Image of lead ion collision captured by ALICE experiment. ©2010 CERN
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has successfully made the transition to collisions using lead ions, instead of lighter protons, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, Cern, announced 8 November. The collision of the much heavier lead ion particles resulted in temperatures a million times hotter than those at the centre of the sun, and tiny quantities of matter called quark-gluon plasma which is believed to have existed micro-moments after the Big Bang 13.7 billion years ago.
The LHC collides beams of particles going in opposite directions in a 27km-long circular tunnel straddling the Geneva-France border. Until 4 November the beams of particles were of protons. It took only four days to make the transition to lead ion beams, Cern said.
Lead ions are lead atoms stripped of their electrons. The collision of lead ion beams will allow scientists to study the origins of the strong nuclear force which binds particles together.
Links to other sites: BBC, Cern, New Scientist
A material that is both flexible and has the property of bending light visible to the human eye has been created by researchers at the University of St. Andrews in Kentucky, USA reporting in the New Journal of Physics 4 November. Physicists say it is a “huge step forward” in developing materials that will bend light in predictable ways. Potential uses for the so-called meta-flex material are as camera lenses or contact lenses, scientists say.
Materials with these properties have been limited to electromagnetic waves beyond the range of the human eye, and have been rigid, flat materials. The new three dimensional flexible metamaterial uses a different production technique to be flexible, said Andrea Di Falco, one of the authors of the report.
Links to other sites: BBC, Technology Review
GenevaLunch photo album, Gotthard base tunnel, April 2009 below the ground and October 2010, piercing the hole
Noise, dust, the weight of the Earth press down on men who doggedly dig our tunnels
Gotthard base tunnel workers celebrate in front of the huge tunneling machine after final bit is pierced 15 October 2010
Gotthard Pass, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Those of us who spend our lives above ground are hard pressed to imagine what it is like to descend into the bowels of the Earth every day to clock in for work. The past two months have had the public imagination focused on the hellish side of that work, watching 33 Chilean miners trapped underground by a mining cave-in.
Friday 15 October another face to that work was shone to the world, when 17 years of drilling deep inside the Swiss Alps resulted in the final hole between two tunnels being pierced.
The workers shouted, cheered, splashed champagne and carried the ultimate symbol of comradery, their beloved statues of St Barbara, patron saint of mine safety, from one side of the tunnel hole to the other.
The workers who have drilled, transported, and built casings for the Gotthard base tunnel, operating at depths that sometimes reach nearly 2 km underground, have seen the light of day, or at least of the other side of the Alps underground, and it’s no small feat.
Gotthard base tunnel workers line up to return to the surface at the end of their shift
In April 2009 I spent most of a day in the tunnel with a small group of journalists. The atmosphere was very different from that of today, 15 October, when the tunnel was pierced and lights were shining everywhere, champagne was flowing.
The high level of security and professionalism observed all the time by everyone struck us immediately, and it was contagious. Taking a series of elevators down that far is daunting and while the men were friendly they, too fell quiet as the machines pulled us far below the surface and into the true heart of the Alps.
Comradery, faith remain important for workers
Unlike today, with TV crews and other women joining the workers and champagne in abundance, there are two strict rules Down Below: no women workers and no alcohol. No women in tunnels is the rare exception to equal rights legislation largely because safety is an overwhelming priority and any distractions, including alcohol and women, that might add to the risk, are taboo.
It was deafeningly noisy, all the time, and while helmets dim the sound, the vibrations from the huge tunneling machine never disappear.
Lighting is either weak or glaring and, the sense that you are in a place far beyond the reach of help if anything goes wrong never really leaves you.
Waiting, watching as cracks appear, a moment of nervousness after 17 years of steady work
The workers joke, like any construction workers, and those who have found jobs in this tunnel are some of the best in the world: it’s clear they know their business and they don’t spend their days worrying.
But the statue of St Barbara, in her niche, gets a nod from passing workmen on a regular basis.
The tunnel is a masterpiece of engineering, which we will look at later but Friday 15 October, it’s time to cheer the workers who go Down Under every day to shave a couple hours off European north-south travel time for the rest of us, starting in 2017.
