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There is one scientist who springs straight into my mind when you talk about being knowledgeable in many disiplines making for a better scientist is a narrower field as well: Albert Einstein.

He worked as a patent clerk for many years. That required him to research a wide range of scientific subjects and understand whether each item was actually feasable.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent_examiner
http://www.kpkb.com/news-article-patent-intellectual-property.html
http://www.aip.org/history/einstein/ae10.htm

I could try and explain this in more depth but simply following the links above will do a much better job than I ever could.

According to this, the acceleration anomaly can't be accounted for by dark matter.

Number 857 #2, February 28, 2008 by Phil Schewe

More Spacecraft Velocity Anomalies

        A new look at the trajectories for various spacecraft as they fly past the Earth finds in each case a tiny amount of surplus velocity. For craft that pursue a path mostly symmetrical with respect to the equator, the effect is minimal. For craft that pursue a more unsymmetrical path, the effect is larger. In the case of the NEAR asteroid rendevous craft (), for instance, the velocity anomaly amounts to 13 mm/sec. Although this is only one-millionth of the total velocity, the precision of the velocity measurements, carried out by looking at the Doppler shift in radio waves bounced off the craft, is 0.1 mm/sec, and this suggests that the anomaly represents a real effect, one needing an explanation.

        Some ten years ago another anomaly was identified for the Pioneer 10 spacecraft (see http://www.aip.org/pnu/1998/split/pnu391-1.htm) and a certain amount of controversy has clung to the subject since then. One of the researchers on that earlier measurement is part of the new study, conducted by Jet Propulsion Lab scientists. John D. Anderson (jdandy@earthlink.net, 626-449-0102) says that the JPL scientists are now working with German colleagues to search for possible velocity anomalies in the recent flyby of the Rosetta spacecraft. (Anderson et al., Physical Review Letters, upcoming article; designated as an editor's suggested articlePhysical Review Letters)

You forgot:

5. Close your mind and refuse to consider evidence that doesn't support your pre-conceived notions. "I know there's no global warming, because it doesn't fit in to my worldview, and my worldview can't possibly be wrong. So unless someone can come up with conclusive evidence with absolutely no uncertainty, I refuse to believe it."

For those who wish to take a more objective look at evidence relating to global warming, there's a really good site here.

Interestingly enough, everyone's favorite new solar technology, CIGS (the tech Nanosolar uses), is not only ubercheap to produce (profitable selling at $0.50/W to $1.50/W), but it's also amazingly tolerant of radiation.

http://scitation.aip.org/getabs/servlet/GetabsServlet?prog=normal&id=PRLTAO000098000003038101000001&idtype=cvips&gifs=yes These people seem to think so.

No link to the actual article or anything w/ birds in the summary. Here it is: http://ptonline.aip.org/journals/doc/PHTOAD-ft/vol_60/iss_10/28_1.shtml

I always wondered what they use to measure the mass of elementary particles (not atoms). Can anyone explain?

You always can have some information on the mass from the kinematics of a particular interaction. The mass of charged particles is usually measured by a mass spectrometer. But one way of measuring the mass of photons (chargless for sure) is to observe how they travel through a vacuum. The theory says that they are massless for one. But if they did have some small mass, they would travel slightly slower than c, and a beam of photons would not maintain its coherence over long distances. Here is a summary on the latest experimental upper limit on the photon mass, which uses a different method, with a torsion balance.

In 1929, Boston's Cardinal O'Connell branded Einstein's theory of relativity as "befogged speculation producing universal doubt about God and His Creation," and as implying "the ghastly apparition of atheism." In alarm, New York's Rabbi Herbert S. Goldstein asked Einstein by telegram: "Do you believe in God? Stop. Answer paid 50 words." In his response, for which Einstein needed but twenty-five (German) words, he stated his beliefs succinctly:

"I believe in Spinoza's God, Who reveals Himself in the lawful harmony of the world, not in a God Who concerns Himself with the fate and the doings of mankind."

The rabbi cited this as evidence that Einstein was not an atheist, and further declared that "Einstein's theory, if carried to its logical conclusion, would bring to mankind a scientific formula for monotheism." Einstein wisely remained silent on that point.

"It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it."

(Helen Dukas and Banesh Hoffman (eds) (1981). Albert Einstein, The Human Side. Princeton University Press, 43.)

Perhaps last month's Physics Today is more to your liking?

I remember seeing an AIP article wiz by a few months about making proton therapy more economical.. Found it.

http://www.aip.org/pnu/2007/split/833-2.html

Compelling evidence? Lets see...

