Science around the OU
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Latest news, views, comment, debate and links for those studying, working, or with an interest in, the Sciences: Biology, Chemistry, Environmental Science, Geology, Physics, Astronomy and the Planetary Sciences
Are biofuels the answer to our energy demands?
The potential of biofuels to solve the world’s future energy requirements is explored by Carlton Wood, Chair of Plants and people (S173), a module which looks at the astonishing variety of uses that humans have found for plants.
A biofuel is a source of energy that is derived from material that was once living. This sounds simple enough, but there are so many ways of generating biofuels that things quickly get complicated.
In its simplest form, burning wood on a fire for warmth is using a biofuel. The wood was once alive and part of a living tree and it became ‘energy-rich’ through the process of photosynthesis. This, as many of us know, is where the plant uses the energy from sunlight to allow it to take carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and convert it into sugars, and ultimately into all the carbon-containing structures within the tree. These structures contain energy that has been converted from the sunlight.
Burning the wood allows this ‘trapped energy’ to be liberated as heat and also light. Indeed, any plant material that can be burnt can be used in a similar way.
You may not be aware that some of the electricity you use is produced by burning biomass. The largest power station in the UK, Drax in North Yorkshire, produces around seven per cent of the UK’s electricity and burns around 300,000 tonnes of biomass a year. It is looking to increase the amount of biofuel it uses to around 1.5 million tonnes, at the expense of the fossil fuel coal that it normally uses. But why?
There are advantages to using biofuels compared with fossil fuels such as coal that are derived from plants that were alive millions of years ago. To produce a fossil fuel, plants died, became buried and subsequently compressed and ultimately produced fossil fuels such as coal and oil, which are energy-rich in the same way as living plant material is.
Burning fossil fuels, however, releases both the energy and the carbon dioxide which was trapped millions of years before. The energy is useful, but the carbon dioxide is widely accepted to be a cause of global warming.
Burning a biofuel, however, releases carbon dioxide that was trapped only a few years prior. It is therefore classed as ‘carbon neutral’ and won’t cause an increase in global warming.
We have already seen that wood can be used as biofuel but there is a lot of interest in using certain types of grasses such as Miscanthus which can grow rapidly, using minimal inputs of fertiliser, and can be grown on land that is not used for growing agricultural crops. These last two points are important, as producing fertiliser requires energy and so it is nonsensical to use energy-requiring fertiliser to produce something that is going to be used as an energy source. Also, using land for growing biofuel that could be used for producing agricultural crops is hard to justify in a time of increasing food shortage.
Indeed, the increases in the global cost of wheat in 2008/09 were partly caused by poor worldwide harvests, but also by the USA using around 25 per cent of its harvest to produce biofuel for transport purposes.
The transport fuels petrol and diesel can both be substituted by liquid biofuels. Both the sugars and starches that are found in plants’ stems and seeds can be fermented to produce alcohol such as ethanol. This is what happens when beer is produced – barley seeds rich in starch have the starch converted to sugar and then yeasts break the sugar down to produce ethanol. In the case of beer, we drink the ethanol but it can be used to produce bioethanol and used as a replacement for petrol.
Biodiesel is produced in a slightly different way: the oils found in many seeds and nuts of plants such as sunflowers, oil seed rape or palm oil can be treated with chemicals to convert the energy-rich oils into biodiesel. The problem with using seeds and nuts is that you are using a potential food source for fuel purposes. Additionally, growing huge areas of plants such as palm oil, some of which is used for biofuel, has caused large tracts of biodiverse rainforest habitat to be cut down, threatening such species as the orangutan.
Scientists have found solutions to such problems. Some transport biofuels such as the biodiesel produced from the fruit of the Jatropha tree do not have such disadvantages. Jatropha fruit is inedible and, also importantly, the tree can tolerate drought conditions and grow on land unsuitable for agricultural crops. One example where Jatropha has been used successfully is in India where the diesel train that runs from Delhi to Mumbai uses 15 per cent biodiesel derived from Jatropha.
Biofuels, though, are not a full answer to our energy needs. Many experts believe that biofuels have an increasing and significant role to play in the generation of our fuels, but in the UK particularly there is extensive pressure on our land resource from population growth and the requirements for both housing and for food production. Biofuels are part of the answer, alongside other renewable sources of energy such as wind and solar power.
In some countries with greater land reserves than the UK, biofuels could be even more useful. In Brazil, for instance, 40 per cent of cars run on bioethanol and there are plans to increase this percentage.
The overall answer to our fuel issues is to use less fuel in the first instance, to decrease our reliance on fossil fuels, increase our reliance on biofuels and to work for a solution that requires global initiatives to maximise the use of non-agricultural land for producing biofuel crops.
