Geek Gestalt

What should Road Trip 2009 do in Jackson Hole, Wyoming? If you have a great suggestion that I end up incorporating into the project, and you're the first to make it, I have a nice prize for you.

(Credit: Jackson Hole Central Reservations)

COLUMBIA FALLS, Montana--For the past three-plus weeks, I've been driving around states like Colorado, Utah, Idaho, and now the Big Sky state, writing stories and producing photo galleries and videos as part of my Road Trip 2009 package. Almost everything I've done was pre-scheduled and coordinated long before the trip started.

But for some reason, a few things on the agenda seem to have fallen through in the last few days, and I find myself, among other things, looking for a perfect Road Trip story to do in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.

And this is where you come in. When I've asked for this kind of help in the past, as I did recently for my visit to Boise, Idaho, you've come through with terrific suggestions. So I'm turning to you again: can you help me find something to do in Jackson that fits into Road Trip's mission of giving exposure to the best this country has to offer in a wide range of fields including technology, military, science, space, architecture, aviation, nature, and so on?

In this case, however, there's a twist: my visit has to be on a Saturday. That complicates things, I know, because most businesses are closed, and few people want to host a reporter on the weekend. But schedules being what they are, that's my situation. Still, I know you will have terrific ideas, and I want to hear them. If you're the first person to make a suggestion that I actually end up incorporating into Road Trip, I have a nice prize for you: Either a Flip Mino video camera or DVD sets of Dexter, seasons one through three.

Please let me know your ideas as soon as possible, and send them, via e-mail, to daniel--dot--terdiman--at--cnet--dot--com. I look forward to hearing from you.

For the next two weeks, Geek Gestalt will be on Road Trip 2009. After driving more than 12,000 miles in the Pacific Northwest, the Southwest, and the Southeast over the last three years, I'll be writing about and photographing the best in technology, science, military, nature, aviation and more in Montana, Wyoming, South Dakota, and Colorado. If you have a suggestion for someplace to visit, drop me a line. And in the meantime, join the Road Trip 2009 Facebook page and follow my Twitter feed.

MISSOULA, Mont.--There were two points Sunday when I had absolutely no idea what time it was. It wasn't that I didn't have any timepieces. Rather, I had several, and they were all telling me different things.

The first time it happened, I was on my way up to the top of the Hells Canyon National Recreation Area in western Idaho at 7,400 feet above sea level, as part of Road Trip 2009. From high up there, it is possible to see four states: Idaho, Montana, Oregon, and Washington. Down below, in Riggins, Idaho, where I'd started my day, it was Mountain time, and, I was pretty sure, about 11:15 a.m. Off to the west, and to the north, it was Pacific time, or about 10:15 a.m. Yet, both iPhones I had in the car, as well as a dedicated Garmin GPS device, read 12:15 p.m. Which it would have been if I'd been in the Central time zone.

Utterly confused, but determined to believe the middle result, the Mountain time zone clock reading, I went on with my day. And indeed, before long, I saw that the iPhones--I didn't check the GPS device--had reverted to the proper time.

Driving around parts of Idaho and Montana on Sunday, CNET News reporter Daniel Terdiman found both his iPhone and a dedicated GPS receiver confused by what time it was. Why did that happen?

(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET)

But hours later, not long after crossing the border into Montana and re-entering the Mountain time zone--parts of north-central Idaho are in the Pacific time zone--I glanced at the two iPhones and once again, they were reading a time that just had to be in the Central time zone.

At least I hoped so, as I really didn't want it to be that late. So, just to be sure, I checked one of those bank time displays you always pass on the road, and sure enough, I was right. It wasn't as late as the iPhones were saying it was. They were once again displaying a time that would be in the Central time zone.

So what happened? Do you have any idea why three different pieces of digital equipment--the two iPhones and my GPS device--were giving me the time from hundreds of miles to the east? I could accept it when I was on top of the world, at 7,400 feet and climbing. But later, I was down in the flats, and the devices were doing the same thing.

Any ideas? I'd love to hear them.