1. That there have been far more events in recorded history similar to Tunguska which have been volcanic or geologic in nature... Mt. Saint Helens ... Krakatoa ... Lake Nyos... And which of these are examples of the supposed megaton range methane gas explosions? Why... none of them. Sorry, unrelated geophysical events don't provide any precedent for the proposed mechanism. The notion seems a bit difficult to buy into - the explosive limits for methane in air is usually quoted at 5-15% by volume, to make a mammoth blast you would need to establish this specific concentration range with millions of tons of methane, and have it ignited at the proper time. How does this happen geophysically? Any actual examples?

2. That there was swamp land in the center of the Tunguska caldera. This is a typical place for methane to build up. But... millions of tons? Capable of sudden release? People should be finding commercial exploitable methane gas deposits in the surface strata of swamps I should think.

3. The directions in which the trees had been knocked down indicated two discrete blast points some distance from one another. If this was observed, a twin asteroid would be a reasonable explanation (recent probe and radar evidence shows asteroids to frequently consist of loosely bound multiple bodies).

4. There were odd glowing clouds seen over the area in the nights leading up to the explosion which could be explained by methane collecting in the sky. Reports on the Tunguska event I have seen report glowing clouds in the sky afterward, not before.

5. No impact crater was found. Only the very rare iron asteroids are strong enough to make ground impact in this size range. The far more common stony bodies will fragment and explode in the air. This is a complete red herring.

6. No meteorite was found. This is a red herring like 5. It exploded high in the air. The extraterrestrial particles found are the meteorite.

The whole notion that this is an unprecedented event that requires alternate explanation is utterly wrong. Atmospheric explosions of extraterrestial bodies are regularly documented events. The Defense Support Program (DSP) has monitored atmospheric explosions since the 1960s and has found Hiroshima-sized (16 kt) events occurring about once a year. A simple statistical distribution permits calculating the frequency of larger events, a 10 Mt event is expected once very 120 years. See: an item about this in the Acoustical Society of America's newsletter. This being the case, there is really no anomaly here to be "explained away". Bolide explosions are a regular occurrence and we should see some in the megaton range in the historical record - most of course occur over open oceans and have had few witnesses and left no evidence.

• Solar Wind: It's not quite so simple or homogeneous as all that. See below.
• Flux Tubes: These are tube-like magnetic fields, which generally find a counterpart in a flow of charged particles flowing in/along them (in fact, dynamic magnetic fields in light plasma REQUIRE such an electric current to be sustained; "frozen-in" field lines were repudiated by Hannes Alfven, who was the one who proposed them in the first place, recognized the mistake of not acknowledging electric currents, then spent most of his later life trying to rectify his mistake). A la "Birkeland currents." The terms may be synonymous? They are found persistently in the fast and slow "solar wind."
• Ion beams: There are electric currents in that there "solar wind." Ion beams are streams/beams of protons and/or ionized atomic nuclei found in the solar wind. Such a flow of charged particles constitutes an electric current (or just a current, for those who prefer to mince words), by the fairly standard definition.
• Strahl: The strahl is the exact polar [no pun intended] opposite of the ion beams. Specifically, it's a contiguous flow / stream / beam of free electrons in the solar wind. Like the ion beams before it, such a flow of like charged particles is also considered an electric current (or just a plain old run of the mill current).
• Heliospheric Current Sheet: Yes, that's right, there's a known sheet of current running through the equatorial plane of the solar system, centered at the sun! Look it up! It may not be "huge," but a little goes a long way...
• Interplanetary Magnetic Field: Yes, there's a magnetic field pervading the solar system. Look it up! How does one power a magnetic field in a light plasma? Were we paying attention in the flux tubes entry above? If not, let me say it again... Hannes Alfven noted that electric currents are REQUIRED to maintain a magnetic field in a light plasma. Field lines CANNOT be "frozen in" to light plasma. Mercifully, I've already mentioned the heliospheric current sheet. So, that resolves that little quibble.

It appears that it's roughly six times less efficient to use a scramjet compared to the now current turbojet. Now, multiply in the ratio of the cost of a hydrogen fuel source with associated infrastructure for generation, transport and storage ...

I see this as a reasonable space transport to low earth orbit (e.g. replacement for the shuttle) but hardly practical as a commercial aircraft anytime soon. There'd have to be a major investment in infrastructure that rivals oil and gas piplines of today.