Gotthard base tunnel
They’ve poked a huge hole in the Alps, and the mountains are still standing. Pretty soon, we’ll take it for granted.
Links to other sites:
“The New Gotthard Rail Link”, pdf, brochure by Alp Transit, in English, including technical descriptions
TSR video of the piercing of the tunnel
Other programmes will be slowed down to accommodate cost cuts, no Cern accelerators to run in 2012
Aerial view Cern - Photo Cern
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) will continue to operate at its current budget level, but several other programmes will be slowed at Cern, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, in order to save CHF343 million between 2011 and 2015. Member states will contribute CHF135m less than originally budgeted and a “consolidation” of social security systems.The budget plan, presented to Cern’s Council in June, was revised it the council’s request, with cost-saving measures.
“The plan protects the flagship LHC programme, achieving cost savings by slowing down the pace of other programmes,” the organization said in its official announcement. “Cern management considers this a good result for the Laboratory given the current financial environment.”
Cern’s Director General Rolf Heuer, commenting on the cuts, notes that “it reduces spending on research and consolidation through careful and responsible adjustment of the pace originally foreseen in a way that does not compromise the future research programme unduly. The reductions will be painful, but in the current financial environment, they are fair.”
Details of the social security system cost-saving were not published with the announcement.
The patterns of bombardment on the Moon by objects from space about four billion years ago may hold clues to what happened on Earth as well, a new study reports in Science. A minute topographical examination of 5,185 craters larger than 20km across indicates that the Moon was likely bombarded in two separate waves. The first started about 4.1bn years ago, the second 3.9bn years ago. The new maps indicate that larger objects hit the moon in the first wave, smaller ones later. The origins of the objects were also different.
James Head of Brown University, who led the research, says: “There seemed to be two stages of impacts and they were “distinctly different.” That’s an important clue about what was going on in the early solar system—including on Earth—because “the same population [of objects] that was hitting the moon certainly was hitting the Earth”, Head said.
Prevalent theories say that the objects hitting the Moon came from the same source but have decreased in frequency.
Links to other sites: The Brown Daily Herald, Christian Science Monitor, Science
Cern in Geneva, Chinese research delegation visiting the AMS, July 2010, before it leaves for Kennedy Space Center (photo, ©2010 Maximilien Brice / Cern)
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Geneva airport was more than usually busy Wednesday 25 August, even for an end of holidays period, with the hubbub surrounding Cern’s Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS) being packed onto a US Air Force Galaxy transport plane.
The AMS flies to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida Thursday, where it will join the final flight (ISS) in the US space shuttle programme, scheduled for the end of February 2011.
The AMS detector “will examine fundamental issues about matter and the origin and structure of the universe directly from space,” according to Cern (European Nuclear Research Organization). “Its main scientific target is the search for dark matter and antimatter, in a programme that is complementary to that of the Large Hadron Collider.”
The detector travelled to the European Space Research and Technology Centre (Estec) in Noordwijk, The Netherlands, in February for testing to certify its readiness for travel into space. It returned to Cern for final modifications.
“In particular, the detector’s superconducting magnet was replaced by the permanent magnet from the AMS-01 prototype, which had already flown into space in 1998. The reason for the decision was that the operational lifetime of the superconducting magnet would have been limited to three years, because there is no way of refilling the magnet with liquid helium, necessary to maintain the magnet’s superconductivity, on board the space station. The permanent magnet, on the other hand, will now allow the experiment to remain operational for the entire lifetime of the ISS,” Cern notes in a press release.
Professor Stanislav Smirnov of Unige wins Fields medal
India and Switzerland (GenevaLunch.com) – A professor at the University of Geneva, Unige, is among four scientist awarded the top mathematics prize in the world: the Fields Medal.
Stanislav Smirnov, 40, received the award for proving two fundamental conjectures in statistical physics. Specifically, the 2010 Fields medal was given to Smirnov for the “proof of conformal invariance of percolation and the planar Ising model in statistical physics.”
The award was presented to Smirnov on 19 August, opening day of the International Congress of Mathematicians in Hyderabad, India.