Geek Gestalt is on the tail end of Road Trip 2009. After driving more than 12,000 miles in the Pacific Northwest, the Southwest and the Southeast over the last three years, I'm now writing about and photographing the best in technology, science, military, nature, aviation and more in Montana, Wyoming, South Dakota and Colorado. If you have a suggestion for someplace to visit, drop me a line. And in the meantime, join the Road Trip 2009 Facebook page and follow my Twitter feed.

This hotfall above an Idaho hot spring produces spectacular rising steam.

(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET)

RIGGINS, Idaho--For many years, I've been taking road trips around the United States. Many have been in the West, and I've covered a whole lot of ground.

In 2006, I did my first CNET Road Trip, a two-week-plus journey around the Pacific Northwest writing stories and posting photo galleries of the most interesting things I found along the way. Afterward, the project became an annual thing, and I'm now well into Road Trip 2009.

And I've finally completed a personal mission I set long ago.

In 2005, just before I joined the CNET News staff, I set out on a 10-day trip that was intended to take me through California, Nevada, Oregon and Idaho. Among the things I was doing was reporting on a rather incredible art piece, the Simnuke Project. But mainly, I was on vacation.

Some friends and I took a couple days at the beginning and visited several of the outstanding hot springs along the eastern Sierra Nevada in California. And after Simnuke, I had planned on going to visit more springs in Oregon and then Idaho. Particularly Idaho. I had heard that there were more springs there than anywhere else in the States. I didn't know if it was true, but it sounded great, and I was going.

And then my car broke down. I lost two days to that, and that cost me Idaho. I made it to some great springs in Oregon, but no gem state.

Flash forward to Road Trip 2006. I was in the Pacific Northwest. Idaho--once again on the itinerary. I would make it to those springs, and complete the circle started the year before I joined CNET. Except when I came down out of eastern Washington state and hit the intersection of Interstates 82 and 84, I was flat-out exhausted. Suck it up and turn left: hello, Idaho. Grit my teeth and turn right: back to Oregon.

Did I mention I was exhausted? I turned right. Fortunately, that return visit to Oregon was incredible.

Still, the following year, when Road Trip 2007 took me to the Southwest--California, Nevada, Arizona, Utah, and New Mexico--I thought, if I'm ambitious, maybe I'll sneak north out of Utah and hit Idaho. And get to those darned springs. But it wasn't to be: too far north.

This went on and on, becoming this great, unfulfilled ambition in my life. In December 2007, I finally went to Idaho, to a suburb near Boise, to do a story on the research and development labs of Ugobe, the maker of the toy robot dinosaur Pleo. And, I thought as I was planning the trip, I'll just tack on a couple of days, rent a car, and drive out to some of the springs. It was foolproof.

Until you realize that I'm a city kid from Northern California, and Idaho has intense winters. Not all of it, of course. But many of the roads where the springs are were in areas that maps said, "May be closed in winter." I could have done it I suppose, but in two days, with an inexpensive rental car, in deep winter, it didn't seem prudent.

I guess a message throughout all this is that I chose prudence over risk time and again. Oh, well. Live and learn.

But then, finally, came Road Trip 2009. The map promised vindication: Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, South Dakota. And, yes, Idaho.

Given the past history, I told myself not to get cocky about it. I wouldn't believe I'd make it to the springs until I was there.

At a lovely Idaho hot spring, a man lays submerged in the water as a hot shower cascades from a rock far above.

(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET)

And then, finally, this weekend, I arrived. In the stunning national forests of the center of the state, on some of the most beautiful rivers I've seen, I was there. At last.

Did they survive, in my mind, the scrutiny of the build-up? You bet. They are some of the best hot springs I've seen, and I've seen more than a few.

They're tucked away along rivers, have hot waterfalls, and feature geothermal steam rising off the sides of steep hills. And they're in the midst of the most green valleys you can imagine.

And I made it.

So what's the next personal challenge I can best?

For the next two weeks, Geek Gestalt will be on Road Trip 2009. After driving more than 12,000 miles in the Pacific Northwest, the Southwest and the Southeast over the last three years, I'll be writing about and photographing the best in technology, science, military, nature, aviation, and more in Idaho, Wyoming, Montana, South Dakota, and Colorado. If you have a suggestion for someplace to visit, drop me a line. And in the meantime, join the Road Trip 2009 Facebook page and follow my Twitter feed.

Micron's newly acquired microdisplay technology could soon make it possible to use a smartphone as a movie projector.

