The Phoenix Sun

Chu: "It's been a long time since we had them up there."

Courtesy of the good people at Planet Forward, here’s a video clip of Secretary of Energy Steven Chu and Council of Environmental Quality Chair Nancy Sutley announcing the good news earlier today that the Obama administration will be installing solar panels (both PV and solar thermal) on the White House roof by next spring. (You can read the full story at OnEarth magazine, here.)

From the Solar Dynamics Observatory:

On April 19, AIA observed one of the largest prominence eruptions in years. The huge structure erupts, but a great deal of the plasma (hundreds of millions of tons) is unable to escape the gravitational pull of the Sun and falls back down as “plasma rain.” As the rain impacts the surface, bright flashes can be seen as the momentum is absorbed on impact. SDO is the first observatory to capture both the rain and the impacts, allowing us to learn a great deal from observations like this.

(Spoiler alert: Look for the plasma rain begin its fall at about eighteen seconds.)

And what is “plasma?” Glad you asked. According to NASA’s glossary:

A fourth state of matter (in addition to solid, liquid, and gas) that exists in space. In this state, atoms are positively charged and share space with free negatively charged electrons. Plasma can conduct electricity and interact strongly with electric and magnetic fields. The solar wind is actually hot plasma blowing from the sun.

Musician (and deep sea explorer) Gale Mead has made a music video that could become the anthem of a new generation of environmentalists coming of age during the BP oil disaster — a tragedy that, as Mead’s lyrics remind us, is still unfolding.

From "BP Did a Bad Bad Thing"

Based on Chris Isaak’s song, Baby Did a Bad Thing, Mead has combined images and words into a potent, nearly overpowering, brew of anger, grief and protest.