International blackouts and promises of 'dinosaur skin' (Photo credit: fhm/cumhurkaplan/SimoneN/Getty Images) Jump to:
An international power outage in Spain, Portugal and southern France left millions of people without power earlier this week, and experts are still trying to pinpoint the cause.
Portugal's National Electricity Grid initially blamed the incident on a rare atmospheric phenomenon known as “induced atmospheric vibration”, but that explanation was later refuted.
Induced atmospheric oscillations are unusual movements in high-voltage power lines that occur when there are extreme temperature changes in a region. While it is not known whether this particular outage was caused by such a phenomenon, experts warn that the extreme temperature swings that caused this event are likely to become more frequent due to climate change, posing a serious threat to power grids around the world.
However, this week's science news also brought encouraging news for global energy production, as scientists in China demonstrated a new method for creating nuclear power more safely, based on old, abandoned American technology.
Dinosaur-themed bagsT-Rex researchers debunk 'misleading' dinosaur skin claim
Companies are looking to create luxury items from a material inspired by the skin of a T-Rex. The bag shown here is made from crocodile skin
Could dinosaur skin be the next big fashion trend? This week, three fashion and biotech companies announced plans to produce luxury accessories made from Tyrannosaurus rex “skin,” created in a lab using fossilized Tyrannosaurus collagen and synthetic cells.
Sourse: www.livescience.com
