Sexual motivation

Okey dokey my peeps.  It seems the majority have spoken with regards the number of views for particular posts.  Although my primary posts will be on science, especially Earth science and astronomy, I also am going to start blogging more on sociology, social psychology and human emotions including behaviour.  I am no way an expert in this, but this is part of my study along with the earth sciences as well.

I get more views when I talk about psychology, especially when it comes down to the intimate areas. I myself like this area, and many of you would have realised that if you have read my past posts on such subjects, so therefore, tonight I have decided to blog on a particularly important topic, to me anyway, that being sexual motivation, because it is indeed a science in itself.

Like hunger, sex is a universal drive based on biology, but its expression varies considerably from culture to culture and from person to person.  In fact, sexual motivation is even more variable than hunger.  Most people eat three meals a day if they are lucky, whereas sexual appetites defy generalisations.  Sexual behaviour is driven as much by fantasies as by hormones (this is why I do so much love having a vivid imagination): indeed, the primary sexual organ in humans is arguably not the genitals but the brain.

Apparently, the average sexually active person in Australia reports having sex twice a week (Australian Research Centre in Sex, Health & Society, 2004).  Good for them, all I can say is that If you compare it to the meals you have in a day, I'm always hungry!! :/

Anyway, the sexual response cycle... Yep, it has a cycle, that begins with a phase of excitement! Why of course!! Characterised by increased muscle tension, engorgement of blood vessels in the genitals causing, well guys and gals...I'm sure you know the answer to that.  Maximum arousal occurs during the second phase, or plateau, phase.  During this stage, heart rate, respiration, muscle tension and blood pressure reach their peak. The third phase, orgasm, BOOM! Characterised by vaginal contractions in females and ejaculation in males... Of course, you all know this.  However, the science behind an orgasm has been of much debate amongst scientist and is not truly understood.  Although the subjective experience of orgasm is very similar in men and women.

Watch the YouTube video I have linked to learn a little about the science of an orgasm... Very interesting stuff :D Woman though, seem to get the better deal when it comes (no pun intended), to the grand finarle'y. We experience it for longer, and multiply times... One hopes.

Humans do not have the same kinds of genetically based mating rituals or mating seasons as others animals, thank god.  However, biological influences on human dating and mating are obvious, from the 'plumage' displayed by both sexes at a party, to scents and perfume, to the pheromones that go off when there is a certain "chemistry" when you meet someone in particular that you find irresistible, oh yes those pheromones are the bodies natural scent, and those hormones have two effects on the nervous system and behaviour: organisational and activational, which I won't go into detail here.

So, do you feel motivated now??? I sure do.... Wonder what my next blog will be about :D

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpc2NjUAtOY&sns=em

Paradigm shift - a new way of thinking....

.... to continue on from my last blog now the festivities have calmed down, this is part two of the disaster of Hellenic.  We finished off introducing one cool dude called Aristotle.  Boy he was a fabulous chap indeed, it was his new way of thinking that has had a very influential effect on what we know about the world today.  You see, when catastrophe happened in Hellenic, Aristotle looked for more "earthly" explanations.  In a culture where the gods were so important, this was a radical approach in trying to understand the world.

Aristotle was particularly intrigued by the particular meteorological conditions that occurred at the time of the Hellenic disaster.  He came up with a theory that the earthquakes were a physical product, not of Poseidon's supernatural abilities, but of "winds" trapped inside the earth, it sounds farfetched but he may have well been on the right track.

The region of Greece in the north is the most earthquake prone part of Europe.  It is where Aristotle first made his observations, today, geologists who work in this area are looking into the relationship of gas and earthquaked.  It turns out, the gas trapped may well play a roll, but, not in the way Aristotle thought.  You see gas, particularly carbon dioxide, is naturally produced deep beneath the earths service.  This rises up, getting trapped along fault lines where the rocks are tightly packed together.  This gas might do one of two things.  As it is under great amounts of pressure, it could force it's way up between the rocks in the fault, eventually lubricating them so they slip - herego, earthquake.  But most geologists now believe that the rocks of the fault move all by themselves to cause seismic activity, this just allows the gas to escape.

Scientists are working today, looking into the escaping gas as a way to help predict when earthquakes can strike.  Trapped gases may not cause earthquakes but at least Aristotle's observations were on the right track, importantly he was taking a stab at understanding the world around him from a purely scientific point of view, he proposed a natural cause for what was otherwise regarded as a supernatural event.

However, although Aristotle made some headway in understanding some geological processes, most ancient greeks still believed that the running of the word, and any major catastrophes were created by their assorted gods!  It was almost 700 years after the catastrophe in Hellenic, before our beliefs in how the world worked around us, that we saw a dramatic change, and it all happened in Italy from the time of the Romans.

to be continued...................

The disaster of Hellenic, The Mediterranean – ancient believes and what we know now.

The Mediterranean is full of beautiful vistas but this stunning scenery is more than just a feast for the eyes.  Throughout history, the landscape has had a major influence on how we believed our planet works.  Civilisations around the Mediterranean held a fantastic range of beliefs about how the world worked.

In ancient Greece a whole legion of supernatural beings are believed to have ruled the earth.  There were numerous different gods to whom great temples were dedicated, plus assorted nymphs who lived in streams and trees and a range of hideous monsters.  Your average Greek citizen believed that these beings were responsible for absolutely everything from love to hate, to harvest and death.

The Greek gods who looked down on the world from heaven above appeared to be a vengeful bunch, ruling over earth with an iron fist.  Not surprisingly, the accent Greeks were keen to keep these mortals happy otherwise they could be in for a rough ride.  One god they really didn’t want to upset was the feared earth shaker, ruler of the sea, the mighty Poseidon. 

Poseidon was notorious for his bad temper; displeased he would cause volcanoes to erupt, the earth to shake and the sea to surge.  The ancients offered lavish gifts for Poseidon, in the hope he wouldn’t visit them with his roth, but despite their best efforts, throughout ancient Greek history, this particular god would often flex his muscles. One place where Poseidon was said to have inverted his fury with extraordinary effort was the Gulf of Corinth in North Penoploese of Mainland Greece.   Archaeologists believe that there once stood an ancient and once thriving city, Hellenic, built as a sacred place to worship Poseidon but despite this, he struck the city with total catastrophe and the sea swallowed it up. 

We now believe that the real cause of the catastrophe wasn’t Poseidon’s fury, but a fault in the earth, which has a habit of making the ground in front of it suddenly drop.  The Hellenic fault is clearly visible as a sheer rock face, which runs for over 19miles.  It was made naturally, as a result of a geological tug of war.  The earth service is broken up into what’s called, tectonic plates, and the whole of Greece sits on the Southern edge of one of those called the European Plate.  We now know that this plate is being pulled by its neighbour the African plate.  I am sure most people who have studied or read anything on earth science will be very much aware of what happens at these plate boundaries, but for anyone who isn’t aware I will give a simple explanation with an analogy. 