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OpenLearn:biofuels heroes or villians?
The Energy and Environment Research Unit
(3 votes)
The potential of biofuels to solve the world’s future energy requirements is explored by Carlton Wood, Chair of Plants and people (S173), a module which looks at the astonishing variety of uses that humans have found for plants. A biofuel is a source of energy that is derived from material that was once living. This sounds simple enough, but there are so many ways of generating ...
Life in extreme environments...
What´s the difference between biological and non-biological washing powder? Charles Cockell, Professor of Geomicrobiology at The Open University, tells Documentally the answer during a chat about life in extreme environments. He also touches on his brief political career as parliamentary candidate for the Forward to Mars Party in 1992 and the human exploration of Mars...
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What´s the difference between biological and non-biological washing powder? Charles Cockell, Professor of Geomicrobiology at The Open University, tells Documentally the answer during a chat about life in extreme environments. He also touches on his brief political career as parliamentary candidate for the Forward to Mars Party in 1992 and the human exploration of ...
More than just a volcanologist...
Dr David Rothery, a Senior Lecturer in the OU´s Faculty of Science, has been a busy man since the volcano in Iceland errupted and the resulting ash cloud grounded most UK flights. As a volcanologist, Dave has been called upon to provide expert commentary to the national and international press, but he also knows about tsunamis and earthquakes too. Here he chats to Documentally about natural disasters, his predictions for the future and how he can make a car disappear...
Watch Dave´s interview for ITN in which he makes a car disappear. Watch closely...
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Dr David Rothery, a Senior Lecturer in the OU´s Faculty of Science, has been a busy man since the volcano in Iceland errupted and the resulting ash cloud grounded most UK flights. As a volcanologist, Dave has been called upon to provide expert commentary to the national and international press, but he also knows about tsunamis and earthquakes too. Here he chats to ...
Podcast: Professor John Zarnecki on applying to be an astronaut...
Is there life on Mars? Documentally chats to Professor of Space Science John Zarnecki in one of the laboratories at The Open University.
Professor Zarnecki confesses to being a three-time failed astronaut and talks about detecting tuberculosis in sub-saharan Africa, drug detection at the Olympic Games and the monitoring of water quality…
Is there life on Mars? Documentally chats to Professor of Space Science John Zarnecki in one of the laboratories at The Open University. Professor Zarnecki confesses to being a three-time failed astronaut and talks about detecting tuberculosis in sub-saharan Africa, drug detection at the Olympic Games and the monitoring of water ...
What gives an Olympic champion the edge over others?
What makes an Olympic champion that little bit higher, faster or more accurate than all the rest? Talent, training and commitment, of course, but ultimately sports performance is governed by the laws of science.
Understanding these laws is now an important factor in success in most major sporting events. So anyone with an interest in sport should take a look at S172 Sport: the science behind the medals, a 10-point short module.
The course introduces the physical concepts that underlie the way top athletes like cyclist Chris Hoy or swimmer Rebecca Adlington move and interact with their environment.
“We look at things like velocity, acceleration, the physics involved in jumping, the problems of moving through water, air resistance, the role of momentum in ball sports, the chemistry of sports drinks,” says Professor Bob Lambourne, co-author of the course.
“It’s oriented towards the physical sciences – physics, chemistry and materials science – rather than the biomedical sciences. What’s been a great delight to me, as Professor of Educational Physics, has been the wonderful range of examples of physics in sport – it’s astonishing how interesting and varied they are, and how they help illuminate the sport involved.”
The focus is on Olympic sports, including track and field events, swimming and diving, and cycling. Science has had an impact on some sports more than others, Bob says. “Take tennis, for example – there have been tremendous developments because of our understanding of the nature of motion of a ball in the atmosphere, the interaction between the ball and racquet, and the ball and court surfaces. But there are other sports where the impact of science hasn’t been so great: people have tended to carry on doing them as they always have.”
As well as improvements to technology, training and preparation is another area where science is to the fore, he says. “Understanding the science can improve performance at sports; elite athletes are aware of these things, if only because their coaches tell them,” says Bob.
The course is bound to interest sports practitioners and coaches but it is not a coaching course. “If people are thinking the course will help them improve their performance in sport – well, we hope it will, but we don’t want to make any unrealistic claims,” explains Bob. “This is a science in sport course, not a sports science course. What we can safely say is it will help people to consider their performance.”
It’s also safe to say the course will give sports enthusiasts an enjoyable introduction to physical sciences. “We are always looking to broaden the range of people interested in science, and looking for ways of making science more approachable and appealing – and that’s what this course is trying to do,” says Bob.
