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Look no further.

Seriously though, many of the items in there are possible with current technology, but not with current infrastructure/adoption (self-driving cars, hypersonic passenger planes, etc). Others are just way off (lol domed cities and plastic roads), and are probably the result of imposing 1960's mindsets on 2008. (Notice there was no mention of skyrocketing fuel prices or energy issues... probably as this was just a little before the gas crunch of the 1970's)

Still, I like to see futurist predictions... especially those past ones that cover where we're supposed to be today.

I also liked that Science Channel production "2057" where they tried to show the world as it might be then. The thing in that show that really caught my interest is the part on the human body where they talk about medicine... the ambulance crew arrives for a serious injury, and before they TOUCH him, they CHECK HIS INSURANCE. Damn, they really improved the "wallet biopsy" 49 years from now.

  As others have mentioned, future predictions are based upon taking cutting edge technology and theories to their logical conclusion, and may get the tech part right without really being able to predict the societal impact or the impact the technology has on the society. For that kind of prediction, I honestly thing that rather than smart pills we're more likely to end up in an Idiocracy.

-- I for one WELCOME our dumbed down idiotic overlords

(Ok, not really... I didn't actually vote for Bush)

http://animal.discovery.com/convergence/dragons/show/show.html ^ I only vaguely remember it, as I was watching it more for the animation and whatnot, but I think that show had a part where a young dragon went up against an Allosaurus or something, so could be what you're thinking of. (or maybe it was just up against a bigger older dragon, like I said I'm a bit hazy on the content)

What is the point of linking to the Dirty Jobs entry on Wikipedia? What's wrong with the actual Discovery Channel site?

Well, I looked at your link and I see some ads and a big Flash thingy. (I'm using FlashBlock so I have to click to view Flash. Wonderful!) If I load the Flash, I see some fancily designed animated cruft with a bunch of buttons that may or may not lead to actual information. Much of text is at slightly random skewed angles, and there's no obvious place to find basic facts.

When I look a the Wikipedia article, on the other hand, I see no ads, no Flash, and some nicely formatted text, written to give quick answers, laid out in tidy sections, all using a standard format that I'm familiar with from a bunch of previous visits.

Other than that, no reason.

What is the point of linking to the Dirty Jobs entry on Wikipedia? What's wrong with the actual Discovery Channel site ??

When will this be on Dirty Jobs

This myth was busted on Mythbusters. Please stop spreading it.

Out of respect for the investment in a show's production I think you should always link to the official site when using content. http://discovery.com/mythbusters/

Annotation excerpt from http://kwc.org/mythbusters/2006/12/episode_69_22000_foot_fall_lig.html

Based on the amount of energy consumed turning on the bulb, they were able calculated how long the bulb would have to be turned off in order to make it worth the energy savings, i.e. "It's best to turn off the bulb if you are leaving the room for":

• Incandescent: 0.36 seconds
• CFL: 0.015 seconds
• Halogen: .51 seconds
• LED: 1.28 seconds
• Fluorescent: 23.3 seconds

In other words, its almost always best to turn the bulb off. Even the 23 seconds for the fluorescent lights isn't very long, and the rest of the times are pretty much blinks of an eye.

This was featured on the History Channel

That theory has been fairly soundly debunked.

Not true. The Mythbusters episode clearly showed that the paint, which was essentially thermite, had quite a lot to do with the speed of the burn:

http://mythbusters-wiki.discovery.com/page/Hindenburg+Mystery?t=anon

Not that the giant balloon filled with hydrogen helped matters.

I am guessing this is something like "It Takes a Thief" on the Discovery Channel

This seems to be original, though. Not regurgitated crap from another network (or another country). I'm curious to see how it pans out. We'll probably be able to tell from the first two episodes on Christmas eve if this will suck or float. It can't be worse than Discovery's "It Takes a Thief". Those guys are bad actors and shady individuals to boot.

We often take for granted when we see these cool renditions of distant space that these images are only possible when based on the leaps and bounds made with various telescopes over the last 50+ years:

"Only now by combining the images of radio telescopes, the optical and ultraviolet eyes of Hubble Space Telescope and the Chandra X-ray Observatory, can researchers put together the entire violent story about this intergalactic mugging.

The coordinated use of such an array of diverse and powerful telescopes is one of the unheralded triumphs of modern physics, Tyson said. "This is an example of the triumph of that exercise." http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2007/12/17/galaxy-black-hole-02.html

Just the fact that we can observe such a dramatic event is awe-inspiring.

Adam? Is that you?

DEEP GEOTHERMAL DRILLING ON THE REYKJANES RIDGE...

Doesn't say they drilled into magma. Does say that an eruption occurred when magma broke into a bore. That resulted in the best parts of the drillfield becoming inoperable for 10-15 years. Obviously no one wants magma venting through their bores and so no one drills into magma.

In this magma layer, water collects in columns or reserves. This trapped water, which can be heated to temperatures of about 700 degrees Fahrenheit, is known as a geothermal reservoir. When engineers want to use geothermal energy, they "tap" in to this geothermal water and use the resulting hot water and steam for various purposes.

That's obviously factually inaccurate as magma is at least 700 degrees Celsius and any water in contact with magma will be heated to that temperature. And they are talking about using existing water reservoirs so they must be talking about Flash or Binary Cycle systems and not EGS systems. So they are not talking about drilling to the magma's level.

http://www.crest.org/geothermal/geothermal_brief_geothermal_resources.html

Which shows the hot side very close to the magma layer, with the injection well being farther away...

So again, no drilling into magma. You still haven't given one example of someone deliberately drilling into a magma chamber for geothermal power generation. The fact is that it is not done. EGS systems involve drilling to heated rock not magma. They may drill close to magma but that is not the same as drilling into magma.