As the plates get tugged, it stretchers, that is because the rocks deep underground are so hot that they act like gluey caramel, think of the inside of a mars bar, but, at the surface, the crust is rigid, think of the outer chocolate coating of that mars bar… it doesn’t stretch when you pull it apart right, it forms a crack, which is exactly what we can see in earth, as a fault line.  But, like anything, it is not that simple.  The earth just doesn’t open up.  Here is another analogy.  Suppose this fault was represented as a gap between too books, when the rigid crust is pulled from either side, the fault moves by going on a slant, one side of the fault goes up, the other side goes down.  This phenomena was felt at this fault in a earthquake in 1861, and the evidence is that deep grooves appeared in the rock, appearing in seconds, the rock on one side slid down, scratching the surface of the other as it went, and this is the secret to how Hellenic was destroyed.  The ground beneath it was crashing all the way down below sea level allowing the waters of the Mediterranean to crash in and completely submerge the city.  Although this at that time was believed to be done by the roth of the gods, this particular disaster influenced a famous Greek philosopher to think differently.

 Aristotle, who may have been the first gem of irrational geological thought, introducing a new paradigm shift towards the science of the inner workings of the earth.  What an awesome dude :)

To be continued.........

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/world/greece/tectonic_summary.php

The Symmetries Of Life

The most memorable and the most important sights that most of us experience from birth are those of human faces.  They identify us and form the basis of first impressions; they are a source of art and social significance in many cultures.

But, there is a tantalising mystery behind the appearance: our faces and our bodies are strikingly symmetrical.  Whereas inanimate objects rarely display perfect symmetry, living things almost always possess external right-left symmetry.  On the face of it..... this might seem an improbable state of affairs.  After all, it requires delicate engineering.  By contrast, symmetry is absent in the top-down direction because bodies are adapted to deal with the variation of gravity and weight, with height, and with the need to remain stable under the influence of small perturbations that would otherwise cause them to fall over.

It is rare to find back-front symmetry in animals because it is 'cheaper' to engineer the ability to turn around.  Bilateral symmetry is very advantageous for movement - the imbalances caused by any bilateral asymmetry make straight-line motion tricky to engineer and the benefits of symmetry are even greater if motion has to occur off the ground, in air or water.

The classic representation of our human symmetry is displayed in Leonardo's famous drawing of the 'Vitruvian Man', which has been artistically reinterpreted and reproduced on countless occasions, most recently on all Italian 1-euro coins.

Many of our superficial evaluations on human beauty, or attractiveness, focus upon the symmetries of the face and body.  The human face displays a very high degree of symmetry, and the evolutionary importance of recognising creatures with faces in crowded fields of vision, between trees and boulders of foliage, has resulted in our sensitivity to lateral symmetry.  It is a good rough and ready guide to distinguishing things that are alive from things that are not.

Our bodies however, the bits under the skin, are a squalid muddle.  Our hearts are on the left, our brains are laid out in an asymmetrical fashion that reflects the type of cognitive activity being performed.  If symmetry persisted under the skin, our vital organs would have to duplicate to maintain it .  The brain would use resources in a wasteful way.

Our deep-laid sensitivity to human faces is an evolutionary inheritance that aids our survival and multiplication.  The sensitivity fo symmetry that we have inherited from these tendencies shows up in all sorts of other places - in the decorations we like to use in our homes, in the types of maths we like to study (or not), and the sorts of scientific theories that we like to create.... All are residues of the time when we first knew we had faces.

Faces have been a pretty useful too, lets face it! :)

Just for a laugh - listen to a classic 90's tune! 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MfDCWD3lhsg

The Story Of A Carbon Atom by Primo Levi

Born in Turin in 1919, Primo Levi graduated in chemistry shortly before the Fascist race laws prohibited Jews like himself from taking university degrees. In 1943 he joined a partisan group in northern Italy, was arrested and deported to Auschwitz. His expertise as a chemist saved him from the gas chambers, however. He was set to work in a factory, and liberated in 1945.
His memoir The Periodic Table takes its title from the table of elements, arranged according to their atomic mass, which was originally devised by Dmitri Mendeleyev in 1869. Levi links each episode of his life to a certain element. But in the book's final section, copied below, he sets himself to imagine the life of a carbon atom. This was, he says, his first 'literary dream', and came to him in Auschwitz.

"Our character lies for hundreds of millions of years, bound to three atoms of oxygen and one of calcium, in the form of limestone: it already has a very long cosmic history behind it, but we shall ignore it. For it time does not exist, or exists only in the form of sluggish variations in temperature, daily or seasonal, if, for the good fortune of this tale, its position is not too far from the earth's surface. Its existence, whose monotony cannot be thought of without horror, is a pitiless alternation of hots and colds, that is, of oscillations (always of equal frequency) a trifle more restricted and a trifle more ample: an imprisonment, for this potentially living personage, worthy of the Catholic Hell. To it, until this moment, the present tense is suited, which is that of description, rather than the past tense, which is that of narration - it is congealed in an eternal present, barely scratched by the moderate quivers of thermal agitation.
But, precisely for the good fortune of the narrator, whose story could otherwise have come to an end, the limestone rock ledge of which the atom forms a part lies on the surface. It lies within reach of man and his pickax (all honor to the pickax and its modern equivalents; they are still the most important intermediaries in the millennial dialogue between the elements and man): at any moment - which I, the narrator, decide out of pure caprice to be the year 1840 - a blow of the pickax detached it and sent it on its way to the lime kiln, plunging it into the world of things that change. It was roasted until it separated from the calcium, which remained so to speak with its feet on the ground and went to meet a less brilliant destiny, which we shall not narrate. Still firmly clinging to two of its three former oxygen companions, it issued from the chimney and took the path of the air. Its story, which once was immobile, now turned tumultuous.
It was caught by the wind, flung down on the earth, lifted ten kilometers high. It was breathed in by a falcon, descending into its precipitous lungs, but did not penetrate its rich blood and was expelled. It dissolved three times in the water of the sea, once in the water of a cascading torrent, and again was expelled. It traveled with the wind, for eight years: now high, now low, on the sea and among the clouds, over forests, deserts, and limitless expanses of ice; then it stumbled into capture and the organic adventure.

