star have a difficult task when it comes to studying its poles. We get great views of all sides of the Sun as Earth orbits it, but seeing its top and bottom is surprisingly hard. The European …
Electric vehicles certainly seem to be the future, with just about every major auto brand following Tesla’s lead to a gas-free future, but will the same be true for boats? Yachts are a big status symbol for wealthy folks, but they’re also huge gas-guzzlers. Now, a Swedish company called Solar Impact is hoping to change …
You’ve probably had a solar-powered calculator since the 1980s, but it’s only been within the past decade or so that the potential of large-scale solar installations has been widely explored. Harnessing the power of the Sun beating down on our planet and using that power to solve our energy concerns seems like a no-brainer, and …
I don’t think anyone listening to Trump’s proclamations about “beautiful clean coal” thought this administration was going to be in favor of renewable energy. According to a draft 2019 budget proposal obtained by the Washington Post, the White House is doing exactly what everyone expected: slashing Energy Department funding for renewable energy by 72 percent overall. The …
Solar energy has the potential to totally destroy our reliance on fossil fuels, so why aren’t we all running on power from the sun? Solar panels aren’t as bulky and obnoxious as they once were, but they’re still not exactly small. You can stick some on a roof without issue, but its jet black appearance …
The internet is about to explode with anticipation for Monday’s solar eclipse. Traffic jams have backed up the entire state of Oregon, Harbor Freight is out of welding masks, and vets are issuing guidance for how dogs should deal with the eclipse. But while everyone is running around in a panic about the sky going …
Part of what makes solar panels so great is that all they need to do is just exist in order to work. They don’t need much room, and as long as sunlight hits them, they’ll work as intended. With over 10 million miles of paved roads on the face of the planet, there’s lots of …
No blog post is going to do justice to the difficulties of being a migrant, crossing the Mediterranean, and finding yourself in an impossible position in Greece. One thing that makes the journey a little easier is cellphones, and by extension access to resources abroad, and family and friends at home. But staying charged up …
We recently told you about an exciting development at MIT, where researchers discovered a way to double the amount of energy generated by solar cells. The breakthrough involves reconfiguring solar panels, adding an additional layer to their structure that reflects sunlight to a second solar cell at the optimal wavelength for peak efficiency. It’s an …