The course is also one of 19 short science courses that can be used to make up the 60-point Certificate in Contemporary Science (C70).
What makes an Olympic champion that little bit higher, faster or more accurate than all the rest? Talent, training and commitment, of course, but ultimately sports performance is governed by the laws of science. Understanding these laws is now an important factor in success in most major sporting events. So anyone with an interest in sport should take a look at S172 Sport: ...
The decline of witchcraft
Dr Peter Elmer, a senior lecturer in the OU’s Department of the History of Science, Technology & Medicine, writes about how the belief in magic and witchcraft declined in the 18th century.
My own work is very much concerned with how early modern (15th to early 18th century) Europeans perceived the place of witchcraft and magic in their universe. I´m especially interested in the process of ´decline´ among the learned elites, that is how and why those in positions of power and authority (magistrates, clergy, doctors, academics) rejected magic and witchcraft as real - something which did not occur universally across the population or at the same time.
Traditional explanations have focused on the role of the ´new science´ or ´scientific revolution´ in arguing witchcraft and magic out of existence, but a whole range of studies have now made this untenable, not least the discovery that key figures such as Isaac Newton and Robert Boyle were wedded to many of the concepts related to the magical or occult view of the natural world. Both Newton and Boyle, for example, were practising ‘adepti’ or alchemists, and the latter consistently sought evidence to sustain belief in ghosts, apparitions and witches.
God/Devil
My own work on 17th-century Irish miracle healer Valentine Greatrakes (pictured) suggests that there was no simple correlation between scientific advance and witchcraft scepticism. In my research, I have tried to develop my belief that the main reason for the demise of witchcraft was broadly political, not scientific, in nature. In short, I argue that belief in witchcraft (and along with it the legal punishment of witches) faded out of existence as European society became increasingly pluralistic in terms of religious and political belief. In other words, belief in witches was integral to a worldview in which only binary opposites were thought to exist: good/bad; heaven/hell; God/Devil, etc. Traditionally, your religious or political opponent could only be right or wrong; one of us or one of them.
Within a European context, this usually meant Protestant or Catholic, and in Britain itself in the late 16th and 17th centuries (ie. the height of the witch hunts) anti-Catholicism was frequently tainted with the rhetoric of diabolism and witchcraft. However, once these simple binary contrasts were first challenged and then outlawed, and religious and political difference was slowly accepted, so too the ideological framework upholding ideas such as witchcraft were dismantled, and the belief in witches, leastwise among elites, lost their grip and appeal.
The explanation for the popularity of certain ideas, and their demise, is never facile or easy. The processes whereby major changes in though structures occur is by their very nature complex. Witchcraft is no exception. Unfortunately, as a subject it lends itself to others who might wish to use it for polemical purposes. Some feminist historians, for example, have jumped on the bandwagon and painted witchcraft as a rather obvious example of the misogynist thinking of the early modern period. The numbers of witches executed has frequently been ludicrously exaggerated (the press often reports some who claim up to six million victims, putting it on a par with the genocide of the Jews in the 20th century). More conservative estimates would suggest about 50,000 across Europe over a period of about 350 years, of whom about 10 to 20 per cent were men.
New ´faith´
Others, such as modern Wiccans, have sought to establish a continuous tradition for their new ´faith´ and so have envisaged those women executed centuries ago as martyrs for the cause, that is practitioners of an ancient fertility religion that was at odds with resurgent Christianity in the early modern perion. Again, there is precious little evidence to support such a view, but it remains widely reported.
Despite the vast amount written by scholars, especially historians, about historic witchcraft in early modern Europe, the message is slow to gain a popular footing. Perhaps people just like the idea too much of a universal and never-ending demonic conspiracy. After all most people seem to subscribe to the view - why let the truth get in the way of a good story?
Useful links:
Study Medicine and society in Europe 1500-1930
Dr Peter Elmer, a senior lecturer in the OU’s Department of the History of Science, Technology & Medicine, writes about how the belief in magic and witchcraft declined in the 18th century. My own work is very much concerned with how early modern (15th to early 18th century) Europeans perceived the place of witchcraft and magic in their universe. I´m ...
What's dark matter?
The OU´s Senior Lecturer in Astrophysics Stephen Serjeant gives an insight into what dark matter is all about...
Imagine you had a big box of dark matter. What would it look like?
