On:

Extreme levels of pollution across China are becoming catastrophic, and now Beijing has begun taking radical steps toward developing clean energy by beginning construction on a 10 square mile solar power station that will generate a massive 200 megawats of solar thermal energy.

Announced by the Qinghai development and reform commission, the plant is expected to cover 10 square miles (25.9 km²), with enough capacity to power one million households. It is also designed to store 15 hours of heat, which will enable continuous power generation. This move is expected to cut the region’s coal usage by 4.26 million tons annually, and reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 896,000 tons.
read more

On:

A breakthrough in space warp-based propulsion appears to have been made by a physicist in Omaha and his team–using a DIY-made apparatus built in his garage.

University of Nebraska at Omaha professor David Pares has built, and apparently demonstrated, a device that appears to compress the very fabric of space-time, of which is considered the holy grail of sci-fi faster-than-light propulsion methods, such as Star Trek’s warp drive. Using observations made by pilot Bruce Gernon’s encounter with an unexplained meteorological phenomenon in the Bermuda Triangle in 1970, Pares set out to replicate the conditions of the odd storm, including an apparent propulsive effect on the aircraft, albeit at a smaller scale that could be replicated in a laboratory.
read more

On:

NASA has just announced the discovery of an earth-like planet orbiting a star similar to our sun, and within the star’s habitable zone. The planet has been designated Kepler-452b, and is the first such planet ever discovered. So far, nearly 4000 planets have been discovered in so-called ‘goldilocks zones’ around distant stars–regions where they are neither too hot nor too cold to sustain life. But all of these planets have been determined to be either very small, very large, or gas giants. Kepler-452b is a "bigger cousin of Earth." It has a 385 day orbit and is 5% farther from its star than Earth is from the sun. Its parent star is Kepler-452. It also has gravity twice that of Earth’s.
read more