(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET)

BOISE, Idaho--Imagine you're on a camping trip with your family, and your kids are bored. They want to watch a movie, but you forgot your laptop at home. Hopeless? Not at all.

You pull out your fifth-generation iPhone--yes, this is a story about future technology--power it up, aim it at the wall of the tent, and start projecting their favorite film there.

This is one of the many potential promises of a new microdisplay technology from Displaytech, a recently acquired division of Boise-based Micron. Known as FLCOS, or fast liquid crystal on silicon, the technology is designed to make it possible to project from a relatively small form factor device, and with high image quality and vibrant colors, just about anything you'd want, be it a Disney flick or a complex PowerPoint presentation.

Photos: A smartphone as a movie projector?

View the full gallery

Today, the technology is still in its prototype stage, and when I visited Micron here this week as part of Road Trip 2009, I was shown a demonstration in which things like YouTube movies or ESPN clips stored on an iPhone were projected onto a screen via a small device with a tiny 3M projection engine in it.

Even that was pretty cool, because the little device probably had about the same volume as a deck of cards, and the image quality--in a very bright room--was fairly good, particularly when it came to showing text-based slides. But the most exciting thing to me about the technology is the promise that by late 2010 or early 2011, there's a good chance that the thumbnail-size chip behind the microdisplay could begin to be embedded in commercially available smartphones, like the iPhone.

And that could mean that not only would it be possible to watch a movie anytime and anywhere, as can already be done on many small devices, but that it would no longer be a solo experience. Instead, using something like an iPhone, it would be possible to share a movie with a room full of people.

The idea behind the technology is that FLCOS microdisplays can mix color over time, blending reds, greens, and blues in very quick sequence, explained Eric Boles, Micron's director of marketing services. The human eye turns such color mixing into full color, meaning that FLCOS obviates any kind of color filtering.

Right now, the projection engine behind the technology is about an inch-and-a-half long and very power efficient, Boles said. Just 1.1 watts can produce 10 lumens.

For now, no mobile phone makers have gotten on board with Micron's microdisplay technology, in part because the chips may still be too expensive, and because smartphones may not yet have the power to allocate to something like FLCOS. But because the projection technology is on a chip, it is likely to follow the traditional silicon curves, Boles said, meaning that the chips will probably get smaller, faster and cheaper quickly.

The market will likely make it possible for Micron's technology to begin being embedded in smartphones by late 2010 or early 2011, the company said.

(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET)

Micron also faces an interesting marketing question: How to market the chips. The company doesn't plan on marketing FLCOS directly to consumers, but rather will work with consumer electronics companies to create the kinds of products they want. In the short term, Boles said, the most obvious market may well be businesspeople who could easily find themselves unable to resist a small device that would let them project a presentation on any surface any time they want.

Other exciting advances--before the microdisplay technology makes its way to the iPhone--could include adding wireless to the device so that it can retrieve content without having to be physically tethered to the content source.

And it's also exciting to imagine the possible roster of things that could be used as projection screens. Boles recalled a visit to a Mexican restaurant at some point recently where one of the prototype devices was used to project onto a tortilla.

There are, of course, other companies working on similar products, but the folks at Micron think they're onto a special approach to tiny projectors because the microdisplays are all-digital. And that means that Micron may be the only company able to embed such technology on a chip.

During my visit we discussed the idea that there is simply no end to the possible applications for the microdisplay technology. But as the Micron folks went through their presentation, it seemed that there was one constant: Each time they talked about a new potential use for it, my reaction was--and I suspect many people's would be--"When can I get that?"

For the next several weeks, Geek Gestalt will be on Road Trip 2009. After driving more than 12,000 miles in the Pacific Northwest, the Southwest and the Southeast over the last three years, I'll be writing about and photographing the best in technology, science, military, nature, aviation and more in Idaho, Wyoming, Montana, South Dakota and Colorado. If you have a suggestion for someplace to visit, drop me a line. And in the meantime, join the Road Trip 2009 Facebook page and follow my Twitter feed.

For today's picture of the day challenge...win a prize for being the first to name this art project and the artist.