The standard model predicted not a single number, but rather predicted the entire CMBR spectral curve. COBE measured this curve at dozens of frequencies, to extreme precisions (as it was designed to). Every one of the observations matched the standard model predictions to well within those precisions. It is not possible for other predictions to match better, as the standard models predictions matched exactly. It is possibly the most dramatic experimental confirmation in Science; along with stellar deflection and relativity I suppose. Both of which EU will have to explain if it hopes to replace the standard model.

The issue of COBE's accuracy is completely dependent upon the efficacy of the Winston Cone design used to collect the data. The world was sold on the 50 ppm of accuracy of measurement obtained from the computers in Greenbelt, MD, but this does not guarantee that the technology is completely free of distortion. The fact that the curve was so perfect should invite more scrutiny than it received. My understanding is that the Winston Cone is not a conventional electromagnetic horn antenna which is characterized in great detail.

It is the job of scientists to ensure that the antenna is not just accidentally returning the result that they desired. The accuracy claimed in the experiment requires that the energy be collected over the 10:1 frequency band over exactly the same solid angle. Some earlier-reported data on the Winston Cone is cited to support this crucial assumption of unchanging beam width with frequency. Further, some earlier ground-based radiation pattern measurements by the discoverers on their own Winston Cone are cited. My understanding is that these guys should have presented over the entire frequency band the 360 degree radiation patterns of the instrument in at least two orthogonal plans (the E- and H-planes). More simply, in a flat spectrum radiation field, the instrument must collect *exactly the same power at all frequencies*. In other words, the authors' inherent assumption that the patterns do not change with frequency can easily introduce an artifactual frequency dependence to an actual flat-spectrum data. We do not know if this is happening because they have not given us enough information to determine it.

There is a paper here, which brings up a second issue:

http://scitation.aip.org/getabs/servlet/GetabsServlet?prog=normal&id=APCPCS000616000001000295000001&idtype=cvips&gifs=yes

Corrugating the inside surface of an electromagnetic horn antenna has the effect of suppressing conduction currents on this surface. Such conduction currents have the undesirable effect that they cause the radiation -- especially at the shorter wavelengths -- to creep along the surface rather the fill the entire cross-section of the horn. Corrugation prevents this effect, and causes the radiation to travel over the entire cross-section, and thus produce desirable pattern and bandwidth characteristics. In other words, this can induce an artifact within the data where less power is reported towards shorter wavelengths (higher frequencies). Electrical engineering students take classes on how to create simplistic curves like that generated by COBE, and it is sufficient to create the curve that everybody wanted to see so badly with just these two artifacts.

Clearly, this gets into some rather heavy stuff. The key point here though is that your confidence in the COBE results should only derive from a confidence in the Winston Cone's ability to take accurate measurements. If you do not possess a detailed understanding of these intricate details, then you should really hold off in just blindly accepting that the Winston Cone works as it is claimed. Furthermore, if it does not appear that the researchers fully qualified the cone's specifications for the paper, then there is not

Electrical spin injection and detection have been demonstrated in all-metal devices [4,5] and ferromagnet/semiconductor based spin valves [6-8] having distinct coercivity difference between ferromagnetic spin injectors and detectors.

Amd by "we" in "we will have to teach you" I suppose you mean you're a qualified astrophysicist? Either way there have been plenty of very qualified and otherwise successful people with PhD's from prestigious schools who got things wrong. You have to pick carefully who you believe.

There's certainly no shame in claiming that I believe in Hannes Alfven. He did after all create magnetohydrodynamics.

You're using the same argument by quantity that you just got done blasting: you say "EU Theory is not *popular*" and then you say "who have been reading astrophysical papers for 30 years" as if that's persuasive. There are still other such people who've been working on astrophysics at least that long who've reached different conclusions. We won't have to wait much longer to have the truth explained to us? I might be anxious like you for that event if it would shut you people up, but I don't think you'll accept any disproof anyway so I'm indifferent.

As I tell my girlfriend all of the time, it's not a competition! The point is that there are very qualified physicists and astrophysicists, both internal and external to the peer review system, that have read what EU Theory states and agree that there is nothing technically wrong with its arguments. What I've noticed over time is that mainstream advocates do not just want to be right; they also demand that they not be challenged. They refuse to accept that there can be any debate about the fundamentals -- like the mathematical modeling of space plasmas. My purpose is not to demonstrate that EU Theory is certainly right. All that I and others wish is to be admitted into a meaningful debate. We want people to talk about the evidence with us. People like Tim Thompson and those on the BAUT Forums have proposed various simplistic arguments that have in the past been designed to dissuade people from looking into the issue. There was, if I remember correctly, a rather simplistic calculation some time ago on BAUT that got passed around a lot that supposedly demonstrated that there was not enough charged particles between us and the nearest star to power the Sun. Since then, as you may be aware, it has been observed that the solar wind's structure consists of many individual flux-tubes. From http://scitation.aip.org/getabs/servlet/GetabsServlet?prog=normal&id=APCPCS000932000001000026000001:

Recent studies suggest that flux-tube-like structures may exist in the solar wind. In this scenario, the solar wind plasma are confined in many individual flux tubes and plasma in these flux tubes move independently from each other. Within each flux tubes, the (MHD) turbulence is due to the local non-linear dynamics. Across the boundaries between adjacent flux tubes, however, the (MHD) turbulence receives another contribution from the sudden change of magnetic field directions between different flux tubes. Thus the solar wind turbulence will naturally be of multiscale and intermittent. In this paper, using the procedure we developed in [1], we analyze magnetic field data obtained from Ulysses spacecraft in both fast and slow solar wind, at various radii and latitudes. Our results show flux tubes exist in both the fast and the slow solar wind.

As you may know, a "flux tube" is conventional astrophysicist speak for the movement of charged particles within filaments. In other words, electrical currents. This is not some loonie crackpot meandering. If you were being rational and objective about it, you would wonder *why* the solar wind has flux tubes. If you were informed of EU Theory or even just laboratory plasma physics, you would also realize that it tends to point to Birkeland Currents, and very importantly, the observation violates quasi-neutrality. Not only is the simplistic calculation completely worthless, but the physical world is look

Yes, we have so many roadblocks in place to stop new nuclear power plants from becoming a reality like a $500 million dollar insurance subsidy to anyone willing to build new plants with $250 Million per year for five years after, and credits for nuclear energy production...

I hope someone does something to stop them and their overhyped fears of nuclear materials, so we can start making new nuclear weapons. Everybody knows we have solved any technical issues with dangerous nuclear power production!

Currently, Physics Today has an article about the swarming of birds. The studies from the group in Rome are expected to complement current models since currently there is little experimental evidence to back up the models. Using several cameras they take time-lapse pictures of the swarms and then reconstruct the complex trajectories on the computer (a tour de force...).

Einstein actually wrote a lot about politics and things other than science, and tended to be pretty pragmatic about it. He actually left Germany because of his political ideals. He wasn't just a single-field genius completely ignorant in everything else (like apparently many slashdotters are, even though they like to pretend otherwise)

Consider, for instance, Edwin Hubble: astronomer, lawyer, and quite the athlete. Highlights: "Usually he placed in Big Ten dual track meets, in both the shot put and the high jump. [...] At Oxford Hubble [...] competed in track and field events and swam on the water polo team. He later said he fought an exhibition boxing match against the French national champion, and did well enough that promoters wanted him to train to fight the world heavyweight champion." Also from photo credits: "The University of Chicago 1909 intercollegiate championship basketball team. Hubble is on the left."

I wonder if this is one of those things that changed with WWII? Perhaps the 60s? Or maybe Hubble was an exception, and the problem is older.

So, what you're saying is, the sun isn't like a barge (or chariot), it's a series of tubes?

The abstract wrote:
Recent studies suggest that flux-tube-like structures may exist in the solar wind. In this scenario, the solar wind plasma are confined in many individual flux tubes and plasma in these flux tubes move independently from each other. Within each flux tubes, the (MHD) turbulence is due to the local non-linear dynamics. Across the boundaries between adjacent flux tubes, however, the (MHD) turbulence receives another contribution from the sudden change of magnetic field directions between different flux tubes. Thus the solar wind turbulence will naturally be of multiscale and intermittent. In this paper, using the procedure we developed in [1], we analyze magnetic field data obtained from Ulysses spacecraft in both fast and slow solar wind, at various radii and latitudes. Our results show flux tubes exist in both the fast and the slow solar wind. ©2007 American Institute of Physics

Well, it goes like this.

That you just posted is a piece of pseudo-scientific dreck from all I can tell. I had a course on MHD in grad school, the theory of magnetic reconnection most certainly can account for the speed of energy release in solar events. It's also an important problem in plasma instability in tokamaks. Searching on google scholar didn't find any peer-reviewed papers by plasma physicists refuting magnetic reconnection.

Perhaps they were confused by Biskamp's 1986 paper on the Sweet-Parker model failing to achieve fast reconnection that was cleared up in a 1992 paper by Priest and they missed that Biskamp himself seems to accept fast reconnection as possible in his 1994 paper?