According to the description of his work given during the ceremony, Smirnov “gave elegant proofs of two long-standing, fundamental conjectures in statistical physics, finding surprising symmetries in mathematical models of physical phenomena.”
The mathematician was born in St Petersburg and after attending university in Russia moved to the United States to pursue his doctoral degrees. He has been a Professor at Unige since 2003.
Nasa Perseid map
(GenevaLunch.com) – What a universe! As the Earth passes through a cloud of dust from a comet, the Swift-Tuttle, bits of the space debris flame out in the atmosphere to create a cosmic light show known as the Perseid meteor shower.
These meteors are called Perseids because it appears as if they originate in the Perseus constellation.
The show begins at sundown tonight, Thursday 12 August, when Venus, Saturn, Mars and the crescent Moon pop out of the western twilight in tight conjunction.
No telescope is required to enjoy this naked-eye event.
Links to other sites: How to see the Perseid meteor shower (Nasa), wikipedia
Perseid captured in video in 1997
Australian scientists at The University of Queensland, have found that sea sponges at the Great Barrier Reef share almost 70% of human genes.
Many of the genes found in the ancient marine animals are also shared by humans, including those associated with disease and cancer, the study says.
“Comparative analysis enabled by the sequencing of the sponge genome reveals genomic events linked to the origin and early evolution of animals, including the appearance, expansion and diversification of pan-metazoan transcription factor, signalling pathway and structural genes.”
“Sponges have what’s (considered) the ‘Holy Grail’ of stem cells” said lead scientist Bernard Degnan to the AFP.
The study was published on the 5 August edition of Nature.
Link to Nature
Swiss military jets leaving streams over the Alps during maneuvers for the World Economic Forum, January 2010
Sion, Switzerland (GenevaLunch.com) – An F-18 fighter jet 7,000 metres high and performing aerial combat maneuvers startled vacationers in the Swiss Alps and residents of the Sion region Monday 26 July when it passed the speed of sound. Military authorities at the Sion air base told ats wire service that although it is uncommon for pilots to do this in the region, there is nothing special or worrisome about it, and the pilot, concentrating on maneuvers, may not even have been aware of crossing that line.
The skies in Valais were noisy with military jets in training Monday but at around 10:20 a large boom that sounded like an explosion occurred, rattling windows.
Particle tracks fly out from the heart of Cern's Alice experiment from one the first LHC collisions at a total energy of 7 TeV
Update 27 July Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch.com) – Cern’s LHC (Large Hadron Collider) is starring at ICHEP, the world’s largest international conference on particle physics, which opens in Paris Monday 26 July. More than 1,00o scientists are attending.
Four spokespersons for the LHC’s four main experiments, Alice, Atlas, CMS and LHCb, are presenting data at the conference today.
The data is measurements from the first three months of successful LHC operation at 3.5 TeV per beam, an energy three and a half times higher than previously achieved at a particle accelerator.
The measurements to date are for “the particles that lie at the heart of the Standard Model, the package that contains current understanding of the particles of matter and the forces that act between them,” Cern notes in a press release.
“This is an essential step before moving on to make discoveries. Among the billions of collisions already recorded are some that contain ‘candidates’ for the top quark, for the first time at a European laboratory.”
Mary, one of the young gorillas at Zurich Zoo, 16 June 2010 (photo: ©2010 Zurich Zoo, Karsten Blum)
Zurich, Switzerland (GenevaLunch.com) – Tag, you’re it! It’s a game played by children everywhere, but it’s also a popular way for the gorillas at Zurich zoo and elsewhere to fend off boredom.
More than that, it offers clues to primates’ social behaviour, say researchers who have been studying three years of film of gorillas in Zurich and Hanover, Germany, according to a report published 14 July in The Scientific Report appears 14 July in Biology Letters, a publication of Britain’s national academy of science, The Royal Society.
Science Now carries a video of the game at Zurich’s zoo.
Behavioral biologist Edwin van Leeuwen and his team at the University of Portsmouth in Hampshire, UK, “say the behavior indicates that gorillas know the limits of their social status—and that they play tag to help even the score.”
Taggers are usually those lower on the social scale and they are also usually the ones who start a new round of the game.
