Theoretically, mining and collecting solar energy in space for use on Earth hold tremendous potential.
Mr Williams denied the delay had anything to do with opposition posed by local people, who are also concerned about potential earth tremors.
He and others also tried to convince the American government that the risk from big meteorites justified a more comprehensive search for potential earth-hitters.
It illustrated how vast the search is (and will become) and its potential impact on Earth's inhabitants.
Frequent follow-up observations will allow astronomers to track those objects and calculate their orbits, identifying any potential threats to Earth.
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There is substantial upside potential in rare earth mineral stocks, and though a decisive bottom is not yet in place, risk-controlled entry points are evident for three leading producers.
The notion that it is these smaller, tens-to-hundreds of metres-sized objects that pose the greatest potential threat to Earth is explored in the BBC feature article Can we know about every asteroid?
In collaboration with other external organizations, one of the program's key goals is to search and hopefully mitigate potential NEO impacts on Earth.
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Also present in the region are lithium, vanadium, and rare-earth metals, not to mention a potential for uranium and diamonds.
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That fact has been emphasized in virtually every study that addresses the potential effect of climate change on the earth and there have been many but none have had a discernible impact on human behavior or government policy.
Friends of the Earth Scotland campaigns manager Mary Church was skeptical about the potential to lower the cost of energy.
Just last month, scientists announced they had found a planet very likely to have liquid oceans (and thus the potential for life) 22 light years from the Earth.
WSJ: The Weekend Interview with Michio Kaku: Captain Michio and the World of Tomorrow
It lies in the Great Basin, an area where the earth's crust is thin and cracked, so it has great potential as a producer of geothermal power.
The juvenile black hole would be only a 1, 000 years old as seen from earth, much more recent than other examples such as SS433, another potential host estimated to be between 17, 000 and 22, 000 years old from our perspective.
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Just as Mars -- a desert planet -- gives us insights into global climate change on Earth, the promise awaits for bringing back to life portions of the Red Planet through the application of Earth Science to its similar chemistry, possibly reawakening its life-bearing potential.
While presently only 0.03 TW of energy was extracted from wind in 2008, and there is room for a considerable expansion of this technology with relatively insignificant effects on the climate, any future expansion on a global scale must take account that the potential for extraction of wind energy is finite according to the nature of the Earth system.
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The company that operated the mines and still owns the land recognized its potential for transformation into a natural-looking golf playground without the expense of having to move much earth.
One part, space tourism, is a luxury service that is, in any case, unlikely to go beyond low-Earth orbit at best (the cost of getting even as far as the moon would reduce the number of potential clients to a handful).
He has been championing the cause to send a spacecraft onto an asteroid to study the potential mineral reserves there and also how one might be deflected if it was on a collision cause with Earth.
Micro-organisms on Earth are much more common in fresh water than acidic water, and so rather than Mars just having been a potential haven for some extreme forms of life, Curiosity's discovery means that Mars had -- and still preserves evidence of -- environments that were habitable for an enormous variety of micro-organisms that thrive on our own planet.
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