The study, detailed in the Oct. 1 issue of Astrophysical Journal, also found the comet tail acted as a source of electrons for the solar wind.

The solar wind consists of charged atoms that are missing most of their electrons, but Ulysses found that solar wind particles passing through the comet's atmosphere could regain some of those electrons. The particles exhibit a different charge when they do this, which SWICS can detect.

Both findings are a surprise to scientists. Thomas Zurbuchen, a study team member at the University of Michigan (U-M), likened Ulysses' pass through the comet tail to putting your hand in the waters of Lake Michigan and pulling out a fish.

The abstract wrote:
Recent studies suggest that flux-tube-like structures may exist in the solar wind. In this scenario, the solar wind plasma are confined in many individual flux tubes and plasma in these flux tubes move independently from each other. Within each flux tubes, the (MHD) turbulence is due to the local non-linear dynamics. Across the boundaries between adjacent flux tubes, however, the (MHD) turbulence receives another contribution from the sudden change of magnetic field directions between different flux tubes. Thus the solar wind turbulence will naturally be of multiscale and intermittent. In this paper, using the procedure we developed in [1], we analyze magnetic field data obtained from Ulysses spacecraft in both fast and slow solar wind, at various radii and latitudes. Our results show flux tubes exist in both the fast and the slow solar wind. ©2007 American Institute of Physics

The basic idea is to create a small fission (not fusion) explosion using magnetic compression. Nuclear weapons use chemical explosives to create an implosion, and during the implosion the fissionable material is compressed hard enough to get a 1.5x to (maybe) 2x density increase. With magnetic compression, a small pellet can be compressed hard enough to get a 10x density increase. This allows smaller explosions, around 50 gigajoules instead of the 20 terajoules of a fission bomb. They want to use curium or californium as the fuel, rather than plutonium.

The experimental work (they compressed an aluminum cylinder with a big magnet at Sandia) was done back in 2002. This isn't really under active development... It's not a totally unreasonable idea, but it would be a huge job to make it work.

Good post.

To expand upon it a bit, I will observe that actual pressures and compressions demonstrated so far are maybe a couple of orders of magnitude below what is needed to achieve 10-fold compression of fissile material. They demonstrated pressures of 2.4 megabars (atmospheres) and roughly two-fold compression in aluminum, performance generally similar to what high explosive implosion systems have produced for over 50 years. Despite decades of work, HE implosion has never been scaled to the pressures or compressions postulated for this. See: APS and AIP pages on this.

Now, their ace-on-the-hole is that they can achieve isentropic compression (i.e. optimal compression, without heating) explosive systems cannot, but even so they aren't in the ball-park with this, only looking at it with binoculars. And the Z-machine is a huge immobile installation. How to convert a grossly souped up version of it to practical flight-ready hardware would be a staggering task.

So this is in the same league as commercial fusion power. A concept that has some grounding in reality, but possibly one forever beyond practicality, and certainly beyond the working career of any living engineer.

The work is dated and I've seen nothing else since, but the idea of providing presentations as videos or audio recordings for review by students who can select, speed up, and extract what they need should have merit.

Here's a quote I picked up a few years back's:

"Apparently, American Psychological Association research has shown that while listening to a speaker, people do the following things:

*18% are really listening to the speaker

*25% are having erotic thoughts

*57% are thinking about something else

(Note: I say "apparently" because I read this in a handout I got at the CPSI conference, and haven't been able to find any actual confirmation of this research on the APA site.)

Most people can speak about 150 words per minute, but can hear and comprehend 900-950 words per minute. So after the first 20 seconds or so of a presentation, the audience will fade in and out and think about other things. So, we were told, you can make this work in your favor by drawing a line down the center of your notepaper and recording "in" thoughts on one side, and the "out" thoughts on the other side. This is supposed to free you from trying to remember "out" thoughts, and encourage you to generate ideas without losing track of the presentation. http://www.corante.com/ideaflow/ 20030201.shtml#21117"

Others have noted some web sites of possible value. Here are several more:

http://www.hardscience.info/

http://library.advanced.org/10170/menuw.htm

http://webphysics.iupui.edu/

http://www.aip.org/education/

http://www.falstad.com/mathphysics.html

http://www.vias.org/feee/index.html

http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Indexe s/HistoryTopics.html

http://www.mhs.ox.ac.uk/geometry/content.htm

http://acept.la.asu.edu/courses/phs110/expmts/toc. html

http://nsac.ca/eng/courses/math1000/index.asp

Hope there's something of value there. Jim

Never mind the fact that scientists are witnessing ice shelves in Antarctica falling into the sea. Or that the North Pole is melting so that there will soon be a North-West Passage which Canada is laying claims to. Or that much of the global warming data does not come from NASA. Or that ski areas in the Alpsare going out of business. Or that there is glacial melting everywhere.. Or that Indonesia's islands are being submerged by rising sea level. Call me a deluded, but it seems that the preponderance of evidence is on the side of these so called "global warming" fanatics.