Carbon, in fact, is a singular element: it is the only element that can bind itself in long stable chains without a great expense of energy, and for life on earth (the only one we know so far) precisely long chains are required. Therefore carbon is the key element of living substance: but its promotion, its entry into the living world, is not easy and must follow an obligatory, intricate path, which has been clarified (and not yet definitively) only in recent years. If the elaboration of carbon were not a common daily occurrence, on the scale of billions of tons a week, wherever the green of a leaf appears, it would by full right deserve to be called a miracle.
The atom we are speaking of, accompanied by its two satellites, which maintained it in a gaseous state, was therefore borne by the wind along a row of vines in the year 1848. It had the good fortune to brush against a leaf, penetrate it, and be nailed there by a ray of the sun. If my language here becomes imprecise and allusive, it is not only because of my ignorance: this decisive event, this instantaneous work a tre - of the carbon dioxide, the light, and the vegetal greenery - has not yet been described in definitive terms, and perhaps it will not be for a long time to come, so different is it from the other ‘organic’ chemistry which is the cumbersome, slow, and ponderous work of man: and yet this refined, minute, and quick-witted chemistry was ‘invented’ two or three billion years ago by our silent sisters, the plants, which do not experiment and do not discuss, and whose temperature is identical to that of the environment in which they live. If to comprehend is the same as forming an image, we will never form an image of a happening whose scale is a millionth of a millimeter, whose rhythm is a millionth of a second and whose protagonists are in their essence invisible. Every verbal description must he inadequate, and one will be as good as the next, so let us settle for the following description.
Our atom of carbon enters the leaf, colliding with other innumerable (but here useless) molecules of nitrogen and oxygen. It adheres to a large and complicated molecule that activates it, and simultaneously receives the decisive message from the sky, in the flashing form of a packet of solar light: in an instant, like an insect caught by a spider, it is separated from its oxygen, combined with hydrogen and (one thinks) phosphorus, and finally inserted in a chain, whether long or short does not matter, but it is the chain of life. All this happens swiftly, in silence, at the temperature and pressure of the atmosphere, and gratis: dear colleagues, when we learn to do likewise we will be sicut Deus [like God], and we will have also solved the problem of hunger in the world.
But there is more and worse, to our shame and that of our art. Carbon dioxide, that is, the aerial form of the carbon of which we have up till now spoken: this gas which constitutes the raw material of life, the permanent store upon which all that grows draws, and the ultimate destiny of all flesh, is not one of the principal components of air but rather a ridiculous remnant, an 'impurity', thirty times less abundant than argon, which nobody even notices. The air contains 0.03 percent; if Italy was air, the only Italians fit to build life would be, for example, the fifteen thousand inhabitants of Milazzo in the province of Messina. This, on the human scale, is ironic acrobatics, a juggler's trick, an incomprehensible display of omnipotence-arrogance, since from this ever renewed impurity of the air we come, we animals and we plants, and we the human species, with our four billion discordant opinions, our milleniums of history, our wars and shames,

nobility and pride. In any event, our very presence on the planet becomes laughable in geometric terms: if all of humanity, about 250 million tons, were distributed in a layer of homogeneous thickness on all the emergent lands, the ‘stature of man’ would not be visible to the naked eye; the thickness one would obtain would be around sixteen thousandths of a millimeter.
Now our atom is inserted: it is part of a structure, in an architectural sense; it has become related and tied to five companions so identical with it that only the fiction of the story permits me to distinguish them. It is a beautiful ring-shaped structure, an almost regular hexagon, which however is subjected to complicated exchanges and balances with the water in which it is dissolved; because by now it is dissolved in water, indeed in the sap of the vine, and this, to remain dissolved, is both the obligation and the privilege of all substances that are destined (I was about to say 'wish') to change. And if then anyone really wanted to find out why a ring, and why a hexagon, and why soluble in water, well, he need not worry; these are among the not many questions to which our doctrine can reply with a persuasive discourse, accessible to everyone, but out of place here.
It has entered to form part of a molecule of glucose, just to speak plainly: a fate that is neither fish, flesh, nor fowl, which is intermediary, which prepares it for its first contact with the animal world but does not authorize it to take on a higher responsibility: that of becoming part of a proteic edifice. Hence it travels, at the slow pace of vegetal juices, from the leaf through the pedicel and by the shoot to the trunk, and from here descends to the almost ripe bunch of grapes. What then follows is the province of the winemakers: we are only interested in pinpointing the fact that it escaped (to our advantage, since we would not know how to put it in words) the alcoholic fermentation, and reached the wine without changing its nature.
It is the destiny of wine to be drunk, and it is the destiny of glucose to be oxidized. But it was not oxidized immediately: its drinker kept it in his liver for more than a week, well curled up and tranquil, as a reserve aliment for a sudden effort; an effort that he was forced to make the following Sunday, pursuing a bolting horse. Farewell to the hexagonal structure: in the space of a few instants the skein was unwound and became glucose again, and this was dragged by the bloodstream all the way to a minute muscle fiber in the thigh, and here brutally split into two molecules of lactic acid, the grim harbinger of fatigue: only later, some minutes after, the panting of the lungs was able to supply the oxygen necessary to quietly oxidize the latter. So a new molecule of carbon dioxide returned to the atmosphere, and a parcel of the energy that the sun had handed to the vine-shoot passed from the state of chemical energy to that of mechanical energy, and thereafter settled down in the slothful condition of heat, warming up imperceptibly the air moved by the running and the blood of the runner. 'Such is life', although rarely is it described in this manner: an inserting itself, a drawing off to its advantage, a parasitizing of the downward course of energy, from its noble solar form to the degraded one of low- temperature heat. In this downward course, which leads to equilibrium and thus death, life draws a bend and nests in it.