You´re probably imagining a big black cube, aren´t you? Actually it would be perfectly transparent. That´s because it´s not really ´dark´ at all. OK, it doesn´t emit light, but it also doesn´t absorb light either, or we´d be able to see it as shadows against the background. You also can´t touch it. If you tried to scoop up a handful of dark matter, it would pass right through your hand. The only way we can tell dark matter is there is from the gravitational pull it has.
Right now, dark matter is streaming through your body. Our Sun and all the solar system is travelling through our galaxy, with the dark matter wafting past us and through us. Now, we can´t see dark matter with our eyes or touch it with our fingers, but very rarely a dark matter particle will still manage to collide with a particle of ordinary matter. These collisions are very rare, but scientists have made dark matter detectors to look for these collisions as the dark matter streams through, rather like holding your hand out of a window of a moving car and feeling the breeze.
A lot of the evidence for dark matter is that the visible matter seems to be moving to quickly, like the spinning of spiral galaxies or the movement of galaxies in a galaxy cluster. There has to be some unseen matter tugging at the visible matter to explain how quickly it´s moving. In fact the discrepancy is so big that most of the matter in the Universe has to be dark matter! Everything you see around you is just a tiny fraction of what´s really there.
Einstein got it wrong
Not only is dark matter wafting through you right now, but you´re also warping the space around you. According to Einstein, every object causes some curvature in the space around it. The curvature from a person is too small to measure directly, but galaxies and clusters of galaxies cause so much warping that background things look distorted. From that distortion we can figure out how much matter there is, which is another line of evidence for dark matter.
Some scientists have argued that Einstein got it wrong about gravity, and that what we´re calling evidence for dark matter is just a sign that we´ve got gravitational tugs from the visible matter wrong. But an image of two galaxy clusters in a middle of a collision have made the case for dark matter very strong. The Hubble Space Telescope took a picture, and from the distorted background galaxies the scientists figured out where the matter was. In the picture, this is shaded in blue. Meanwhile, the Chandra X-ray space telescope (there are lots of space telescopes!) took a picture and found out where the gas is. This is red in the picture. Now when gas collides with gas, you get all sorts of messy turbulence and mixing and maybe shock waves. But when dark matter meets dark matter, it just passes right through. Even if your hand was made of dark matter, you STILL wouldn´t be able to scoop up a handful! What the astronomers saw in the galaxy cluster collision is that the gas (red) got stuck in the middle, while most of the matter (blue) passed right through and out the other side. This is very hard to explain in any way, unless most of the matter is dark matter.
Useful links:
NASA Finds Direct Proof of Dark Matter
Study S197 - How the universe works with the OU
Study S194 - Introducing astronomy
More information on Stephen Serjeant
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The OU´s Senior Lecturer in Astrophysics Stephen Serjeant gives an insight into what dark matter is all about... Imagine you had a big box of dark matter. What would it look like? You´re probably imagining a big black cube, aren´t you? Actually it would be perfectly transparent. That´s because it´s not really ´dark´ ...
Lunar fingerprints lead to earth
Researcher Mahesh Anand of the Open University´s Centre for Earth, Planetary, Space and Astronomical Research (CEPSAR) is undertaking analysis of lunar basalt collected during the moon landings of the late 1960s and 1970s.
The results may provide clues into the origins of the earth. See the video below for more information.
Researcher Mahesh Anand of the Open University´s Centre for Earth, Planetary, Space and Astronomical Research (CEPSAR) is undertaking analysis of lunar basalt collected during the moon landings of the late 1960s and 1970s. The results may provide clues into the origins of the earth. See the video below for more information.
Preventing earthquake deaths
Dave Rothery, a Senior Lecturer in the OU Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, examines whether the Italian Government could have been better prepared for the recent L’Aquila
Dave Rothery, a Senior Lecturer in the OU Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, examines whether the Italian Government could have been better prepared for the recent L’Aquila earthquake.
Now that the drama of the L’Aquila earthquake is losing its immediacy, some media outlets are shifting their attention to recrimination, having discovered that last month the Italian civil protection agency silenced Giampaolo Giuliani who had been raising alarm among residents of the area on the grounds of an increase in the amount of radon gas in the soil.
So, was this earthquake predicted, and what should the authorities have done?
My first comment is that prediction is easy with hindsight. With the aid of hindsight it can be seen that increased radon (leaking up from fractured rock at depth) was heralding this earthquake, and that various smaller earthquakes in the previous weeks were foreshocks to the main event. The trouble is that foreshocks don’t usually happen and cannot be recognised as foreshocks until the bigger earthquake happens. More often, a big earthquake happens suddenly, and is followed by a series of smaller earthquakes known as aftershocks. From the perspective of March, it would have been reasonable to interpret the increased soil radon as associated with the small earthquakes that were already happening, and to anticipate that activity would subside.