Just to add some information to clarify what TFA is going on about,

1. In general the oxide-ion conducting material is known as YSZ (yttria-stabilized zirconia) or 8YSZ (specifying 8% yttria). So it is a ceramic of both yttrium oxide and zirconium oxide with a certain crystal structure that indeed by oxide ion holes conducts O(2-) ions at high temperatures (around 700 to 1000 deg C).

2. What the "invention" is discussing is actually a proton (H+) ion conductor made from the same materials in a different way and not needing to be at the temperature to successfully become an ionic conductive. There are other ceramic materials people have been investigating for proton conductivity and these guys claim that their's has some advantages. Here's a link to the paper from Applied Physics Letters last year - unfortunately you must have an account there to view the full-text; most universities should.

Are you sure? From what I've read, a cable of constant width would require a tensile strength of 382GPa.

Here's my source
It's a paper in the american journal of physics by the americal association of physics teachers with a simplified version of the thought experiment and the math leading to the current concept of the space elevator. I don't believe you need a subscription to access this pdf. But let me know if I'm wrong and I'll get around it somehow.

Spectra is a mere 3.5G GPa UTS and *950* kg per cubic meter. You converted g/cm to kg/m^3 wrong. It's not even within an order of magnitude of what is needed. Furthermore, you represented SWNTs wrong. They're SWNTs, not graphite; it's a completely different form that just happens to use the same SP2 bonding structure. Their density is about 1300 kg/m^3.

Furthermore, while it's possible to build a space elevator with a nanotube cable that's only 65 GPa tensile, it's not realistic. It's also possible to build a space elevator out of kevlar. Your taper factor is just preposterous. LiftPort's numbers call for a SWNT fiber with strength 100-120 GPa, yet a total system cost in the tens of billions. You really can't get much lower of a strength and still have a remotely feasible business plan.

Now, the sad truth that Laine refused to address. Early after the discovery of SWNTs, there were all sorts of wild numbers for their strength produced, most around 120 GPa. That's not the reality of the situation. Modern calculations are only for 50-60 GPa, and that matches well what has been tested by using microscopic probes to break nanotubes. But it gets worse! The tubes cluster into ropes by pi bonding and vdw, and these aren't some sort of "reverse-wrap" ropes. Their strengths are only 3.6 += 0.4 GPa. Now, this can probably be improved, but it's obviously never going to surpass, and probably never even approach, the strength of the individual tubes. However, even ropes aren't the end of the story -- then you have to produce an *affordable fabric of an indefinite length* out of them, which puts yet another strength bottleneck into play.

Come on, Laine -- why didn't you address this? It's not like it hasn't been raised.

I think Liftport's development process can best be summed up as:

"In other news, my Teleporation Shoes are performing extremely well in tests. The shoelaces have survived twelve straight tying tests, including one "bunny ears" test conducted by a young child. Sole durability tests are also holding up well. Teleporation will be tested at some time in the future."

Here's the referenced article, outside the PhysOrg tarpit. Abstract only without a paid subscription.

You are correct, The carnot efficiency comes about due to the phonons:
http://scitation.aip.org/getabs/servlet/GetabsServ let?prog=normal&id=JAPIAU000084000002001109000001& idtype=cvips&gifs=yes
http://www.evidenttech.com/applications/solar-cell -white-paper/solar-limitations.php
http://www.springerlink.com/content/u8854u22418252 73/
http://www.evidenttech.com/applications/quantum-do t-solar-cells.php
http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/29499/
(some of these require account to access :(

In practice only those photons that exactly match the bandgap are able to be converted with this efficiency, limiting Silicon cells to about 30%. Using multiple layers of decreasing bandgap can produce higher efficiencies (and hence the interest in higher bandgap materials such as those based on Gallium). This lower efficiency is called the Shockley-Queisser limit which increases with increasing illumination to about 40%:
http://www.pv.unsw.edu.au/Research/3gp.asp

Similarly, virtual photons corresponding to the 'flame temperature' or 'temperament' (derived from the Gibbs free energy) limit the maximum efficiency of the fuel cell to the carnot ratio:
http://www.benwiens.com/energy4.html#energy1.17

At the end of the nineteenth century, physicists believed that all the fundamental laws of nature had been discovered and nothing more was left to be done except determine the physical constants to more decimal places.