Our atom is again carbon dioxide, for which we apologize: this too is an obligatory passage; one can imagine and invent others, but on earth that's the way it is. Once again the wind, which this time travels far; sails over die Apennines and the Adriatic, Greece, the Aegean, and Cyprus: we are over Lebanon, and the dance is repeated. The atom we are concerned with is now trapped in a structure that promises to last for a long time: it is the venerable trunk of a cedar, one of the last; it is passed again through the stages we have already described, and the glucose of which it is a part belongs, like the bead of a rosary, to a long chain of cellulose. This is no longer the hallucinatory and geological fixity of rock, this is no longer millions of years, but we can easily speak of centuries because the cedar is a tree of great longevity. It is our whim to abandon it for a year or five hundred years: let us say that after twenty years (we are in 1868) a wood worm has taken an interest in it. It has dug its tunnel between the trunk and the bark, with the obstinate and blind voracity of its race; as it drills it grows, and its tunnel grows with it. There it has swallowed and provided a setting for the subject of this story; then it has formed a pupa, and in the spring it has come out in the shape of an ugly gray moth which is now drying in the sun, confused and dazzled by the splendor of the day. Our atom is in one of the insect’s thousand eyes, contributing to the summary and crude vision with which it orients itself in space. The insect is fecundated, lays its eggs, and dies: the small cadaver lies in the undergrowth of the woods, it is emptied of its fluids, but the chitin carapace resists for a long time, almost indestructible. The snow and sun return above it without injuring it: it is buried by the dead leaves and the loam, it has become a slough, a 'thing', but the death of atoms, unlike ours, is never irrevocable. Here are at work the omnipresent, untiring, and invisible gravediggers of the undergrowth, the microorganisms of the humus. The carapace, with its eyes by now blind, has slowly disintegrated and the ex-drinker, ex-cedar, ex-wood worm has once again taken wing.
We will let it fly three times around the world, until 1960, and in justification of so long an interval in respect to the human measure we will point out that it is, however, much shorter than the average: which, we understand, is two hundred years. Every two hundred years, every atom of carbon that is not congealed in materials by now stable (such as, precisely, limestone, or coal, or diamond, or certain plastics) enters and reenters the cycle of life, through the narrow door of photosynthesis. Do other doors exist? Yes, some syntheses created by man; they are a title of nobility for man-the-maker, but until now their quantitative importance is negligible. They are doors still much narrower than that of the vegetable greenery; knowingly or not, man has not tried until now to compete with nature on this terrain, that is, he has not striven to draw from the carbon dioxide in the air the carbon that is necessary to nourish him, clothe him, warm him, and for the hundred other more sophisticated needs of modern life. He has not done it because he has not needed to: he has found, and is still finding (but for how many more decades?) gigantic reserves of carbon already organicized or at least reduced. Besides the vegetable and animal worlds, these reserves are constituted by deposits of coal and petroleum: but these too are the inheritance of photosynthetic activity carried out in distant epochs, so that one can well affirm that photosynthesis is not only the sole path by which carbon becomes living matter, but also the sole path by which the sun's energy becomes chemically usable.

It is possible to demonstrate that this completely arbitrary story is nevertheless true. I could tell innumerable other stories, and they would all be true: all literally true, in the nature of the transitions, in their order and data. The number of atoms is so great that one could always be found whose story coincides with any capriciously invented story. I could recount an endless number of stories about carbon atoms that become colors or perfumes in flowers; of others which, from tiny algae to small crustaceans to fish, gradually return as carbon dioxide to the waters of the sea, in a perpetual, frightening round-dance of life and death, in which every devourer is immediately devoured, of others which instead attain a decorous semi-eternity in the yellowed pages of some archival document, or the canvas of a famous painter; or those to which fell the privilege of forming part of a grain of pollen and left their fossil imprint in the rocks for our curiosity; of others still that descended to become part of the mysterious shape- messengers of the human seed, and participated in the subtle process of division, duplication, and fusion from which each of us is born. Instead, I will tell just one more story, the most secret, and I will tell it with the humility and restraint of him who knows from the start that his theme is desperate, his means feeble, and the trade of clothing facts in words is bound by its very nature to fail.
It is again among us, in a glass of milk. It is inserted in a very complex, long chain, yet such that almost all of its links are acceptable to the human body. It is swallowed; and since every living structure harbors a savage distrust toward every contribution of any material of living origin, the chain is meticulously broken apart and the fragments, one by one, are accepted or rejected. One, the one that concerns us, crosses the intestinal threshold and enters the bloodstream: it migrates, knocks at the door of a nerve cell, enters, and supplants the carbon which was part of it. This cell belongs to a brain, and it is my brain, the brain of the me who is writing; and the cell in question, and within it the atom in question, is in charge of my writing, in a gigantic minuscule game which nobody has yet described. It is that which at this instant, issuing out of a labyrinthine tangle of yeses and nos, makes my hand run along a certain path on the paper, mark it with these volutes that are signs: a double snap, up and down, between two levels of energy, guides this hand of mine to impress on the paper this dot, here, this one".

from Primo Levi, The Periodic Table 

A for Andromeda - The Galaxy Next Door

There is nothing quite as fantastic for me than to go outside, look up at the stars, point out what is what and see the only galaxy that can be seen with the naked eye, Andromeda - everything else that can be seen with our naked eyes is comets, stars and planets.

Imagine that you could go out into space, far beyond earth and the solar system, far beyond our milky way galaxy, and then turn and look back.  What would our galaxy of a hundred billion starts look like, well we have a pretty good idea because our own galaxy is one of a pair.

It's partner Andromeda is 2,9 million light years away (1 Lightyear = 9.46052894x10E15) and 1000 lightyears across, about twice the mass of ours, but in most respects it is it's twin.  The rotate in opposite directions and are moving towards one another every second they get 100km closer.  One day, 3 billion years from now, our worlds will collide - thats a while away so don't go getting stressed just yet, there are still enough issues on earth at present that are cause for concern.....

Just looking outside tonight, looking up at many identifiable objects such as Jupiter which is very bright tonight, Rigel and Betelgeuse were winking at me also. I wish my camera could have picked up what I was seeing! To think that I was stood in my own back garden, looking at the furthest thing in space that can be seen with the naked eye, not just another star but a whole other galaxy - it blows me away every time and certainly gets my heart ticking faster :)

If you are new to Astronomy, or really not that interested as such - I urge you to get the app for iphone called StarmapPro or puniverse.  Simply open the app and hold it up to the sky, it will tell you what you are looking at, I would then google these objects and have a quick read about them, I promise you that the next time you are out at night you will look up and wonder what is on display again.... It is simply amazing and beautiful.  Andromeda can be seen

Andromeda sent its light to earth long before humans existed....... give it a few moments of your time

http://www.space.com/9605-andromeda-galaxy-visible-eagle-eye-skywatchers.html

December 7, 1988: A day to remember in natural disaster history

Here is another "Day to Remember" blog that I almost shamefully forgot to type.

December 7, 1988, 11.41am, Earthquake Armenia:

In 40 seconds, two violent earth tremors destroyed 80% of the buildings in the town of Spitak and the nearby city of Leninakan (now Gyumn) in northern Armenia.

It left 25,000 dead - tho-thirds were children - and 15,000 injured.

Most of the victims were buried under rubble when poorly constructed Soviet-style concrete buildings collapsed.  

THRIVE: What On Earth Will It Take?

