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WALLULA, Walla Walla County — After nearly a decade of preparation, the experiment that started last week near the banks of the Columbia River seems almost anti-climactic. Four cylindrical tanks, each containing about 40 tons of carbon dioxide, sit tethered by pipes and tubes to a hole in the ground. There’s a faint hum of machinery as a pump forces the liquefied gas down the well and into rocks more than half a mile below the surface. The setup doesn’t look like much, conceded project leader Peter McGrail, of the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL). But it represents the first crack at finding out whether the vast basalt deposits of the Columbia Basin might someday serve as a geologic vault to lock up greenhouse gas emissions from power plants and other industrial sources. “This is the only one in the world,” McGrail said earlier this week at the experiment site. “Nobody else has injected (liquefied) CO2 into basalt.” The pumping started July 17 and will continu...

The humongous electromagnet has finally reached its destination after travelling through water and roads, throwing a spectacular show for viewers. The magnet garnered itself a lot of fan following on Twitter (#bigmove) covering a safe 3,200 mile journey. The 50-foot-wide, 15-ton electromagnet became a sensation while making a move from the national laboratory in Brookhaven, New York to Fermilab in Batavia, Ill, Friday night. The giant magnet's arrival was welcomed by the new home crowd. A 15-hour drive-down from New York to Illinois, took a month for the giant magnet, considering the safety of the $30 million gadget. It traveled down the East Coast, through the Gulf of Mexico and up the Mississippi and Illinois rivers, by ship. It was then towed into a custom-made 16-axel flatbed truck, which was designed to travel at an average speed of 10 miles per hour, to cover its final leg of the journey. The truck displayed a huge board "Driving discovery in particle phy...

Frogs living in remote mountain ponds in the Sierra Nevada are ingesting pesticides used to grow crops 50 to 100 miles away in California’s Central Valley, according to a study by government scientists. Researchers from the U.S. Geological Survey identified 10 distinct chemicals in the frogs’ tissues, including residues of DDT, an insecticide that’s been banned for more than 40 years. No Kermit, it’s not easy being green. While the new study, published Thursday in Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry, found only trace amounts of the agricultural chemicals, researchers say that’s almost beside the point: The mere fact that the pesticides had made their way to distant sites in national parks and other public lands was their primary concern. Amphibians are considered excellent indicators of ecosystem health due to their sensitivity to environmental change. And while they’re not as charismatic as polar bears,“they are a part of the food web,” said study leader Kelly Smalling ...

Global warming has been bantered about for years. Is it happening? Is it a myth? The pros and cons have been heard around the world and often attempt to cancel each other out. However, the North Pole Environmental Observatory has released photos of what was once the frozen North Pole–only it’s now a lake. The North Pole Environmental Observatory has been around since the year 2000. It is funded by grants from the National Science Foundation and its purpose is to monitor the Arctic sea ice. The lake began forming on July 13 after a month of temperatures rising one to three degrees Celsius above normal. Ice still separates the lake from the Arctic Ocean, but as that frozen layer keeps melting, the lake will deepen. Scientists have been monitoring the melting ice during recent years. It freezes over after the summer months, but melts again the next year. The melting has opened up the Northwest Passage for shipping as well as oil and gas exploration. Unfortunately for the polar b...

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) - NASA is getting an unprecedented close-up look at the sun, thanks to a new telescope. NASA's IRIS spacecraft, launched just a month ago, already is providing detailed pictures of the sun. The telescope's door opened last week, and it began observing the lower solar atmospheres in never-before-seen detail. The early results were announced Thursday and hailed by the research team as exciting. NASA's science mission directorate chief, former astronaut John Grunsfeld, says it's "a grand opening of a new era in solar physics." IRIS is short for Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph. It will continue its mission for the next two years. Scientists say the observations will help shed light on the sun's impact on Earth. ___ Online: NASA: http://www.nasa.gov/iris Read more at http://www.philly.com/philly/news/science/20130725_ap_bd616b58ba8f44c6a15556cc79f145bd.html#rBk7RS44tpHKiz3P.99

European Union and Chinese negotiators reached an agreement to curb EU imports of solar panels from China in exchange for exempting the shipments from punitive tariffs. The accord would set a minimum price for imports of the renewable-energy technology from China. In return, Chinese manufacturers would be spared EU levies meant to counter below-cost sales, a practice known as dumping . The EU import taxes target more than 100 Chinese companies including Yingli Green Energy Holding Co., Wuxi Suntech Power Co. and Changzhou Trina Solar Energy Co. “We found an amicable solution in the EU-China solar-panels case that will lead to a new market equilibrium at sustainable prices,” European Trade Commissioner Karel De Gucht said in a statement yesterday in Brussels. He didn’t disclose China’s minimum-price offer, which must be accepted by the full European Commission, or indicate whether the accord includes a limit on the volume of imports from China. The goal is to limit Chinese comp...