Yes. Each synapse has a wide range of activation (see for example: Fusi, S and Senn, W, Eluding oblivion with smart stochastic selection of synaptic updates, Chaos. http://link.aip.org/link/?CHAOEH/16/026112/1 ). The binary simplification is just the result of early models made to run on limited computer resources.

By the way neuronal networks as known in computer science have little to do with natural neuronal networks. To begin with, a natural NN in the human cortex have an average connectivity per neuron of 10.000 with its immediate neighbors (see DB Chklovskii - Neuron, 2004 at http://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S08966 27304004982 ).

Albert Cardona

The article lacked a photo of the Z Machine in operation. Amazing!

Hmmm...according to his published papers this news brief is all wrong. these things get 0.14% conversion efficiency in nearly full sun. Bah.

Excuse me, it is somethin ehich is called commonly a "preprint server". That defines it to be a preprint.

Timothy Ball and Richard Lindzen are idiots. Lindzen argues against Global Warming the same way Intelligent Design supporters argue against evolution. Timothy Ball uses the tired "1970's global cooling consensus" argument (see here and see here), specifically quoting Lowell Ponte, and he also overstates his qualifications. I also found another article by Ball where he lists reasons why global warming is good for Canada and actually says "Thank goodness for global warming."

From the paper:

"In performing these generalized calculations, the following assumptions have been made:

(snip)

* The dense central region may be considered approximately isotropic since particles are converging from and returning to all directions (If it is not isotropic one must deal with problems such as Weibel and counterstreaming instabilities) (poster's note: Fusors are anisotropic. Due to resonant filtering, they tend to operate in what is called "star mode", in which the ions are confined to relatively tight channels)

* Spatial variations of temperature and energy may be neglected within the central region (assuming that the center of the potential well is fairly broad and flat, as stated in Refs 1 and 18) (poster's note: again, not accurate, as indicated above)

* Quasineutrality ( ... ) holds in the region of significant density." (poster's note: Fusors are non-neutral. It's fundamental to their operation.

So, this rules out the applicabily of the general calculations to fusors. Let's look at his specific cases. (next post)

IAAPC and yeah I think the controversy was actually about whether the associated gamma rays, and not just the high energy neutrons, were from the deuterated acetone and not some other source sitting around the lab that was radioactive.

Taleyarkhan, R.P., Cho, J.S. et.al. Physical Review E. vol 69 pg 36109-1. The title is: 'Additional Evidence of Nuclear Emissions During Acoustic Cavitation.'

See also this blurb

And furthermore, now that I have read the "article", it turns out to be a freaking BLOG POST containing nine whole sentences. NINE! Sheesh. Secretsather, you deserve some serious downmods for your laziness and obvious lack of subject knowledge.

A quick news search reveals much more informative articles, which allows one to find the original journal article. Here's the abstract...

We show that the coefficients of operators in the electroweak chiral Lagrangian can be bounded if the underlying theory obeys the usual assumptions of Lorentz invariance, analyticity, unitarity, and crossing to arbitrarily short distances. Violations of these bounds can be explained by either the existence of new physics below the naive cutoff of the effective theory, or by the breakdown of one of these assumptions in the short distance theory. As a corollary, if no light resonances are found, then a measured violation of the bound would falsify generic models of string theory.

...most of which is beyond grasp of what I remember from 200-level college physics. Would a domain expert care to jump in now?

Looks like somebody may have indulged is some prior art. And I am sure they are not the only ones. I recall someone from a few years ago developing a project to laser enscribe data on a titanium disc for archive purposes. All you needed was a microscope to read the data. with many many thousands of pages on something smaller than your hand. Better than sheets of copper, for sure.

Are you sure it wasn't Feynman that said that?

Or maybe even this guy http://www.aip.org/pt/vol-57/iss-5/p10.html

Well,

nice and well written, but IMHO you are a troll.

There is nothing else significantly changing in the world except CO2 levels. So what else should be the cause for the strong warming up we observe the last years?

Try to understand this picture: A greenhouse is a closed glass house, where especially the sun is causing the interiour of the house to become quite warm in relation to the outside. E.g. at 10 degrees celsious outside temperature, inside of the greenhosue it is about 25 degrees.