Another must see Movie!"an unconventional documentary that lifts the veil on what's REALLY going on in our world by following the money upstream -- uncovering the global consolidation of power in nearly every aspect of our lives. Weaving together breakthroughs in science, consciousness and activism, THRIVE offers real solutions, empowering us with unprecedented and bold strategies for reclaiming our lives and our future".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=lEV5AFFcZ-s 

A discovery of the ecology of Plants and variations in climate - Alexander Von Humboldt

Alexander Von Humboldt is a guy that is not really that familiar outside of his home town of Germany, unless like me, you are either study Earth/Environmental science or just love reading about it, or maybe you do and still have not heard of him.  I think this guy deserves a mention to say the least, and that everyone should be familiar with him, as his claims to be one of the most important scientists of the past 200 years are extremely persuasive!

He was born in Berlin in 1769, and was well educated and socially privileged enough to be involved in a wide range of political and intellectual affairs at the time when Prussia was at the heart of European politics.  Humboldt was determined to follow in the steps of a Joseph Banks who he had met, by travelling the world for the benefits of science such as Banks did.

He began his career exploring, discovering, cataloguing and sheer scientific entrepreneurship.  He did pioneer work in botany, geology, meteorology, animal physiology, geomagnetism and zoology, discovering new minerals and diamond deposits.  Back home in Germany, he played an important role in the reform of universities, the fostering of research the linking with university scientists with industry.
Overall, he was responsible for a massive professionalisation of science and educational practice.

What really interested me was that he was one of the first scientists to be interested in developing big pictures of climatic trends around the world.  He made wide-ranging studies of temperature variations around Earth and recognised the importance of considering other variables still, such as altitude and aspect on the diverse range of ecology at different altitudes, creating maps outlining this.  These maps were the forerunners of modern maps of average seasonal variations around the Earth, which have recently become of crucial importance in the study of global warming.  One of his papers in 1817, reporting on the variation of the mean temperature around the Earth's surface, invented the concept of the isotherm - any meteorologist will certainly understand the importance of this.

The diversity of Humboldt's interests led naturally to his introduction of comparative studies, looking at correlations between climate, diversity, flora, and topography.  It created a new way of thinking and correlating facts, and is memorial to the contribution he made to science and the great German's talent.  He is certainly a name that should be known a lot more than it is.


A. von Humboldt, Essai sur la geographi des plantes, Paris, 1805.

Emotional Self-Esteem

Oooh what a topic I have chosen to blog about this evening.  Sooo many levels to this and so many paths to go down, I certainly don't want to start blogging too much about this kind of thing, however, I blog about things that are on my mind and this topic is certainly something that has been, umm, is, ummm, well, it's an issue anyway.

A sense of personal wellness, vitality and robustness comprise in my eyes some of the most important components of self-esteem.  It is very difficult to feel good about one self when you're feeling physically and emotionally tired, weak or have/are ill.  I have just had one horrible cold/flu whatever it was, it was some next level stuff - so I totally know that this can certainly effect your self-esteem.  But - here's a big but, feelings, those bloomin' feelings can play a HUGE role in tugging on the old self-esteem strings.

When your out of touch with your feelings, its hard to know who you are.  I think you tend to feel internally detached from yourself and very often fearful, about anything.  By identifying and most importantly expressing the full range of your feelings, you can become better acquainted with your own unique desires, needs - yearnings... It is then that you begin to feel yourself again - but do you???

Learning to express your feelings apparently takes time, courage and the willingness to be vulnerable in the presence of others whom you trust.  Personally, I do not have any trouble what so ever with showing and expressing my feelings, I wear my heart on my sleeve.  This can also be problematic, I will refer back to a previous blog on being too sensitive, being expressive with ones feelings sometimes doesn't do you any good either.  

When your brain is working at a crazily fast rate, things tend to come out of your mouth before you have actually thought about the repercussions of what you have said.  I do this a lot, it is not that I do not mean what I say, I always mean what I say, but I say too much.  Yes, it is who I am, it is how I have been brought up, it probably will serve me well in my future career after I graduate, it has certainly served me well in my past career too, but sometimes, it is just as well to keep ones feelings close to ones self, as there is a time and a place for them.  If you are too expressive, I am finding that it can actually do quite the opposite of what you intended it to do in the first place.

How does one simply stop being ones self - I do not have the answer to this.  Maybe the older you get the wiser you get I don't know... but the point of this blog is that feelings certainly do have an impact of your own self-esteem - it is important to be in touch with them, to be aware of them - but I am just not sure what you actually do with them??????  Typing a blog about it can help a bit ;)

Intimacy

Intimacy - it's what some of us need, it's what some of us lack, what some of us want, what some of us don't..
While some people seem content to go through life with a few close friends, most of us seek a special relationship with one particular person.  I have kinda had this on my mind for a while now and made me decide to write a small blog on it, because, it is in intimate relationships that we open ourselves most deeply and have the chance to discover the most about ourselves.

Such relationships help overcome a certain loneliness that most of us would eventually feel - no matter how self-sufficient and strong we may be - without intimacy.   The sense of belonging that we gain from intimate relationships contributes substantially to our feelings of self-worth.  Saying that, I want to strongly emphasise here that self-worth cannot derive entirely from someone else, but a healthy, intimate relationship simply reinforces your own self-acceptance and belief in yourself.

What would constitute an intimate relationship for you? What would you consider to be a really important part of a healthy relationship?  Well, this all depends of the individual of course, and what you want from that particular relationship.  Maybe you are getting a sense that the reason why I am writing this is because I am myself maybe lacking in an area of intimacy and therefore decided to write a blog on the subject - because indeed, I am no professional psychologist when it comes to the inner workings of the human mind, however I know my own, and I know how I feel and I do not think I am alone when it comes to factors that we see are key to a healthy relationship.  Am I lacking in this area - this is for me to know, this is not the point of this blog, however when I type out my thoughts, it generally helps me more clearly see the things in a different context to what is in my head.

To name but a few factor that I see to be important for a happy, healthy, fun and intimate relationship, and not in any rank order, are:

1. A sense of romance or "magic"between you and the other person.  This is an intangible quality of attraction that goes well beyond the physical level.  It has to be strong and has to be a continued path of new discovery.  The butterflies in the belly feeling, the cannot wait to see them feeling and when you do, its like you are learning something new each time.... this to me is very important.

2. Regular expressions of affection and touching.  Either non sexual but definitely sexual.  The ability to explore and discover, trying new things.... very very important.

3.  Being able to share feelings.  Genuine closeness and being willing to open up and share your deepest feelings.

4.  Common values and a larger sense of purpose.  Values that you see as an important part of life, such as career, family, health, education and to me, the need and want to make a change to make this world a better place, no matter how small it may be.

5. Good communication - the ability to listen to each other and meet at some common ground.

6. Mutual acceptance and support of each others growths and personal changes.  

7. Mutual acceptance of each others weaknesses or faults.  Gee we all have them, but it is being able to tolerate them that makes it work.