No win situation
In this case, the civil protection agency made a ‘wrong call’, but a perfectly excusable one. Moreover, consider this. Suppose they had concluded, in late March, that there was a 50 per cent chance of a major earthquake somewhere in an area the size of Lincolnshire. What should ‘they’ have done? Told hundreds of thousands of people to sleep outdoors for a month? Advised them (or forced them?) to evacuate the province. What would that have cost, and what would the repercussions have been if a major earthquake had then not happened?
Predicting earthquakes for civil protection purposes is usually a ‘no win’ situation. What can be done and in fact is done in earthquake-prone regions of Italy is to drill school children on what to do if they feel an earthquake (dive under the nearest table). Also construction codes to make buildings earthquake resistant should be enforced. The situation in that respect gives less reason for complacency. Not just in Italy but pretty much worldwide schools and other public buildings are built on the cheap, and inspectors can be under pressure to turn a blind eye. I wait to learn how many new school buildings fell down this time, and I’m glad that this earthquake happened when the schools were empty.
I have been in the company of half a dozen Italian colleagues at a meeting in the Netherlands for the past two days. Many of them felt foreshocks over the past few weeks, and several of them felt (of have spouses who felt) yesterday’s earthquake. Not one of them is blaming the government for what happened. They accept that parts of their country are at risk from earthquakes, and that (generally speaking) buildings that have stood since the Rennaissance cannot be made earthquake proof. But hey, they survived for several hundred years, so that’s not bad. Two hundred-plus deaths is a tragedy, but provided that the relief effort is swift and appropriate, the authorities have done their job. That seems reasonable to me.
A little perspective. In 2006 and 2007 about 3,000 people died each year in road accidents in the UK, and it was probably about 5,000 in Italy.
Dave Rothery, a Senior Lecturer in the OU Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, and chairs the level 1 Science Short Course S186 Volcanoes, Earthquakes and Tsunamis, where issues of hazard prediction and hazard mitigation are examined.
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Dave Rothery, a Senior Lecturer in the OU Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, examines whether the Italian Government could have been better prepared for the recent L’Aquila Dave Rothery, a Senior Lecturer in the OU Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, examines whether the Italian Government could have been better prepared for the recent ...
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Hard as rocks?
Science students get all the fun! In this video, Senior Research Fellow Sarah Sherlock, of the OU´s Faculty of Science, demonstrates how to melt rocks using lasers.
Science students get all the fun! In this video, Senior Research Fellow Sarah Sherlock, of the OU´s Faculty of Science, demonstrates how to melt rocks using lasers.
Space: A 90-second lecture
Dr Stephen Serjeant, a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Physics and Astronomy, asks the question: if space is expanding what is it expanding into?
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Dr Stephen Serjeant, a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Physics and Astronomy, asks the question: if space is expanding what is it expanding into? Useful links Goldfinger: A 60-second lecture Politics: A 90-second lecture Study physics and astronomy at the OU
A lightbulb moment...
Following on from Edison´s first lightbulb moment back in 1879, the OU´s Stephen Serjeant, from the Faculty of Science, experiments with an alternative power source - the humble potato.
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Following on from Edison´s first lightbulb moment back in 1879, the OU´s Stephen Serjeant, from the Faculty of Science, experiments with an alternative power source - the humble potato. Useful links Science at the OU
Administrators
Who's your favourite TV expert on British TV (current or of all time)?
David Attenborough
55% (399 votes)
Mary Beard
5% (33 votes)
Martin Lewis
3% (24 votes)
Jo Frost
2% (15 votes)
Brian Cox
21% (150 votes)
Maggie Aderin-Pocock
0% (1 vote)
The Hairy Bikers: David Myers & Simon King
2% (18 votes)
The Two Fat Ladies: Clarissa Dickson Wright & Jennifer Paterson
1% (8 votes)
Gareth Malone
2% (18 votes)
Monty Halls
0% (3 votes)
Other
7% (52 votes)
Total votes: 721
David Attenborough 55% (399 votes) Mary Beard 5% (33 votes) Martin Lewis 3% (24 votes) Jo Frost 2% (15 votes) Brian Cox 21% (150 votes) Maggie Aderin-Pocock 0% (1 vote) The Hairy Bikers: David Myers & Simon King 2% (18 votes) The Two Fat Ladies: Clarissa ...
Will the Higgs-boson be found in the LHC?
Yes....because....
66% (61 votes)
No....because....
34% (32 votes)
Total votes: 93
Yes....because.... 66% (61 votes) No....because.... 34% (32 votes) Total votes: 93