Here’s an interesting and informative 3-D interactive graphic about fracking. It takes the reader on a step-by-step of the process:

Breaking Fuel From the Rock
Geologists long knew there was natural gas in the Marcellus shale formation, but thought it impossible to unlock. But producers in the last decade learned to mine this huge resource by drilling horizontally to reach a large surface area, then fracturing the rock with high-pressure water, sand, and lubricant chemicals.

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Via: National Geographic

Aerial View of the Bonneville Dam Complex.

More Power!
I live in the Pacific Northwest and have seen or visited several of the hydroelectric power dams along the mighty Columbia River.

Hydroelectric power accounts for nearly three-fourths of the northwest’s electricity generation, the most in the nation. For years, Pacific Northwesterners enjoyed relatively low electricity costs. I can remember our boasting about a penny a kilowatt when the rest of the nation was paying five times that.

Unfortunately, for reasons beyond my understanding, we are now paying our “fair share” and more in alignment with the rest of the nation. And we’ve even experienced so-called power shortages; never totally understood that either.

All that aside, the dams along the Columbia River are an engineering wonder. The very well-written article below does an excellent job of describing just what a wonder the system is. It’s quite long, so I’ve only posted a portion of it. But please click the link to read the complete article. It’s well worth the time.

The High-Stakes Math Behind the West’s Greatest River

Jon Bruner, Forbes Staff

In the generator room at the Bonneville Dam. From left: Rick Pendergrass, Jim Duffus, Witt Anderson, Jerry Carroll, Harold H. Opitz. Photo by Robbie McClaran for Forbes.

In a darkened, ultra-secure room on the fifth floor of an unassuming office tower in Portland, Ore., Bob Neal sits before a panel of ten computer screens and plays Moses. It’s 8:45 in the morning on a sunny late-August day and electricity demand is rising as office workers across the West switch on their computers. Neal points to a dense blue-and-white display whose flickering numbers show power output at each of 31 dams in the Columbia basin. With a few keystrokes he orders the Grand Coulee Dam, the continent’s largest power plant, to ramp up its output by 870 megawatts in the next hour—an increase enough to light 15 million light bulbs at 60 watts apiece.

240 miles away, the Grand Coulee’s 24 giant turbines ease open, sending a surge of water toward the Pacific Ocean. Just below the dam, the river quadruples in volume and rises by 13 feet over a period of nine hours. By 2 P.M., one and a half million gallons of water—enough to flood a football field three feet deep—moves through the dam’s turbines every second.

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This radar image of asteroid 2005 YU55 was generated from data taken in April of 2010 by the Arecibo Radar Telescope in Puerto Rico. (Credit: NASA/Cornell/Arecibo)

NASA in Final Preparations for Nov. 8 Asteroid Flyby

ScienceDaily (Oct. 28, 2011) — NASA scientists will be tracking asteroid 2005 YU55 with antennas of the agency’s Deep Space Network at Goldstone, Calif., as the space rock safely flies past Earth slightly closer than the moon’s orbit on Nov. 8. Scientists are treating the flyby of the 1,300-foot-wide (400-meter) asteroid as a science target of opportunity — allowing instruments on “spacecraft Earth” to scan it during the close pass.

Tracking of the aircraft carrier-sized asteroid will begin at 9:30 a.m. local time (PDT) on Nov. 4, using the massive 70-meter (230-foot) Deep Space Network antenna, and last for about two hours. The asteroid will continue to be tracked by Goldstone for at least four hours each day from Nov. 6 through Nov. 10. Radar observations from the Arecibo Planetary Radar Facility in Puerto Rico will begin on Nov. 8, the same day the asteroid will make its closest approach to Earth at 3:28 p.m. PST.

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