Is there any factors in this small list that you would choose? maybe you have totally different ideas on what makes a perfect relationship.  Whatever your list includes, I think that it is very important to have a good intimate relationship as it contributes substantially to our own feelings of self-worth, and if we feel worthy then we should feel happy and content - I think???? ;)

The Pinnacles, WA

These limestone formations in Western Australia were created by the erosion of sand dunes made from marine fossil-bearing sediments.  

Plants once lived on the dunes and contributed to calcite cementation of interior columns, which have been exposed by erosion of softer dune material.

It reminds me of the film Pitch Black a little bit, except, without the alien human eating creatures :/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7SVUrY2JXBg&feature=fvwrel  

WA's Horizontal Waterfall

The Horizontal Falls in the north-west of Western Australia is described by David Attenborough as "one of the greatest natural wonders of the world".

The horizontal waterfall in Talbot Bay, Western Australia, is produced by tidal movements causing water to bank up against one side of the narrow cliff.  It is amazingly beautiful and this short video will explain and show you in more detail.

I will visit here one day for sure!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_bWS2sdD2U 

Another date in History - November 26th 1703 - Storm, Southern England

Tomorrow is another day in history to remember.

A violent storm, lasting all day, swept in from the Atlantic, causing havoc as it raged across souther England.

In Cornwall, a lighthouse was swept away, while elsewhere thousands of acres were uprooted and about 150 people killed by flying debris and roof collapses.
An estimated 8,000 seaman died when hundreds of ships were wrecked off the coast.

The British Fleet was devastated.



Another event in November for England was in 1873 - Fog.

London was plagued with thick fogs containing sulphur dioxide (SO2) and soot, referred to as "pea soup", exacerbated by smoke from thousands of industrial and domestic fires.
Between January 26 and 29, 1880, London experienced smog so severe, due to the extraordinary weather conditions of that day, that there were 1176 excess deaths reported.  

Server fog continued to plague London right up until the mid-twentieth century.

Join me on Facebook

http://www.facebook.com/FindingTheBeautyInEverything

Join me on Facebook. 

I have decided to create a page where I will post my blog,share links,photos, anything I find awesome.Topics from science to sustainability. 

I will post stuff like, my blog, my photos, my interests: Earth Science, Environmental science, mineralogy, biology, anthropology, The Universe, Atmospheric science, sustainability, nature, nurture, psychology, humour and sometimes just utter nonsense - you name it, I will be posting it. I am pretty random, occasionally there will be music but that my dears could have a whole page to itself! 

Just enjoy my page and try and find the beauty in everything ;)

The Pale Blue Dot

Carl Sagen is a hero of mine - and I feel I need not explain anything about this very short documentary, except it will be the best 3.30 minutes you will ever watch in my opinion :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=p86BPM1GV8M

Investigating human origins with fossils

The investigation in human origins is kind of like a detective story.  Clues lead the anthropologist on a search for evidence, using techniques developed in many other fields of science, such as geology, chemistry and zoology, this is why this topic is of real interest to me as well as the many others.  I have started to collect mineral and rocks but do not have any fossils, to purchase them they cost a lot of money. Not only are they valuable to collectors, but are essential in the investigation into human origins.  The search for evidence still continues today at an increasing rate.  As new techniques are developed, new knowledge is built on and foundations laid in the past.

Any preserved trace left by a previously living organism is, of course, a fossil.  Bones and teeth are the most common to be fossilised, but preserved footprints, faces and other remains can provide some really valuable information.

When we consider billions of organisms that have lived on earth, the chance that the individual plant or animal will be fossilised is very small.  Normally, dead organisms are decayed by micro-organisms and no trace of their existence is left.  Parts of organisms may become fossilised when they are buried by drifting sand, mud deposits by rivers, volcanic ash, or, in the case with more recent human ancestors, by other members of the species.  If buried rapidly, conditions may not be suitable for the activity of decay organisms and decomposition may be slowed or prevented.

The nature of the soil is very important for the fossilisation of bone.  In wet, acid soils minerals in the bones are dissolved and no fossilisation occurs.   However if the wet, acid soil contains no oxygen, like peat for example, complete preservation of the soft tissues of animals as well as bones may occur.  
Bones buried with alkali soils produce the best fossils since the minerals in the bones are not dissolved. New minerals, often lime or iron oxide, are deposited in the pore of the bones, replacing organic matter that makes up about 35% I think by weight of the bone.  The bone turns into rock, it becomes 'petrified' (seen Harry Potter?) but the details and structure are still preserved.

Fossil ancestors are often found at the edges of ancient lakes and river systems, in caves or in volcanically active areas.  It is unusual for animals to be preserved near volcanic eruptions because the heat would obviously destroy the organism, but in East Africa, ash falls have preserved fossils of many human ancestors.  Most fossils are found by chance, but also by painstaking excavation of likely sites.

Western Australia's unique Leeuwin current

Cold currents flowing along the western edge of continents is the norm for all except Western Australia, where the warm Leeuwin current, coming from the north between Australia and Indonesian archipelago flows down the west coast, forcing the cold current off shore.  This benefits the terrestrial environment.  As the water off Western Australia is warm, evaporation from the sea surface creates clouds, bringing rain further north than would be the case off the coast of South Africa or South America.  Mean average rainfall in the mid-west of Australia is more than twice as high as rainfall at an equivalent latitude on the west coast of Africa.

Agriculturally, Western Australia benefits from the warm Leeuwin current.  Although there are no high mountains to produce orographic rainfall (rainfall related to altitude) on the west coast, the warmer seas compensate to some extent.

Uniquely, significant upwelling does not occur on Western Australia's coast because it is suppressed by the Leeuwin current.  Driven by the relatively high water levels in the Indonesian archipelago it can rise water levels as high as 20 cm.  This warm current may decrease marine productivity off the west coast, but it allows coral reefs to grow as far as Perth in Western Australia.

A great lecture worth watching called  "Life along the Leeuwin Current: seashells of the Central West and Houtman Abrolhos" by Shirley Slack-Smith who is an aquatic zoologist gives a great talk about the uniqueness of the Western Australian's coast.

http://museum.wa.gov.au/explore/videos/life-along-leeuwin-current-seashells-central-west-and-houtman-abrolhos

The Chemistry of Fireworks

I love fireworks!  I could watch a firework show for hours, so any opportunity I get here in Australia to see them I do.  I also love chemistry, my favourite topic is the modern atomic theory, and the reactions between complex mixtures of chemicals and the outcomes. What made me think of this was actually the film The Lord Of The Rings that was on last night,  where Gandalf throws a spectacular firework display on the eve of Bilbo Bagging's fair well.  I started to think about the complex chemistry that is going on to make such beautiful aesthetic entertainment that most people don't even think about.
So this prompted me to write a short blog on the chemistry of how fireworks, work!

