By now you are probably well familiar with the concept of the urban heat island effect, even if you can’t quite pinpoint the physics at play when your sneaker sole melts a little on a hot black street in July. Asphalt is an awesome material for storing the sun’s heat. On a steamy summer day, the surface of a road may be as hot as 140 degrees Fahrenheit. And it’ll stay that miserable long after the sun sets, pushing up the temperature of whole neighborhoods covered in this blacktop.
A lot of work has gone into figuring out how to combat the effect. We could plant more tree cover. We couldpaint black surfaces white. We could construct… artificial glaciers. But this idea might top them all: Why don’t we use that heat instead of fighting it?
“The bottom line is that roads get hot in summertime, even springtime,” says Rajib Mallick, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts. “They have a large surface area, which is collecting solar energy. Why not use that solar energy for something? It’s free energy, and if you use it, at the same time you can lower the temperature of the pavement.”
Mallick and other researchers have been developing a model that would harness the heat contained in asphalt and put it to productive uses. Asphalt, for instance, could heat water coursing through a series of pipes embedded in the road. And that process would both cool street surfaces and send their heat somewhere useful.
Very cool. Cheesy pun intended.
(via abaldwin360)
“Disobedience, in the eyes of any one who has read history, is man’s original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made, through disobedience and through rebellion.” — Oscar Wilde (via theblazingworld)
(Source: sunburstcybernetics, via holyfireman)
[video]
(Source: thisisonlyme, via beaglebot)
Compared to Jupiter’s moon Europa, our planet is practically a desert, as this NASA image shows. It’s a computer visualization showing Europa and a dried-out Earth, with the volume of all their water represented by blue spheres.
(Details at APOD: 2012 May 24 - All the Water on Europa)
The Brass Lantern, Megaton
Fallout 3
(via holyfireman)
“Each member of a ka-tet is like a piece in a puzzle. Taken by itself, each piece is a mystery, but when they are put together, they make a picture… or part of a picture. It may take a great many ka-tets to finish one picture.” — Stephen King. “The Dark Tower III: The Waste Lands”. (via fuckyeah-unclesteve)
(via starlightandtea)
Baaaaaaaaaabe…
(Source: whospam)
PS- Michelle Ryan, I knew she looked familiar. She was in Planet of the Dead, one of Tennant’s last DW roles. And she is a fucking babe, GODDAMN.
Kratos by ~Tetsugem28
Hellboy sketches by `diablo2003
ladykingsfield replied to your post: ladykingsfield replied to your post:…
How was I all of a sudden a mister? HAHAHA ;D On my way!
ladykingsfield replied to your post: ladykingsfield replied to your post:…
Yeah, I should have done that yesterday… but I kind of fell asleep XD
Well go wash your nasty booty. YOU HAVE A VERY NASTY BOOTY, MISTER.
ladykingsfield replied to your post: ladykingsfield replied to your post:…
It’s a pretty weird description :P I have no idea what mine would be, but I’m gonna let people believe I’m still foxy as hell XD and not one of those gamer girls who forget what a shower is sometimes … *shhh*
Weird, but accurate as to the grotesqueness of my countenance.
Showers are good. I should do that tomorrow.
ladykingsfield replied to your post: ladykingsfield replied to your post:…
Okay then! Since I’m not you… I don’t think I am at least. I’m confused XD Time to hit the shower :D
I will break the confusion.
You = Foxy lady.
Ashe = nasty toenail clippings in a briny, potato and spam soupy concoction.
Also, I keep trying to one up myself on the description of myself.