(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET)

Update (9:04 a.m.): We have a winner. It seems that many people knew of, or had visited, Nancy Holt's "Sun Tunnels," close to the town of Lucin, Utah. It also seems that the hints provided and/or Google may have made this one a little too easy. Stay tuned for tomorrow's Road Trip picture of the day challenge.

BOISE, Idaho--If only I'd known, when I began Road Trip 2009 nearly three weeks ago, that running a picture of the day challenge would elicit such a large response.

Over the last two days, I've posted two photos, one of an odd large yellow sphere in Arco, Idaho, and the other a Cold War era Bomarc B surface-to-air missile, currently housed at the Hill Air Force Museum near Ogden, Utah, asking my readers to identify them. I'm not sure if I've ever gotten so much e-mail. So, the picture of the day challenge continues.

Your task: be the first person to send me an e-mail--with "Picture of the Day" in the subject line identifying this art piece, and the artist who made it. I won't ask you to say where it's located, and I'll even give you one hint: it's in Utah, not far at all from the Nevada border.

If you have an answer, please e-mail it to me at daniel--dot--terdiman--at--cnet--dot--com. The first person with the right answer (including the name of the artist) wins a prize. Once I've identified a winner, I'll post an update with the answer.

Good luck.

For the next several weeks, Geek Gestalt will be on Road Trip 2009. After driving more than 12,000 miles in the Pacific Northwest, the Southwest, and the Southeast over the last three years, I'll be writing about and photographing the best in technology, science, military, nature, aviation and more in Idaho, Wyoming, Montana, South Dakota, and Colorado. If you have a suggestion for someplace to visit, drop me a line. And in the meantime, join the Road Trip 2009 Facebook page and follow my Twitter feed.

This military equipment is based in Utah. The first person to tell me what and where it is wins a prize.

(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET)

Update at 9:22 a.m. PDT: We have a winner. It's a BOMARC B--Boeing/Marc CIM-10B surface-to-air missile housed at the Hill Air Force Museum, near Ogden, Utah.

BOISE, Idaho--Out here on the highways of Colorado, Utah, and Idaho, I've seen a lot. I'm on Road Trip 2009 and making daily stops at military installations, national parks, small towns, big cities, energy research institutions, and more.

That means I take a lot of pictures, and every day from here until the end of Road Trip 2009, I'll be presenting you with one picture--and a challenge.

On Wednesday, I challenged you to identify the large yellow sphere, in the picture below, that's located in Arco, Idaho. In part it was because I wanted to know what my readers would think it was and, I'll be honest, it was also because I didn't know myself, and I wanted to. I got lots of responses. But, my dear readers, none of them seemed like the correct answer. So the prize for being the first to send me the right answer is still available.

What is this yellow sphere in Arco, Idaho? Tell me and you could win a prize.

(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET)

Now, however, I'm offering up a picture that I do know the truth about. So in this case, I want to hear from you about what it is and where.

I'll give you a hint: it's a Cold War-era relic, clearly military, and currently located in Utah.

If you're the first person to send me the right answer, Thursday's prize is yours.

Please send your thoughts to daniel--dot--terdiman--at--cnet--dot--com, and include "Pic of the day" in the subject line. If you're the one, I'll get back to you.

Good luck.

For the next several weeks, Geek Gestalt will be on Road Trip 2009. After driving more than 12,000 miles in the Pacific Northwest, the Southwest and the Southeast over the last three years, I'll be writing about and photographing the best in technology, science, military, nature, aviation and more in Idaho, Wyoming, Montana, South Dakota and Colorado. If you have a suggestion for someplace to visit, drop me a line. And in the meantime, join the Road Trip 2009 Facebook page and follow my Twitter feed.

In 1955, the tiny town of Arco, Idaho, became the first community in the 'free world' to be powered by nuclear-based electricity. With the power coming from the nearby Experimental Breeder Reactor I, operated by the Nuclear Reactor Testing Station. Over time, the idea of using nuclear power for municipal electricity fell out of favor. But today, at the Idaho National Lab, the leading U.S. Department of Energy nuclear energy research institution, the idea is very much at the forefront, as scientists and policymakers alike search for ways to provide more power while creating less of a carbon footprint.

(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET)

ARCO, Idaho--On July 17, 1955, this tiny town, which might otherwise have forever escaped notoriety of any kind, was put on the map for a very historic reason: It became the first place in the "free world" to be powered by "electrical energy developed from the atom."