I guess the art of using mixtures of chemicals to produce explosives is an ancient one to say the least.  Black powder - a mixture of potasium nitrate, charcoal, and sulfur - was being used in China well before 1000A.D. and is also used in military explosives too, no surprise there, also in constuction blasting and, of course, fireworks.  Years and years ago fireworks just used to be basically rockets and loud bangs and the colours such as orange and yellow came from charcoal and iron fillings.
However, great advances in chemistry in the 19th century had new compounds finding their way into fireworks.  Salts of copper, strontium, and barium added some brilliant colours.  Magnesium and aluminium metals gave a dazzling white light. 

So, how do these fireworks actually produce these brilliant colours and rather loud bangs?  There is really only a handful of different chemicals that are actually responsible for the most spectacular effects.  To produce the noise and flashes, an oxidizer, (something that has a strong affinity for electrons) is reacted with a metal such as magnesium or aluminium mixed with sulfur.  The resulting reaction produces a brilliant flash, whixh is due to the magnesium and aluminium burning, and a loud bang is produced by the rapidly expanding gases.... cool huh?

For a colour effect, an element with a coloured flame is included.
Yellow colours in fireworks are due to sodium, strontium salts give the red colour and barium salts give the green colour.  Achieving the vivid white flashes and the brilliant colours requires complex combinations of chemicals.  For example, because a white flash produces high flame temperatures, the colours tend to wash out.  Another problem arises from the use of sodium salts.  Because sodium produces an extremely bright yellow colour, sodium salts cannot be used when other colours are desired, ( It would be worth checking out the energy states of atoms that goes into more detail about the colours that elements give off during different energy levels).

In short, the manufacturer of fireworks that produce the desired effects and are also safe to handle requires very careful selection of chemicals.  No wonder they cost so much!

Wednesday's Solar Eclipse and some Sun facts

Wednesday, 14th November, is the solar eclipse.  I am hoping to go out early morning at the Perth Observatory to view it, however the chances are slim as it will only be somewhat viewable here in Perth for about 30 minutes depending just after sunrise.

So, I thought id post some cool facts that I know about the Sun as kind of a celebration for the eclipse.
I have already blogged a detailed summary of the making and death of stars, but here are just a few more cool things I know about that amazing, life giving star in the sky.

Solar storms; Coronal Mass Ejections, or CMEs for short, can hurl more than 100 billion tons of mass into deep space at speeds millions of kilometers an hour.  The ejected mass is in the form of subatomic particles.  When these reach the Earth, they interact with the planets upper atmosphere and magnetic field.... the spectacular lights of the aurora borealis.

Solar Prominences; Vast curling clouds of relatively cool plasma can easily been seen through a telescope with a suitably dense filter to shut out the glare.  Unlike CMEs, these visually dramatic prominences are usually confined within the Sun's atmosphere, the corona.

Sunspots; The photosphere is the obviously bright surface of the Sun.  It is often dappled with sunspots, created when huge and powerful loops within the Sun's magnetic field force their way through the photosphere.

Solar Grains; Granulation is caused by convection currents inside the Sun.  Hot material rises into the photosphere, then cools down (cooled for the Sun anyway) and falls back around the edges of each cell.  Think Lava lamp.

Jets on the Sun; Imagine a pipe as wide as say, Arizona, and as tall as the Earth from pole to pole.  Now imagine this pipe filled with hot gas moving 50,000km per mile.  Think of the pipe made not from any solid materials by just by a transparent magnetic field.  This is a spicule, one of thousands constantly generated by the Sun.  They last for around 5 minutes and then fade.

and finally - The Eclipse; A solar eclipse occurs when the moon interposes itself between the Sun and the Earth, temporarily obscuring our view of the Sun.  By a lucky coincidence, the Moon's disc neatly superimposes over the Sun's disc during a full eclipse, leaving just the corona visible.  This is a perfect time for scientists to observe the Sun.

Well, there we go, some pretty cool facts about our star, its work googling some of these as the pictures are amazing..... Wish me luck for Wednesday :)

Altruism part two - George Price's theorem, an evolutionary survival trait explained by Math?

Evolution, tiny changes over billions of years explain the physical make up of our bodies, but is it also responsible for how we behave?  Can it explain compassion and kindness?

There was a mathematician, George Price, who believed that true human kindness didn't exist,  but it was nothing more than an evolutionary survival trick in which he developed an equation to prove it.

Have you ever done something truly kind or ever won a medal for your selfless act of bravery?  Suppose that someone could prove, that your so called kindness, is merely an illusion, nothing more than an accident of our evolution.... what does that say about the very nature of good and evil?

George Price lived in two worlds, one of numbers and one of people.  In the world of numbers he is a genius, but in his world of people, he is not so good.  Price travelled to London in search of a new direction, where he buries himself in many of London's libraries, reading as many science journals that he finds interesting, where he stumbles on a subject that he has never thought about before - evolution.

Charles Darwin's theory on natural selection suggests that tiny changes to our offspring, can make one more likely to survive and reproduce than another, for example, if you lived in an area where resources became sparse, and you had to climb trees to get food, those with better tree climbing skills would be able to get the food and survive whilst those others who didn't receive those tree climbing genes wouldn't be able to climb and therefore wouldn't survive.

Evolution is nothing new, but Price finds a revolutionary paper by a biologist names William Hamilton, that applies that evolution, not to the way our bodies work, but the way we behave.  So not just a physical characteristic but a social one too, that social behaviour is carried in our genes, just like hair or eye colour.  

Price wanted to know, how can self generous self sacrifice, known as Altruism, be a survival trait?  Imagine a gene that caused the ultimate self sacrifice, to give your life on behalf of somebody else, that gene will surly disappear as that individual will have no offspring, however if this gene is part of the family, this gene can be passed on, like a mother who saved her three offspring by throwing herself in front of a bus, would have a better chance of her three offspring having that same gene and passing it on.

Price looks at this with a mathematical mind, and develops a new set of equations that explains this idea where he sends his work to Hamilton.  What price comes up with isn't a theory, rather a theorem, a mathematical truth and a truth that is always right in all circumstances.  This theorem sets out to prove Hamilton's idea that Altruism, is indeed, an evolutionary survival trait. No matter how selfless a person seems, math says that genes are always in control, you may think your being generous, but in reality your behaviour is really to benefit your own genes.  

However, as Price's social skills become more apparent, as he goes out, he see's pure Altruism all around him, and wonders if these examples of human kindness can really be explained by Math, not only does he wonder, he actually hopes, he has made an error.  All he needed is one case to blow out his own theorem.  

