Infinite Clean Energy

[Weird Harold]

All I'm trying to say is this, 500 or so years ago the conventional wisdom was that the world was flat. We look back at that, and shake our heads, and say how could people be so ignorant. I think it's more than possible, it's probable, that 500 years from now school children will read what we believe now, and laugh their asses off.

[piercehawkeye45]

Yes, I agree with this 100%, every year there will be able to look farther into science and find out a lot of assumptions are wrong.

The thing with laws in science is that they work differently than most people take as laws. If something in science does become a law, there is there is zero chance it will be proven wrong except if the prerequistes are different or another variable shows up, and the way of establishing laws in science are much different than science theories.

For example, 1+1 = 2. This will never change from this form unless we invent a new mathematical system.

[xoxoxoBruce]

But 1+1=11.

[tw]

Originally Posted by Weird Harold

It used to be the law, that no human could run a mile under 4 minutes. Then in 1954 some one finally did. Shortly after that, lots of people did.

It was only a law among those who automatically knew because they 'felt'. There was no such laws based in logical reasoning.

The 'law' was found where speculation was sufficient to 'know a fact'.

[Rexmons]

damn not a peep about this orbo lately, maybe the evil billionaire oil tycoons have worked there magic :conspiracytheory:

[barefoot serpent]

There's actually a cold fusion device under the table that powers it.

[Happy Monkey]

It has to be under the table, because apparently indoor lighting disables it.

[jester]

Not sure if this would go here - please move if you know of a better place

ORNL, UT getting greener
Oak Ridge will be site of one of three bioenergy centers
By Andrew Eder (Contact)
Wednesday, June 27, 2007
BIOENERGY SCIENCE CENTER
• Location: Joint Institute for Biological Sciences on the Oak Ridge National Laboratory campus
• Purpose: Developing costeffective and sustainable ways to produce biofuels from plants
• Researchers: ORNL, University of Tennessee and a coalition of universities, research institutions and private companies
• Investment: $125 million over five years from the Department of Energy’s Office of Science
OAK RIDGE — Tennessee’s effort to position itself as a leader in renewable fuels kicked into high gear Tuesday with the announcement that Oak Ridge will be the site of one of three coveted national research centers.
Researchers from Oak Ridge National Laboratory will lead a team that includes the University of Tennessee in exploring ways to produce fuel from plants at the $125 million Bioenergy Science Center.
Martin Keller, director of ORNL’s biosciences division, will be the project director and principal investigator at the center, which the Department of Energy will fund for five years.
The new research center will be located at the unfinished Joint Institute for Biological Sciences, a state-funded, UT-owned facility on ORNL grounds.
The ORNL bid was one of three successful proposals from a pool of more than 20 applicants in a process described as intensely competitive.
The federal research effort will complement $72 million in recently approved state money for biofuels research, including more than $40 million for a demonstration-scale ethanol refinery.
“Certainly, seeking ways to reduce our consumption of fossil fuels is the right issue at the right time at all levels of government,” Gov. Phil Bredesen said at a press conference at the lab.
The new research center will focus on the challenges of cellulosic ethanol, a gasoline substitute made from plant materials known as biomass. Researchers will focus specifically on switchgrass and poplar trees. Most domestic ethanol is made from corn.
“Starch is put together in a way that’s somewhat easy to break apart, so you can make things out of it,” said Brian Davison, a chief scientist in ORNL’s biosciences division, who led the proposal process. “Cellulose, which is the structure in wood and paper and grass, is put together in a way that’s virtually impossible to break apart.”
Davison said researchers would use a “suite of approaches” to analyze and modify the makeup of plants and improve their understanding of the microbes and enzymes that break down plant materials, allowing them to be converted to ethanol.
At the same time, the state will offer incentives for farmers to grow switchgrass, and the 5 million-gallon-a-year pilot ethanol plant will let researchers and companies test new technologies.
UT, the lead institution for the state-funded ethanol refinery, is close to finding a partner to build the plant and will locate a site after that decision is made, said Tom Klindt, interim dean of the UT Agricultural Experiment Station.
“That connectivity from the fundamental science to the crop science and the refinery processes, that whole package is probably one of the aspects that led to this being a winning proposal,” said Thom Mason, the incoming ORNL director.
In addition to ORNL and UT, other members of the research team include the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Georgia Tech, the University of Georgia, Dartmouth College, the Samuel Roberts Noble Foundation, individual researchers from several institutions, and three private companies — ArborGen, Verenium Corp. and Mascoma Corp., all of which were chosen for their expertise in specific technical skills, Davison said.
The other national research centers will be located in Madison, Wis., and near Berkeley, Calif.
A federal renewable fuels standard calls for 7.5 billion gallons of the nation’s fuel supply to come from renewable sources by 2012, and a bill that recently passed the U.S. Senate calls for 36 billion gallons by 2022.
Many scientists, economists and others worry about the effects of relying on food crops to produce renewable fuels. Cellulosic ethanol offers the opportunity to produce dedicated energy crops on surplus farmland, and boosters think the plant-based fuel could spur development in rural Tennessee and beyond — if researchers can make the process economical for wide-scale commercial production.
“We know what the trends are, and the trends are that we have to drive the cost of the renewables down,” Mason said. “And the trends probably also are that the cost of the fossils are going to be up, so you don’t have to be a genius to figure that those two lines are going to cross.”
© 2007, Knoxville News Sentinel Co.