The power was generated by an experimental reactor run by the nearby National Reactor Testing Station, and the flipping of the switch seemed to usher in a new era for the United States and the world: the nuclear era.

Over time, the U.S. and other countries grew more and more attracted to the idea of nuclear power as a major alternative to fossil fuel-based power. But by the 1980s and early 1990s, the country had lost its appetite for the fuel source. It was seen as dangerous, too closely related to nuclear weapons, and too productive of nuclear waste, and gradually, the number of working nuclear power plants got smaller and smaller. In many places, in fact, the mere mention of nuclear power will draw a dirty stare.

But in Arco, there is still a civic pride associated with the events of 1955, and today, there is a growing national enthusiasm for the idea that back then, in the heart of the Cold War, seemed so novel: turning to nuclear power as a major source of energy.

Photos: Inside a nuclear reactor

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Nowhere, perhaps, is that enthusiasm more palpable than at the Idaho National Lab (INL), the U.S. Department of Energy's lead nuclear research institution. Located in and around Idaho Falls, Idaho, INL is at the forefront of developing the technology that could bring nuclear back to the grownups' table, and the researchers there--and clearly, some policymakers in Washington, D.C., as well--feel that nuclear is our best bet for providing a good deal of the power needs of both the general population and industry, while at the same time keeping the carbon footprint small.

I visited INL this week as part of Road Trip 2009, and was given the lowdown on why nuclear is thought to be a better energy alternative than ever before, and why the public shouldn't worry about the kinds of safety concerns that were so prevalent after high-profile reactor accidents at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania in 1979 and in Chernobyl in the Soviet Union in 1986.

My first stop was for a visit with Phillip Finck, INL's associate director for nuclear science and technology (see video below).

Finck explained that the genesis of his lab, which was formed about four years ago, was a feeling that a nuclear renaissance is coming, driven both by a need for new dependable sources of energy and by major climate concerns.

The vision behind the lab, he continued, is to figure out how to address America's carbon dioxide problems with nuclear. Today, roughly one-third of our domestic power output goes into electricity production, a third into transportation and a third into industrial, home heating, and other applications. Of that total output, nearly 85 percent comes from fossil fuels, while only 6 percent to 7 percent comes from hydropower and an equal amount from nuclear. A very small amount comes from other sources, such as biomass, he added.

As a result, the thinking is that nuclear can be a significant part of the solution, and in several ways.

The first, he explained, would be the building of new nuclear power plants; the second, the extension of the lifetimes of the 104 existing nuclear plants in the country; and the third would be using existing--and new--plants to produce new processed heats and liquid fuels that could replace existing carbon-based fuels.

Of course, there would still be the question of how to deal with the nuclear waste from the plants, but Finck said that is also something INL is working hard on. To begin with, INL is looking into ways to make existing reactors produce less waste, and at the same time, the lab, and other research facilities, are working on technologies designed to take spent fuels and through the process of transmutation, reduce their toxicity. The latter would mean, he added, that it could be possible to reuse much of the radioactive waste and reduce the toxicity of the eventual waste by a factor of up to 100.

What this all means is that the time has come, Finck continued, to pursue the development of what he called fourth-generation nuclear power plants. This is a growing research field that is being worked on in as many as 12 countries around the world, including the U.S., Japan, France, and China, all of which are working together to make these next-generation reactors possible.

The criteria of these new reactors are simple, Finck said: they would need to be cheaper, be more sustainable--meaning that they would produce less waste; have constantly improving safety standards; and would have improved proliferation resistance--meaning they would have less and less applicability for nuclear weapons.

Today, this is all in the research stage, but according to Finck, it's possible that the first fourth-generation plant could come online sometime around 2020.

In the meantime, however, there are factors that make even today's nuclear reactors more of a solution for our national energy problems than ever before, he said. To begin with, the operating and safety performance of the nation's plants have never been higher. There haven't been any notable safety problems in the U.S. since Three Mile Island, Finck said, and today, plants are operating at 92 percent efficiency, meaning that they are online 92 percent of the time.

And that has come as a result of better-than-ever training and discipline and means that existing plants are producing power at the equivalent of several entirely new plants, just from that increased efficiency, he argued.