After countless hours trying to figure it out, he turns to religion and now believes that god has created true kindness, despite all that science says, changing his whole ideas and even his own religion in order for him to show true Altruism and try and wipe out any of his past ideas.  This ultimately changes his entire life. He begins to live a very selfless life, giving away everything he possess to any body and everybody, he goes hungry and without shelter or warmth.  This new life nearly kills him and he turns to his good friend Hamilton who helps him.

He now realises that trying disproof his theorem is a hopeless cause.  No matter how selfless his acts appear, there is always the possibility that some underlining evolutionary advantage was at play.  He simply could not proof that the math was correct or incorrect.

All this was too much for him, and was found on January 6, 1975, dead, he had cut his throat with nail scissors, killed by his own theorem.  

George Price was buried in an unmarked grave in London.  Hamilton said that he had only ever seen two examples of truly altruistic behaviour, Mother Teresa and his friend, George Price.

Price's theorems remain central to modern evolutionary biology to this day.


http://books.google.com.au/books/about/The_Price_of_Altruism.html?id=5iy51X-70LAC

Fly through the Universe

The largest sky map revealed... this is an amazing 2 minutes, again, view full screen...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOjrImaPh80&feature=share

The Movie 'Home'

I have been plugging this movie for quite some time now and I simply cannot plug it enough.

Home, our planet, a powerful film about the sheer wonder and beauty of our planet and the human impacts that are effecting its balance.

Watch full screen because the aerial views and music is breathtaking and somewhat haunting..... 

Click 'watch the movie' under the trailer to view on youtube.

http://www.homethemovie.org/en

Warped Space - the fabric of space

How did Einstein end up solving the problem of gravity?  

Well, he learnt an entirely new form of mathematics, called non-Euclidean geometry, and from that formulated a theory in which neither space nor time is flat.  Bare with me, this is some cool stuff. 

Rather, in Einstein's theory, both space and time are warped by the presence of mass, which causes them to curve.  A good way to picture how gravity works within general relativity is to picture a bowling ball on a trampoline.  As the ball sits on the flexible surface, it creates an indentation.  In general relativity, the same thing happens when a massive object (like Earth, the Moon or the Sun) sits in the 'fabric' of space time.  Space and time must both 'curve' around it, and it creates an indentation in the very dimensions of the Universe.  Just as with a bowling ball on a trampoline, the more massive the object, the larger the indentation and the greater the area influenced by the objects presence.

If a small ball was rolled towards the bowling ball, its path would be altered by the indentation of the larger ball, which warps the fabric itself. This, in essence, is the same principle by which the Moon and satellites orbit the Earth.  Everything is basically falling towards something with a greater mass.

Watch this short 6 minute video that shows a very good animation of this theory, at about 2.40 minutes in.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHPqhTY6dh0&feature=related

Australia's most recent volcano

Just something that may interest you..

The most recent volcanic activity in Australia occurred at Tower Hill in western Victoria.  The 'hill', a presumed extinct volcano, last erupted 25 000 years ago, building the ash cone that can be seen today, and sending a river of lava (lava is the name of magma above the surface) several kilometers south to the coast.

The lava forms the low basalt points, rocks and reefs between Kilarney Beach and Port Fairy, the youngest igneous (volcanic) rocks in Australia.  WA has the oldest rocks.  Tower Hill was declared Victoria's first national park in 1892.  It is now a State Game Reserve.

http://vro.dpi.vic.gov.au/dpi/vro/glenregn.nsf/pages/eruption_points_tower_hill 

The power of the Wind

Well what a couple of rainy, windy days we have had here in good old WA.  

I love this weather - many people think i'm mad... I seem to be saying that a lot lol :/  Anyhow, got me thinking about Wind power as a renewable energy source, I mean, where in the world don't we get wind.

Wind power, like solar power, has evolved over a long period of time, beginning with early Chinese and Persian civilizations.  Wind energy was one of the first non-animal sources of energy to be exploited by these early civilizations as it propelled ships around the world and it was use to drive windmills in order to grind grain and to pump water. The verity of machines that has been devised or proposed to harness wind energy is considerable.  Modern Wind turbines come in two basic configurations: Horizontal axis and vertical axis turbines. Horizontal and vertical wind turbines both make use of the aerodynamic forces generated by aerofoils in order to extract power from the wind, but each harness these forces in a different way, vertical-axis wind turbines have an advantage over horizontal wind turbines as they do not have to shift with changes in wind direction which reduces maintenance and tower costs.  The majority of modern wind turbines are generated by electricity and range from small to large wind turbines.  The performance of these two sized wind turbines differ as the small has a much lower power density of a few hundred watts because of the limited wind potential in the sites, in comparison to the large wind turbines that are situated in Wind farms that can create large amounts of energy of 1 MW.

 So where is it currently being used in Australia and what are its future prospects for its use?

The climate is changing. The majority of climate scientists from around the world confirm greenhouse gases in our atmosphere have been increasing since the industrial revolution, prompting a wide range of climate shifts that have the potential to threaten our environment and our way of life if greenhouse gas levels continue to rise.  Australia is particularly vulnerable to climate change. Our environmental, social and economic security is at risk unless we play our part in the global effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.  Electricity generation in Australia is responsible for more than a third of our greenhouse gas emissions. Eighty per cent of Australia’s electricity currently comes from coal. Therefore, any attempt to reduce greenhouse gas emissions must focus on the energy sector and support the transition to clean, less polluting technologies.

Fortunately, Australia has some of the world’s best clean energy sources, many of which are already powering Australian homes and businesses.  One of my previous blogs about Fremantle putting solar on the town hall is a prime example of governments taking action on renewable energy practices.  Making full use of our abundant clean energy resources - like wind, solar, hydro, wave and geothermal has the potential to meet Australia's growing energy needs as well as create new job opportunities and export markets.  A clean energy economy will create new opportunities, jobs and provide other social, economic and environmental benefits to both current and future Australian generations.

Australia has some of the best wind resources in the world.  Wind energy is currently the most cost-effective renewable energy resource in Australia.

It involves the generation of electricity from the naturally occurring power of the wind.  Wind turbines capture wind energy within the area their blades pass through. The blades in turn drive an electrical generator to produce power for export to the electricity grid.

Unlike conventional sources of electricity generation, like coal, no water is required for wind farm operation and no greenhouse gases are produced.  A single wind turbine can produce enough energy to supply up to 2,000 average households each year and save around 1 tonne of greenhouse gas for every megawatt produced.  Sites where there is strong, consistent wind are the most appropriate locations for wind farms.  Fremantle is yet again trying to pursue renewable energy and hoping to install wind turbines in the very near future and very much demonstrating a very active role in become sustainability leaders.  

Onward and Upward!