Mining bitcoin uses more energy than Denmark: study

PARIS -- Extracting a dollar's worth of cryptocurrency such as bitcoin from the deep Web consumes 3 times more energy than digging up a dollar's worth of gold, researchers said Monday.

There are now hundreds of virtual currencies and an unknown number of server farms around the world running around the clock to unearth them, more than half of them in China, according to a recent report from the University of Cambridge.

Mining virtual currencies with a real-world value, in other words, carries a hidden environmental cost that is rarely measured or taken into account.

"We now have an entirely new industry that is consuming more energy per year than many countries," said Max Krause, a researcher at the Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education and lead author of a study in the journal Nature Sustainability.

"In 2018, bitcoin is on track to consume more energy than Denmark," he told AFP.

Denmark consumed 31.4 billion kilowatt hours in electricity in 2015. As of July 1 of this year, Bitcoin mining used up approximately 30.1 billion kilowatt hours, according to the study.

The highly competitive practice of mining cryptocurrencies requires hundreds, even tens of thousands, of linked computers running intensive calculations in search of the Internet equivalent of precious metals.

New coins are awarded to those who complete calculations first, with the transaction confirmed and entered into the currency's shared public ledger, known as the "blockchain".

The top 100 cryptocurrencies have a current market value of about $200 billion (175 billion euros), according to the website coinmarketcap.com.

Bitcoin accounts for more than half of that amount.

"We wanted to spread awareness about the potential environmental costs for mining cryptocurrencies," Krause said.

DIGITAL IS NOT COST-FREE

"Just because you are creating a digital product, that doesn't mean it does not consume a large amount of energy to make it."

The movies, music and videos that billions of people stream every day all have measurable environmental costs, earlier research has shown.

For the study, Krause and Thabet Tolaymat, an environmental engineer based in Cincinnati, Ohio, calculated the average energy consumed to create one US dollar's worth of four top virtual currencies -- bitcoin, ethereum, litecoin and monero -- over the 30-month period up to June 2018.

That amount was 17, 7, 7 and 14 million joules, or megajoules (MJ), respectively.

A joule is a unit of energy equivalent to the work required to produce one watt of power for one second.

That is up to three times the energy needed to excavate gold, platinum or copper, they found. Of the metals examined, only aluminium -- at 122 MJ per dollar's worth -- was more energy intensive.

A complete calculation of the environmental cost of virtual currencies would take into account the banks of computers used to mine them.

"The computers are made with gold and other precious metals," said Krause.

"They are run aggressively, which means the hardware is destroyed much quicker than you or I would expect for regular use -- maybe a year instead of five or ten."

source: news.abs-cbn.com

It's showtime for Perseid meteors

Dark skies due to a nearly invisible moon will make this year's Perseid meteor shower -- peaking Wednesday and Thursday -- an especially star-studded event, astronomers say.

So grab a folding chair, prepare a list of wishes, and get as far from bright city lights and clouds as you can to watch the natural firework display.

You do not even need a telescope or special, geeky glasses.

At its peak, up to 100 shooting stars per hour will streak across the sky -- more than one a minute.

Viewing is expected to be even easier this year because the moon's glow won't interfere with meteor-watching, as it will be approaching its darkest or "new" phase, experts say.

The light show will be visible around the globe, but especially bright in northern latitudes above the United States, Europe and East Asia.

What we often call "falling stars" are actually tiny bits of space rock that smash into the atmosphere at about 60 kilometres (37 miles) per second, burning up in flashes of light.

Occasionally, longer and brighter streaks are seen, from pea- or marble-sized comet remnants.

The flaming nuggets visible over the next couple of days are from the tail of the Swift-Tuttle comet, which swings around the solar system every 130 years or so.

"All comets probably have a bad case of dandruff," said Carolin Crawford, the public astronomer at the University of Cambridge's Institute of Astronomy.

"But this one is one where the Earth's orbit takes it smack through the centre of the trail of debris that it leaves behind."

Swift-Tuttle last crossed paths with Earth's orbit in 1992.

The visual intensity of the meteor shower is caused not only by the number of space pebbles streaking into the atmosphere but also by the angle at which we approach them.

"It's like driving through a snow storm," said Jackie Faherty, an astronomer at the American Museum of Natural History.

"A meteor shower is a collision between the Earth" -- whipping through Space -- "and this debris tail," she explained.

"We are not hitting one little spot, but turning through it. As in a snow storm, when you are in the front of a car it looks way worse than when you are at the back."

Amateur interest around the globe is high, but astronomy shops in London were not exactly buzzing with talk of the meteor shower Wednesday.

"It's not something we spend a great amount of time chatting to people about," said someone from The Widescreen Centre, an astronomy supplies store.

"Meteor showers are best seen with the unaided eye and we can't sell people equipment to do that."

The showers are named after the constellation of Perseus, the hero from Greek mythology who beheaded the snake-headed Medusa to save the princess Andromeda.

"It's going to be a spectacular show this year," astronomer Morgan Hollis of the Royal Astronomical Society told AFP previously. "You'll be able to a see a lot more than normal."

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com