Hydrogen Production
My next stop was to visit with Stephen Herring, the technical director for High Temperature Electrolysis in the Energy Department's office of nuclear energy nuclear hydrogen initiative.

Herring and his team are working on a number of experiments, but their major purpose is to develop methods, using nuclear reactors, of producing hydrogen as a way of improving the quality of existing liquid fuels and to produce more liquid fuels with zero, or at least much less usage of carbon dioxide.

As well, Herring's lab is all about looking for technical answers to problems raised by industry and then finding out, from industry, if they're on the right track.

At the next facility, the Fuel Conditioning Facility, I was shown a series of what are called "hot cells," which are highly radioactive areas behind five feet and nine layers of lead glass.

One of the first things I saw in the hot cells was a series of spent fuel rods from INL's Experimental Breeder Reactor II (EBR II), which was a formerly working reactor closed down by congressional decree in 1994.

If someone were to go inside the room, my host for the day, Don Miley, said, they "wouldn't see the sun go down. So we're not going in there."

In a similar facility, the Hot Fuel Examination Facility, we saw a different set of hot cells, this time behind four feet of glass, but no less dangerous on the other side (see video below). There, David Petti, the director of the Very High Temperature Reactor (VHTR) technology development office, explained that his program is to work on a gas reactor, a "passively safe reactor" that is cooled with helium, and which has a reactor core made of graphite, and which is "tall and skinny" at 28 meters high and 8 meters wide.

Because it's graphite, which absorbs heat, he explained, it's resilient to accidents. That would mean that even in the case of an accident, it would take hundreds of hours to overheat.

"The joke," Petti said, is that in the case of an accident, "the operators could go to lunch, dinner and breakfast before having to figure out what to do."

Developed after Three Mile Island, the VHTR uses a unique kind of fuel: half-inch diameter and inch-long pellets made from huge numbers of compacted microscopic uranium particles covered in three layers of carbon and silicon carbine and then coated in graphite. The pellets, Petti explained, can take heats up to 1600 degrees Celsius without failing.

Inside the reactor, there are millions of these pellets, as well as tennis-ball sized spheres called "pebbles," and when bombarded with neutrons, they fission and create heat.

But the carbon covering the particles protects the uranium up to temperatures of 3,000 degrees Celsius, and the reactor is designed, he said, not to get above 1,600 degrees. "Everything is designed from that worst-case accident," he said, "so heat is always moved, and so it never gets that hot."

Looking into the cooling pond at the Idaho National Labs Advanced Test Reactor, it is possible to see a blue glow coming off of nuclear fuel stored below, which is based on the Cherenkov Effect.

(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET)

Another goal, he said, is to increase what is called "burnup," or how much of the fission is used for getting power on the grid. Today's water-cooled plants have a burnup rate of around 5 percent, he said, but at the INL's Advanced Test Reactor, they're working on getting that number up to 19 percent.

The idea, then, is to use the VHTR to prove the model and then begin building out similar reactors for use in industry. Ideally, then, companies like Chevron and Dow would license such plants in order to produce heat at constant cost and low carbon footprint, Petti said. And such a buildout of new reactors would make a big difference, he added, because a company like Dow has the same level of hydrocarbon usage as a country like Kuwait.

National Scientific User Facility
The last stop of the day was at the Advanced Test Reactor (ATR), a fully functional reactor that is used in large part by the Navy for a series of experiments, as well as by universities and government and industry researchers.

A big part of the ATR's mission is as the National Scientific User Facility, under which university researchers submit proposals for time in the reactor to conduct experiments. At any given time, there might be about 45 different experiments underway.

And one of the biggest utilities of the ATR is that because its core is geared towards giving every experiment exposure to as many neutrons as they need, it serves as somewhat of a "time machine," explained Frances Marshall, the ATR experiment program manager. That means, she said, that because neutrons erode metals, researchers can see a 20x aging effect on the metals in their experiments due to the bombardment of neutrons inside ATR.

Ultimately, it's too early to know whether the nation and the world will get behind a re-emergence of nuclear power plants as a major energy source. But at INL, the researchers and scientists there are making the argument that such facilities are both safe and energy and cost effective.

