Tagged: Science and Technology

Now, it’s time for a gut check. Literally.  A researcher at Northern Arizona University is working with a team of scientists trying to unravel what lives inside our guts.

It’s a cold morning in Flagstaff and the sun is still low in the winter sky.

Business partners Ryan Holtz and Jim Corning have positioned a photovoltaic panel to face southeast.

When they plug it in, a digital monitor starts measuring the amount of energy being produced by the sun.

“Wow. 159 watts, 160, cool,” says Jim Corning, a partner in Plug and Play Solar Kits of Arizona. “Now, we’re out from behind the cloud a little more. 178. Part of the fun is messing around with these things and getting them pointed right and seeing the output.”

Later this year, the Mars Rover Curiosity is scheduled to begin its longest road trip yet, to Mount Sharp.  That’s a three-mile-high mountain on Mars that tells the planet’s geologic history in the same way the Grand Canyon’s exposes earth’s.  But getting Curiosity to its ultimate destination depends on maps and cameras.  That’s where Flagstaff’s office of the U.S. Geological Survey comes in.

Flagstaff geologist Wayne Ranney discusses some new theories of how - and when - the Grand Canyon formed. The second edition of Ranney's book, Carving Grand Canyon, was recently released.