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Going Like Sixty
Eco Scientists Devise New Propulsion - Sea Glider Powered by Water's Heat
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While President Bush says it’s OK for the Navy to kill whales during testing, researchers have launched an awesome sea glider that uses heat from the energy to propel itself. The glider has proven itself by criss crossing the Virgin Island Basin more than 20 times since December. It could keep going for another six months the researchers say.
"Gliders can be put to work on tasks that humans wouldn't want to do or cannot do because of time and cost concerns," Dave Fratantoni of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and Webb Research Corporation said. "They can work around the clock in all weather conditions."
Such robots can carry sensors to measure temperature, salinity and biological productivity.
They usually surface from time to time to fix their positions using the Global Positioning System and to communicate via Iridium satellite to a laboratory.
Most gliders rely on battery-powered motors and mechanical pumps, the researchers said. This one draws its energy from the differences in temperature between warm surface waters and the colder, deeper layers of the ocean.
"We are tapping a virtually unlimited energy source for propulsion," Fratantoni said.
He said data collected by the glider would help researchers understand how eddies in the region affect ocean circulation and move around the larvae of fish as well as pollutants.
(news.yahoo)
Via: news.yahoo
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