If true, a lot more towns like Arco, Idaho could someday see their power provided by nuclear reactors. In the short term, though, the world is hungry for new clean power, and a lot of people think the best answer is nuclear.

For the next several weeks, Geek Gestalt will be on Road Trip 2009. After driving more than 12,000 miles in the Pacific Northwest, the Southwest and the Southeast over the last three years, I'll be writing about and photographing the best in technology, science, military, nature, aviation and more in Idaho, Wyoming, Montana, South Dakota and Colorado. If you have a suggestion for someplace to visit, drop me a line. And in the meantime, join the Road Trip 2009 Facebook page and follow my Twitter feed.

What is this yellow sphere? Tell me and you could win a nice giveaway.

(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET)

ARCO, Idaho--Every day on Road Trip 2009, I'm seeing eye-catching things I've never seen before. And every day, I'm seeing things that I'm familiar with that still manage to make me smile, or laugh, or shake my head.

And so, as you might guess--or have seen if you've read any of the stories I've written or photo galleries I've posted during the last two and a half weeks--I've been taking a whole lot of pictures. Nearly 4,000, so far, in fact.

From now until Road Trip is over, I will do my very best to post a daily photo and ask a question about it. If you're the first person to answer the question correctly, or provide the information I'm looking for, then I'll offer you a nice gift in return.

For Wednesday, I want to know what this yellow sphere is. Walking through this tiny town near the Craters of the Moon, I saw two of them on a back street. I have a theory on what they might be, but I thought it would be fun to hear your ideas. After all, when I posted a photo of an extremely cool, steampunk-looking object from Utah two years ago, I got plenty of answers, including many that were spot on.

So, e-mail me at daniel--dot--terdiman--at--cnet--dot--com and let's hear your ideas on what this is. And then please stay tuned for the Road Trip picture of the day throughout the rest of the project.

For the next several weeks, Geek Gestalt will be on Road Trip 2009. After driving more than 12,000 miles in the Pacific Northwest, the Southwest, and the Southeast over the last three years, I'll be writing about and photographing the best in technology, science, military, nature, aviation and more in Idaho, Wyoming, Montana, South Dakota, and Colorado. If you have a suggestion for someplace to visit, drop me a line. And in the meantime, join the Road Trip 2009 Facebook page and follow my Twitter feed.

Road Trip 2009 is looking for your suggestions for what to do this Thursday in Boise, Idaho. If you are the one to make a suggestion that I use, I have a cool prize for you.

(Credit: Boise Convention and Visitors Bureau)

IDAHO FALLS, Idaho--What should I do in Boise?

I'm on my Road Trip 2009 project, and am headed toward the Idaho capital. But the plan I had in place for Boise this Thursday looks like it's falling through, and I'm hoping you can help me figure out an alternative.

So far on Road Trip 2009, I've written stories and put together photo galleries about a wide variety of topics, including green building; preparing for a post peak-oil world; starting out at the Air Force Academy; the current state of Cheyenne Mountain; the incredible canyons, arches, and buttes of southeastern Utah (and northeastern Arizona); Army defenses against chemical and biological weapons; incredible earthworks; giant Air Force bombing ranges; and the building of the next generation of NASA rockets.

That should give you a sense of the breadth of things I look for in putting together Road Trip, and what would work for me in, or near, Boise.

If you have a suggestion for something I can do in the area that will work for this Thursday and that no one else has mentioned first, I'd be happy to reward you with a choice of a DVD set or a video game or two. But regardless of the opportunity for prizes, I'm hoping you might have an idea or two for me based on your desire to see something really cool get a little bit of exposure.

Please let me know as soon as you can if you have an idea to share. You can e-mail me at daniel--dot--terdiman--at--cnet--dot--com. Or you can send it to me via Twitter or Facebook. I look forward to hearing from you.

For the next several weeks, Geek Gestalt will be on Road Trip 2009. After driving more than 12,000 miles in the Pacific Northwest, the Southwest, and the Southeast over the last three years, I'll be writing about and photographing the best in technology, science, military, nature, aviation and more in Idaho, Wyoming, Montana, South Dakota, and Colorado. If you have a suggestion for someplace to visit, drop me a line. And in the meantime, join the Road Trip 2009 Facebook page and follow my Twitter feed.