Planet Krishna

TIRUPATI: When money talks, `bhakti' takes a backseat. In what could be seen as posing threat to the very existence of a 17th century temple,
unauthorised quarrying works in about 50 acres of the land surrounding the temple are going on at a frenetic pace. The resultant business worth is: a cool Rs 2 crore every year.

The world must avoid backsliding in fighting global warming and work out a "Green New Deal" to fix its twin climate and economic crises, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said on Thursday. "We must re-commit ourselves to the urgency of our cause," Ban told a December 1-12 meeting of 100 environment ministers in Poznan, Poland, reviewing progress toward a new U.N. climate treaty meant to be agreed at the end of 2009.

Planted in the New Mexico desert near Albuquerque, the six solar dish engines of the Solar Thermal Test Facility at Sandia National Laboratories look a bit like giant, highly reflective satellite dishes. Each one is a mosaic of 82 mirrors that fit together to form a 38-ft-wide parabola. The mirrors’ precise curvature focuses light onto a 7-in. area. At its most intense spot, the heat is equivalent to a blistering 13,000 suns, producing a flux 13 times greater than the space shuttle experiences during re-entry. “That’ll melt almost anything known to man,” says Sandia engineer Chuck Andraka. “It’s incredibly hot.”

As Pope Benedict again called on young people to defend nature from a "correct ecological perspective", the first solar panels have been installed on the Paul VI auditorium at the Vatican.

BBC News reports Pope Benedict has become the first pontiff to harness solar power to provide energy for the Vatican.