Our planet is habitable because "some kind of glass sheet" is providing us with an isolation, preventing the planet to be as cold as Mars. That glass sheet is CO2, which had in the 50s a concentration of roughly 270 ppm. Similar like a real greenhosue, which gets more greenhouse like when you place additional shells of glass around it, the earth gets more "shells" around its atmosphere if CO2 levels increase. Meanwhile we have an CO2 level of roughly 380 - 400 ppm, so the amount of glass shells around our greenhouse planet Earth increased by over 30%. Source: http://aip.org/history/climate/images/maunaloa.jpg on the web site: http://aip.org/history/climate/co2.htm

And about your "long term" data, you seem not to be able to google for: http://maps.grida.no/go/graphic/temperature_and_co 2_concentration_in_the_atmosphere_over_the_past_40 0_000_years ... everyone knows that we currently have the highest concentration, and all know the concentratio will likely still double, even! When we burn all remaining oil, gas and coal, CO2 levels will be around 600 - 700 ppm.

People are only talking about possible "average" temperature increases ... which is roughly 2 or 3 degrees centigrade over the whole planet At the local spot I live right now, the winter temperature, including extreme cold and extrem hot winters (like the current one) jumped from -30 degrees in the 1975th to 1980th to +10 to +15 degress today. So the average levels out to be a jump of 45 degrees centigrade, not farenheit, centigrade at my local position. That is a temperature increase of 112 degrees Farenheit! FYI: I live in central europe, roughly 300km south from the northern coast and 1000km east from the atlantic coast.

angel'o'sphere

Well,

nice and well written, but IMHO you are a troll.

There is nothing else significantly changing in the world except CO2 levels. So what else should be the cause for the strong warming up we observe the last years?

Try to understand this picture: A greenhouse is a closed glass house, where especially the sun is causing the interiour of the house to become quite warm in relation to the outside. E.g. at 10 degrees celsious outside temperature, inside of the greenhosue it is about 25 degrees.

Our planet is habitable because "some kind of glass sheet" is providing us with an isolation, preventing the planet to be as cold as Mars. That glass sheet is CO2, which had in the 50s a concentration of roughly 270 ppm. Similar like a real greenhosue, which gets more greenhouse like when you place additional shells of glass around it, the earth gets more "shells" around its atmosphere if CO2 levels increase. Meanwhile we have an CO2 level of roughly 380 - 400 ppm, so the amount of glass shells around our greenhouse planet Earth increased by over 30%. Source: http://aip.org/history/climate/images/maunaloa.jpg on the web site: http://aip.org/history/climate/co2.htm

And about your "long term" data, you seem not to be able to google for: http://maps.grida.no/go/graphic/temperature_and_co 2_concentration_in_the_atmosphere_over_the_past_40 0_000_years ... everyone knows that we currently have the highest concentration, and all know the concentratio will likely still double, even! When we burn all remaining oil, gas and coal, CO2 levels will be around 600 - 700 ppm.

People are only talking about possible "average" temperature increases ... which is roughly 2 or 3 degrees centigrade over the whole planet At the local spot I live right now, the winter temperature, including extreme cold and extrem hot winters (like the current one) jumped from -30 degrees in the 1975th to 1980th to +10 to +15 degress today. So the average levels out to be a jump of 45 degrees centigrade, not farenheit, centigrade at my local position. That is a temperature increase of 112 degrees Farenheit! FYI: I live in central europe, roughly 300km south from the northern coast and 1000km east from the atlantic coast.

angel'o'sphere

The authors demonstrate transmission of visible light through metallic coaxial nanostructures many wavelengths in length, with coaxial electrode spacing much less than a wavelength. Since the light frequency is well below the plasma resonance in the metal of the electrodes, the propagating mode reduces to the well-known transverse electromagnetic mode of a coaxial waveguide. They have thus achieved a faithful analog of the conventional coaxial cable for visible light. ©2007 American Institute of Physics

In this work, we show experimentally that a nanoscopic analog of the conventional coaxial cable, with properly chosen metals for the electrodes and proper electrode dimensions, indeed retains approximately all of the above properties of its conventional macroscale cousin.

http://www.aip.org/pnu/1994/split/pnu178-1.htm

Yet another slashvertisement for New Scientist claptrap. Will the pseudo science crap ever stop? If I wanted to read that shit I'd go there, PLEASE stop posting it here.

"New" Scientist? If this is the new science I don't want anything to do with it.

At least they do not claim to be scientists, just "New Scientists". New Scientist = euphemism for Pseudo Scientist.

Give us some real science please. You won't find it at New Scientist, nor will you find it in Nature.

You can find real science in publications like those overseen by the following organisations: ACS, RSC, AIP, IOP, AMS, Elsevier, etc., etc...

See the difference? Probably not...