Green Options

Scientists have discovered a hybrid plastic-metal material that generates electrons in a way that can easily be captured on a spectrum and at the same time efficiently absorb all the energy from a ray of sunlight.

The material is a computerized lab creation that combines electrically conductive plastic with several metals including molybdenum and titanium. It overcomes the two major roadblocks involved in capturing solar energy: taking in all energy from sunlight and producing easily-capturable electons. Thus, the new material may have the potential to revolutionize how manufactured solar cells obtain energy from the sun.

Scientists have uncovered life in a South African gold mine, 2.8 kilometers (1.7 miles) beneath the surface of the earth. In this dark but hot ecosystem, a single biological species derives power not from the sun but from elements produced by uranium’s radioactive decay.

Remarkably, it is the first ecosystem ever found having only one biological species. In utter darkness, total isolation, with no oxygen, and in 60-degree-Celsius heat (140 degrees Fahrenheit), the cave-dwelling, rod-shaped bacterium, Desulforudis audaxviator survives.

Trajectories of evolution have fitted the bacterium with the genes necessary to exist under a variety of different conditions. One such adaptation is the ability to survive by fixing nitrogen and carbon directly from the environment.

Researchers in Canada have found 4.28 billion year old rocks, probably the world’s oldest, and which may be remnants of a portion of the first crust that formed at the surface of our planet, known as the primordial crust.

The ancient rocks were found in Northern Quebec, along the Hudson’s Bay coast, 40 km south of Inukjuak in an area known as the Nuvvuagittuq greenstone belt.

Nature has finally confirmed it: the industrialized nations may be rich but the air that people breathe in poorer nations in the Southern Hemisphere is cleaner four times over.

A chemical equator - an atmospheric line - discovered by scientists suggests the existence of a 50 kilometer-wide boundary between polluted air of the Northern Hemisphere and the largely uncontaminated atmosphere of the Southern Hemisphere.

In a model, the red that represents high levels of carbon monoxide present in the air in the Northern Hemisphere gives way to blue that reflects clean air of the South; in between, a white-colored ‘chemical equator’ separates them.

Sweden’s Umeå University in April announced the discovery of ‘the world’s oldest living tree’, a 9,550 year old spruce in the mountains of Dalarna province of the Nordic country.

Scientists discovered the 13 foot tall (4 meter tall) spruce growing at an altitude of 2,985 feet (910 meters) on Fulu Mountain but it is thought its roots actually sprouted just after the end of the last ice age, nearly 10,000 years ago, and the lone survivor has been cloning itself ever since.

The discovery effectively turned the tables on Methuselah, a bristlecone pine located in California’s White Mountains, which at 4,768 years old, was believed to be the oldest living tree around. Its species are known to live long - there are 4,000-year-old pine trees in North America.

German biologists have discovered an hitherto unknown ant species, believed to be the oldest on the planet, deep in the Amazon rain forest.

Field researchers from Karlsruhe’s Natural History Museum who made the discovery near Manaus, Brazil, say the species, which resembles miniature wasps and looks like no other, may date back around 120 million years, according to Reuters.

Martialis heureka, nicknamed the “Ant from Mars” due to its unusual features and heureka from its surprising discovery, the ants themselves are eyeless, pale in color, subterranean, and predatory, according to Wikipedia.

Just over a month since the Smithsonian Institution announced the discovery of new bird species in Africa, little is still known about the olive-backed forest robin named for its distinctive olive back and rump.

Scientists are trying to unravel the little bird’s specific diet, mating and nesting habits, and the species’ complete habitat range, but the dense undergrowth of tropical forest where it was sighted may still offer further surprises.

Adult members of the robins - both male and female - measure just about 4.5 inches in length and average 18 grams in weight.

Males exhibit a fiery orange throat and breast, yellow belly, olive back and black feathers on the head. Females are similar, but less vibrant. Both sexes have a distinctive white dot on their face in front of each eye.