Located in one of the most popular national parks in America, Grand Prismatic Spring is the third-largest hot spring in the world.

Besides its size, it reflects the entire rainbow spectrum just like a prism. Its blue center spreads into a red ring around the edge.

The color shift is due to heat-loving microbes in the water.

What Makes The Grand Prismatic So Grand?

Deeper Than A 10-Story Building

Extremely hot water travels 121 feet from a crack in the Earth to reach the surface of the spring.

Football Field On Steroids

The third-largest spring in the world, the Grand Prismatic is bigger than a football field at 370 feet in diameter. A gridiron is 360 feet long and 160 feet wide.

Rainbow Of Colors

The hot spring has bright bands of orange, yellow, and green ring the deep blue waters in the spring. The multicolored layers get their hues from different species of thermophile (heat-loving) bacteria living in the progressively cooler water around the spring. And the deep blue center? That’s because water scatters the blue wavelengths of light more than others, reflecting blues back to our eyes.

A Living Thermometer

What living thing in Yellowstone has helped investigators solve crimes and NASA search for extraterrestrial life on seemingly inhospitable planets? Heat-loving microbes living in the Yellowstone’s thermal pools. In 1968, researcher Thomas Brock discovered a microbe living in one of Yellowstone’s extremely hot springs. In the years since, research on Yellowstone’s microbes has led to major medical and scientific advances, including the sequencing of the entire human genome.

A 1,500-acre fire near the coastal community of Big Sur, California triggered evacuations and closed part of a major highway, state and local officials said.

The Colorado Fire, which has been active since Friday, was 5% contained, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (Cal Fire) said.

A 20-mile stretch of State Highway 1, a scenic north-south route on the Pacific Coast, was closed from near the beach town of Carmel-by-the-Sea to Andrew Molera State Park.

About 400 people in Monterey County were evacuated from 1,100 structures, a spokeswoman for the American Red Cross said, citing county reports.

Four people and a pet stayed overnight at a shelter in a local school, the Red Cross said, Reuters reported.

California has long had an active wildfire season, but in recent years, fueled at least in part by climate change, it has grown longer and more punishing.

Last year, the wildfire season started unusually early amid an ongoing drought and low reservoir levels, Cal Fire said. In January 2021 alone, the state battled 297 fires on 1,171 acres, the office said.

The Colorado Fire is the only fire listed on Cal Fire’s incident list so far in 2022.

This year, California is also grappling with the Santa Ana winds. A high wind warning was in effect for the area, with possible gusts of up to 70 miles per hour (112.65 kph), according to the National Weather Service.

But winds had improved and were forecast to remain light throughout the weekend, the Red Cross said.

Swedish power corporation OKG is to supply fossil free ‘pink hydrogen’ from its Oskarshamn 3 nuclear facility.

The first contract is reported to be with the industrial gas company Linde Gas, with the first delivery due early in the year.

OKG, owned by Uniper and Fortum, has long produced hydrogen from the electrolysis of water to use in the cooling systems of the nuclear generators. With the closure of the Oskarshamn units 1 and 2 and only unit 3 remaining in operation, the company has an over-capacity of hydrogen.

“Initially it is about relatively small volumes. But we have expertise as well as plant and infrastructure and I see a very good potential to expand this business,” says Johan Lundberg, CEO of OKG.

“The need for hydrogen will increase gradually and we have received strong support from our owners to develop this business opportunity.”

OKG says in a statement that the hydrogen plant is currently being modernised, including a new control system, while other components will also be replaced in order to expand operations.

Johan Svenningsson, CEO of Uniper Sweden, says that the ambition is to develop the growing market for hydrogen together with Fortum.

“The Swedish electricity system is virtually fossil-free, and we therefore have good conditions for producing large volumes of hydrogen, which will play an important role when Sweden changes.”

With the agreement, Oskarshamn on Sweden’s east coast becomes the country’s first municipality to offer so-called ‘pink hydrogen’ – also referred to as ‘red’ or ‘purple’ hydrogen – produced by nuclear power.

Data on pink hydrogen production globally is limited and any volumes must be small. However, that is likely to change with the growing resurgence of support for nuclear power and for example, the EU’s proposal to categorise certain nuclear generation as contributing to climate change mitigation.

The IEA’s Global Hydrogen Review 2021 reports around a dozen demonstration projects with a combined 250MW electrolyser capacity exploring using nuclear power for hydrogen production in Canada, China, Russia, UK and US. However, not all are expected to be realised.

France has signalled that nuclear-powered hydrogen production could have a major role in the country’s future energy mix, while the UK government Nuclear Industry Council’s hydrogen roadmap has nuclear power-producing one-third of the country’s clean hydrogen needs by 2050.