Illustration from Biology Letters: gorillas' tag game in Hanover, Germany zoo
“The findings, Ross says, suggest that low-status gorillas use the game as a sort of ego boost. They can hit a high-status individual without repercussions, she says, and that gives them a feeling of superiority, even if it’s only temporary. And that means that gorillas are aware of inequities in their society.”
Mothers often sit on the sidelines and watch, without intervening.
It’s the first time this social ladder behaviour has been observed outside a laboratory experiment setting, say the authors.
The scientific report appears 14 July in Biology Letters, a publication of Britain’s national academy of science, The Royal Society.
French researchers have found, and put on display at the Natural History Museum in Paris, the fossilized remains of what could be described as a “sea monster.”
The findings of a 12 million-year-old creature dug from the Peruvian dessert, is being explained in the most recent edition of Nature magazine.
The fossil found in an expedition in 2008, has 36 cm-long teeth, located on the mandible and the skull. Researchers believe this means “Leviathan” – as the giant predator whale is being called – could have fed off other whales, and might have engaged in fierce battles.
The jaws of the “Leviathan Melville” is 3 meters long, that is 2 meters more than the bite of killer whales nowadays.
Video by Nature magazine
Aerial view Cern - Photo Cern
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Cern, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, has announced a new programme to guide the collaboration between physics research and the medical field.
The newly presented strategy stems from a February workshop that discussed the synergy between physics and health. It gathered over 400 healthcare professionals and physicists in the Swiss-French border.
Cern Opera experiments bring in exciting results
Cern Opera experiment detector, Geneva
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – A significant step forward in our understanding of physics was announced in Italy Monday 31 May, by a team at the Gran Sasso laboratory: the first direct observation of a tau particle in a muon neutrino beam sent through the Earth from Cern, 730km away.
The team has been working as part of the Opera experiments at Cern in Geneva.
The tau particle sighting provides the missing link to a puzzle that has intrigued physicists since it was described in the 1960s by US scientist Ray Davies, whose work on it led to a Nobel Prize. Cern reports:
He observed far fewer neutrinos arriving at the Earth from the Sun than solar models predicted: either solar models were wrong, or something was happening to the neutrinos on their way. A possible solution to the puzzle was provided in 1969 by the theorists Bruno Pontecorvo and Vladimir Gribov, who first suggested that chameleon-like oscillatory changes between different types of neutrinos could be responsible for the apparent neutrino deficit.
Several experiments since have observed the disappearance of muon-neutrinos, confirming the oscillation hypothesis, but until now no observations of the appearance of a tau-neutrino in a pure muon-neutrino beam have been observed: this is the first time that the neutrino chameleon has been caught in the act of changing from muon-type to tau-type.
The chameleon-like change has enormous potential significance for the world of physics.
Science magazine’s 7 May issue publishes the work of a group of scientists who have shown that Neandertal Man is indeed a distance relative, with a small part of the human population carrying some of his genes.
The study also appears to back up the Out of Africa theory that most of the human population comes from a small group in central Africa.
An international team carried out a draft sequence of the Neandertal genome, composed of more than 4 billion nucleotides from three individuals who lived 30,000 years ago. The team was led by Svante Pääbo of the Max-Planck Institute in Germany.
Links to other sites: BBC, Bloomberg/Business Week, Science magazine about Neandertals
Solar impulse lifts off the ground for its first flight in Payerne, Switzerland 7 April 2010
Update 13:05 Lausanne, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The weather was beautiful, the mood upbeat – and the plane flew, just as everyone was hoping it would. Solar Impulse, the first plane designed to fly night and day without fossil fuels, slowly climbed 1,200 metres into the air Wednesday 7 April at 10:27 and flew for the next 87 minutes before pilot Markus Scherdel landed it again in Payerne.
Solar Impulse, maiden flight 7 April 2010 in Payerne, Switzerland
“This first flight was for me a very intense moment!” Scherdel told the crowd that had gathered, as he got down from the aircraft.
