I was always taught when the season is correct farmers go out and sow their seeds so their next crops will grow. It has been this way ever since seeds were discovered. This may not be true in the future. There is a new crop in town and it is called Salish Blue. It is a hybrid wheat crop and has one very big difference from crops in the past. It was developed by researchers from Washington State University and not a seed company, which is a big plus as far as I am concerned. The reason it is called Salish Blue is there is a bluish hue to the seeds, but this is not the big difference I am talking about. The seeds create a self-planting, self-regenerating wheatgrass which grows every year. This means farmers will no longer have to waste time sowing seeds and can use the time they gain around their farms for other things. There is another added bonus which is the soil gets improved, because the ground is never empty thanks to deep roots and lower energy and lower fertilizer import requirements. These new seeds seem to be a win for everyone. It took twenty-one years to perfect the seeds and gene modification was not used only plant breeding. The University is growing this crop on a small plot of land. We just have to wait for the seeds to be approved for creating plants for human consumption. One scientist made pancakes and guess what, yes they were blue.

Scientists have just made an incredible discovery. I am sure we are all familiar with the fact dinosaurs laid eggs and as a matter of fact some fossilized dinosaur eggs have been found in the past. In Southwest China the remains of a Dinocephalosauruswhich scientists thought was a dinosaur were found. It is a gigantic dinosaur which roamed the seas, but we have found many dinosaur fossils before. This dinosaur fossil had a secret and scientists were very surprised to find out what was. As they searched the fossil they found the fossilized embryo within it. It turned out this dinosaur didn’t lay eggs but birthed its young. The name of the dinosaur means terrible-headed lizard. Scientists now say this huge monster was technically not a dinosaur at all. It may have been a huge monster, but they say it preceded dinosaurs by a few million years.

The battle between the forces which claim we are experiencing climate change caused by humans and the forces which claim climate change is a natural phenomenon is still raging. Some scientists are now saying humans are responsible for the climate changing one hundred and seventy times faster than from natural forces. They base this on the fact before humans were on the planet they claim to have found evidence where the rate of change was only 0.01 degrees centigrade per century, but they claim after humans appeared the rate of change was 1.7 degrees centigrade per century. Sorry guys can’t buy this, because for many of those years humans didn’t even have fire and even when they got it, it shouldn’t have made much of a difference. I would think the big change would have come with the Industrial Revolution, which only happened a few hundred years ago so to say anything before that caused the temperature to go up 1.7 degrees centigrade sounds impossible unless it was a natural force. I am not saying humans do not affect global warming, I think they certainly do, but it doesn’t help when people and scientists make false claims.

There is a new sheriff in town and it is a material which can harness different forms of energy at the same time. Researchers at the University of Oulu say they have found a specific type of perovskite called KBNNO which may be able to harness many forms of energy. The material is ferroelectric and is filled with tiny electric dipoles. Perovskites are a family of materials which until now have shown they may be able to harness one or two types of energy at a time. KBNNO has been shown to be able to generate electricity both from heat and from pressure. Scientists have found that this material was not as good as some of the other perovskites in its ability, but then they found the material could be adjusted to perform much better. They also found they could adjust it to react to react to a third force. Just think of all the things something like this could power. We might eventually have cell phones which will never need to be recharged, because different forces which we cause just by carrying the phones on our body will recharge the batteries in the phones and perhaps in the further future batteries may not even be needed.

There is a theory which stated water was brought here by asteroids. I’ve also heard this said about other heavenly bodies and now it turns out even if this is true, it may not be the main source of water on the earth. A new study shows earth’s inner regions has the ingredients to make water and we just didn’t know it. Computer simulations are showing us the chemical reactions in the earth’s upper mantle could produce water under the right conditions. The mantle lies directly under earth’s crust. Scientists are saying the abundance of quartz in the mantle helped create all this water, because in the mantle temperatures fourteen hundred degrees Celsius and pressures twenty thousand times greater than atmospheric pressure force quartz to react with liquid hydrogen to produce silicone hydride and liquid water.

Speaking of water, scientists are beginning to worry about the heavy metals polluting our water. There are many areas in the United States where companies have closed without cleaning up the mess they have made, because of this chemicals are slowly seeping into the ground. Scientists want to use one ecological disaster against the other. We’ve all heard of algae blooms. They appear when there is an excess of nutrients in warm water. As I said they themselves are a disaster, because they create a dead zone in the water. Their ability to absorb the heavy metals and water may be a plus for us if they are used correctly. It is always interesting when something which we know to be a detriment can be turned into a helpful tool.