Looking to the skies

[ This article by Paul Willis, was published on October 12 2011, last updated on April 2 2012. ]

This week a couple of items connected through the heavens. One is the world’s greatest solar vehicle challenge and the other, well it’s perhaps the most wonderfully weird story I’ve heard in a long time!

Isn’t it fitting that our sun-drenched country is the stage for the world’s largest solar-powered vehicle challenge? Notice I say ‘challenge’. As has been pointed out to me several times, it’s not a race. The challenge is to demonstrate robust technologies for harnessing the sun, not to whip across the continent in the shortest possible time. It’s a demonstration of what’s possible, a test bed for cutting-edge solar engineering and this time around RiAus will be there as the Mission Control for the world’s media.

The World Solar Challenge is held every two years and attracts the best research teams and their vehicles from across the planet. Starting out in Darwin the entrants head south covering over 3000km through the outback to arrive in Adelaide a week or so later. There is a strong competitive edge, not just to be the first across the finish line, but to demonstrate that their particular approach to building these impressive vehicles leads to better overall performance than their competitors. And you can follow all the action live through the RiAus website.

Meanwhile on the other side of the planet what must be one of the most amazing coincidences in history has occurred. According to my primary source in the British newspaper the Guardian a house in Paris has been struck by an egg-sized meteorite. That in itself is pretty remarkable, what are the chances of a house being hit by a meteorite anywhere on earth? Answer: vanishingly small. But the kicker is the name of the family who own the house — Commette! OK, so ‘commette’ translates into English as ‘commit’ (while ‘comet’ in French is ‘comète‘) but surely the bilingual phononym is close enough to raise a few wry smiles? No one was hurt in the incident and the full story can be read on the Guardian website. And I hope that little piece of trivia provides you with some inner delight for the next week or so.

Meanwhile, I’m off to Darwin for the start of that cross-continental solar challenge.

By Dr Paul Willis @Fossilcrox