Great excitement at Cern just after first collision occurs 30 March 2010
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Beams collided at 7 TeV in the LHC (Large Hadron Collider) at 13:06 Swiss time Tuesday 30 March, a successful physics breakthrough after 20 years of preparatory work that marks “the start of the LHC research programme,” notes Cern, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, in a press release. “Particle physicists around the world are looking forward to a potentially rich harvest of new physics as the LHC begins its first long run at an energy three and a half times higher than previously achieved at a particle accelerator.”
The mood at Cern was clearly one of high excitement.
“‘It’s a great day to be a particle physicist,’ said Cern Director General Rolf Heuer. ‘A lot of people have waited a long time for this moment, but their patience and dedication is starting to pay dividends.’”
It took three attempts Tuesday morning before a collision occurred, but overall the process was relatively smooth and quick, several Cern scientists remarked.
Background, GenevaLunch and webcast, Cern
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - “Ready for collision” said the screen at Cern (European Nuclear Research Organization) shortly after 08:30. The first attempt at 7 TeV collisions of two 3.5 TeV beams, about three to four times the collisions currently done at the Fermilab in the US, is expected to occur around 10:30 this morning.
A beam was lost around 06:00 this morning, but was recovered fairly quickly. The beams are now circulating in their pipes but a collision in advance of the planned schedule is avoided by keeping them magnetically separated. The mood in the control centre is upbeat and excited although given the complexity of the task, it could be hours before a collision occurs.
- Watch the webcast live.
- Background, GenevaLunch
- Cern LHC pages
EPFL joins the fight against tuberculosis
Lausanne, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Testing new therapies in the fight to eradicate tuberculosis is high on the list of work that will be done at a new laboratory in Lausanne that specializes in air-borne pathogens. EPFL, the Swiss federal polytechnic institute in Lausanne, inaugurated the laboratory Wednesday 17 March. It is financed by the Stavros Niarchos Foundation and the Swiss government and is open to researchers from EPFL and nearby universities.
The laboratory will study in vivo strains of Bacillus anthracis, the air-borne pathogen that causes tuberculosis, a disease that has thousands of new victims a year, including 500 new cases annually in Switzerland alone. The teams will be led by EPFL professors Stewart Cole, who is head of the EPFL Global Health Institute, and John McKinney.
Cole points out that the problem is not, as people often believe, limited to developing countries. “In Département 93 in France and in certain neighbourhoods in London the rate of tuberculosis disease is as high as in sub-Saharan Africa.And it is in Eastern Europe where the most virulent and antibiotic-resistant strains are found. Seventy percent of the patients do not survive if they don’t receive effective treatment, he says.
The researchers will work on strains used around the world, which are less aggressive than those found in nature, or even in hospitals, according to Cole.
Governments asked Ban Ki-moon and IPCC for external review
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) Chair Rajendra Pachauri have asked the InterAcademy Council (IAC), a group of the world’s leading science academies, to review the scientific procedures of the Geneva-based IPCC. IPCC was created in 1986 but came into the limelight in 2007 when it won the Nobel Peace Prize jointly with former US Vice-president Al Gore for work on climate change. The group has come under pressure since the news surfaced in recent months that its 2007 report on climate change contained scientific errors which were not caught in the approvals and editing process.
The two men asked for the review after IPCC member governments requested it.
In a statement issued as part of a press conference in New York to announce the review, the IPCC and the Ban’s office stated that:
The Life Sciences building at EPFL in Lausanne
Lausanne, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – A team of researchers at the Brain Mind Institute at the EPFL in Lausanne has unraveled one of the mysteries that is part of the larger question of how Alzheimers works. In an article that appears Wednesday 3 March in The Journal of Neuroscience, the group of laboratories working with the Institute’s director, Pierre Magistretti, has studied studied how the functions of cells called astrocytes are impaired when “possessed” by aggregated, or built up, Amyloid-Beta.
Amyloid-Beta protein, found in cerebral plaques, is typically present in the brain of Alzheimer’s patients.
Lumding Himalaya. Photos by photographer Jef Maion. www.maion.com
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - The Himalayan glaciers are under threat to melt by 2035, according to a widely-read scientific report on the state of the world’s climate. This has now been revealed to be inaccurate, after news organizations, including the BBC, pointed out the error. The report was produced by the Nobel Peace Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
The report contains “poorly substantiated estimates of rate of recession and date for the disappearance of Himalayan glaciers”, according to the IPCC website 20 January.
The approval by the US National Institutes of Health of 13 lines of stem cells for use in research means scientists in the United States will have access to embryonic stem cells for the first time in 10 years. The NIH made the announcement Wednesday 2 December, saying that up to 96 lines could be approved under new guidelines. The US eased its restrictions on stem cell research under the direction of President Barack Obama, early in 2009.
Updated 24 November 08:00 Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The LHC (Large Hadron Collider) began to run over the weekend after a year-long delay, but Monday was the real day of excitement at its home at Cern (European Organization for Nuclear Research). The LHC is designed to study the world’s smallest known particles, the building blocks of the universe. Two beams have been circulating in opposite directions since the 20 November startup, alternating, but today they began to circulate at the same time, crossing at two points.
A view of Atlas. Higgs Boson, extra dimensions, dark matter, look here. Photo by Ellen Wallace
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at Cern (European Centre for Nuclear Research) will be switched on this weekend 21-22 November after its year-long repairs. The LHC, the world’s most expensive machine, smashes atoms into each other at very high energies in order to recreate the conditions at the very beginning of the universe. The LHC will start up very slowly at first, probably at no more than 45o GeV, says James Gillies, head of communications. Energy levels will slowly be increased to about 3.5 TeV by mid-January.
GenevaLunch asked Gillies why the LHC, designed to run at 7 TeV, was going to go at only half-steam. He explained that the LHC’s breakdown in September 2008 required a series of careful checks on the machine before it could ramp up to full power.
Greenland glacier from the air (photo E Wallace, October 2009)
Greenland’s ice mass is melting at a quicker pace than previously believed and consequently adding more water to the oceans, reports Science magazine 13 November. The increased run-off will cause the sea-level to rise by more than was estimated by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) 2007 projection for 2100.
Altogether some 1,500 gigatonnes of ice melted between 2000 and 2008, the researchers say, contributing about 4.1 millimetres to sea levels. The ice melt is equally divided between increased run-off and precipitation on the one hand, and ice dynamics, meaning faster-moving glaciers, on the other. Since 2006 ice melting in Greenland has accelerated and contributes 0.75mm per year to the global rise in sea levels.
New measurements have allowed the team of researchers led by Michiel van den Broeke of Utrecht University in the Netherlands to quantify more precisely the sources of the melt since 2000. Several warm summers have increased the melting of the ice mass faster than can be fixed during the winters by snowing and refreezing.
The scientist confirmed their data using GRACE, a space-based system that detects subtle changes in the earth’s gravitational field due to shifts, such as ice-melt, in the earth’s mass. BBC, TSR
Title: Expanding your Horizons: nurturing girls’ interest in science, technology, mathematics and science
Link out: Click here
Description: First European conference inviting 400 11-13 year old girls from public and private schools to nurture interest in the sciences, mathematics, engineering and technology
Start Time: 9:00
Date: 14 Nov 2009
End Time: 16:00
Sponsored by the Geneva Women in International Trade (GWIT)
A day of hands-on workshops and speakers with women who excel in the non-traditonal fields for girls who show an interest.
Register on-line on the Expanding your Horizons site, further information on the event at expandingyourhorizons@gwit.ch
Lausanne, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – EPFL’s miniature “SwissCube” satellite cube, originally a student project developed with other universities, including Neuchatel, will become Switzerland’s first launched satellite Wednesday 23 September, when it leaves the Indian Sriharikota space station. The launch is scheduled for 08:34 Swiss time and EPFL is planning a live viewing session open to students and faculty, followed by a celebration. SpaceCube is a mere 1,000 cm3 in size and is designed to photograph airglow phenomena.
China is leaping ahead in solar and wind turbine technology, as well as in the lesser known field of solar water heaters, writes Los Angeles Times reporter David Pierson from Rhizhao in Shandong province, China. Some cities such as Rhizhao have 99 percent coverage, with the mattress-size panels covering virtually every roof in the coastel city of 2.8 million.
New Scientist video on Rhizhao and solar water heaters, 2007