A conventional Geothermal Plant *is* a deep drill plant... check out all the large scale ones around the world. The depths are different because the magma layers are at different depths... but they all drill to really close - or into that layer.

You seem to be confused about the different geothermal plant systems.

A conventional plant is not a deep drill plant. A conventional plant uses water that was already in the ground. In the case of Flash steam systems superheated water (in excess of 180 degrees Celsius) is allowed to flash to steam that drives turbines directly. In the case of Binary Cycle systems cooler water (between 100 and 180 degrees Celsius) is used in a heat exchanger. Both of these systems have been in production for decades and neither one requires deep drilling. The largest scale plants, such as those in The Geysers in California, and the plants in the Philippines are of this type.

EGS systems are still relatively new. They have been developed since the 1980's. They involve drilling to superheated rock and then pumping water from the surface to be heated (i.e. they don't use existing water from the ground). They still do not drill into magma. "Hot dry rock technology is meant to stay well away from the 99 percent of the Earth's interior, which is over 1,000 degrees". Note the "hot dry rock" alternate name - they don't want ground water for these plants. So there is not much point is using this helium technique to find locations for them. And also note that there are no EGS plants in the US.

I think you just misread the article. The title sums it up nicely though... "Helium isotopes point to the best sources of geothermal energy"

I didn't misread at all. You are reading stuff into it that is not there. They developed the technique by analyzing samples from the area surrounding the Dixie Valley geothermal plant in Nevada. That's not a EGS plant. Why would they test a technique for deep drilling on the area occupied by a conventional plant? They did that because they are looking for sites for new conventional plants, not EGS plants. As for the title, clearly the best sources of geothermal energy are those that don't require deep drilling.

As the other poster mentioned, the two locations have varying sizes.

You are looking at an area of 10,582 km (Salar de Uyuni) versus an area of 412 km (Bonneville Salt Flats).

In fact, you are most likely correct about the Bonneville Salt Flats having no more than 1 foot (30 cm) of elevation variation for every 10 miles (16 km), however, the Salar de Uyuni was found to have only 16 inches (40 cm) of variation over its entire surface. This is a huge area that dwarfs 10 miles. The Salar de Uyuni has also been stated by several places that it is, indeed, the largest flattest surface yet to have been found on earth.

Purely speculation on my end however, would be the reasons why the military would choose the Bonneville Salt Flats over the Salar de Uyuni. The military would most likely be testing equipment and technologies they don't want anyone else to get their hands one or are a type which are particularly politically sensitive, whereas other space or research agencies are more or less politically neutral comparatively. This allows other groups to test in an international (and further away) location that the military might find inconvenient due to both political and logistical reasons. Stating that because a lot of people do testing on the Bonneville Salt Flats is not evidence for it being the flattest. There are reasons to use it, simply because of its convenience and close location (it is in US compared to being in Bolivia) among other things.

Read more on the Bolivian Salt Flats (Salar de Uyuni).
http://dsc.discovery.com/news/briefs/20041206/flatearth.html/

Good call...

(and it is)

If money is no object, having seven kids can be fun.

Maybe not....
Study Predicts Trillions Of Planets http://dsc.discovery.com/news/afp/20030922/universe.html
NASA estimates the number of terrestrial planets to be as high as 30 Billion: http://astrobiology.arc.nasa.gov/news/expandnews.cfm?id=1227
(And both articles are several years old...)

Weird, I'm watching that Mythbusters episode right now. Or maybe not so weird.

The 30-foot-long dinosaur, which stood about 10-12 feet tall at the hips and weighed several tons[natch], is believed to be the largest specimen recovered from the site's 75-million-year-old Kaiparowits Formation. A description of the dino appears in this month's Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society.

No, its not R. Lee Ermey. I think the parent post was talking about Richard 'Mack' Machowicz who hosts 'FutureWeapons' which airs on both The Discovery Channel and the Military Channel. If you go here you can find a link to a clip featuring the Active Denial System.

Who is Carrie? You mean, Kari!

This has been brought up before
I am glad to see that it is available though. I spent last month in Bangalore and spent over 3 hours in traffic every day to get to and from work, i thought it was hell and I live in Boston! I don't expect that this will help the problem too much. The city needs hard solutions to the traffic problems and they have already started by not allowing any new motor rickshaws, starting public transport rail projects, creating a new highway, and getting serious about traffic ticketing.

Those are probably batteries from A123 Systems, and they've been around for a little while. We used them in our vehicles at the MIT Vehicle Design Summit last year. They don't have greater storage than the lithium ion batteries already in common use, but the number of duty cycles and the amount of current it can take is pretty damn good. They won't solve the energy storage problem, though. They're too bulky, both in mass and volume, and while I can't recall the CTO's estimates for the price per Wh, I don't remember thinking it would be good enough. It's two steps forward and one step back... Progress, though! ;-)

In respect to those who lost their lives, I'm going to watch The Right Stuff this weekend along with the SpaceShipOne DVD from The Discovery Channel.

Notice the energy conversion efficiency is 0.57% and the fabrication process is quite sophisticated, requirng exotic Fullerene chemicals and other sonatic lab gear.

Compare that to a classic Dye-sensitized cell one can make at home with titanium dioxide and rasberry juice... but delivers 0.45% energy efficiency.

The DIY solar cell recipe below achieves nano-level self-assembly with TiO2 instead of bucky balls and outputs 0.43 V and 1 mA/cm2. Titanium Dioxide is very inexpensive because it's most common ingredient used in white pigment. http://www.solideas.com/solrcell/english.html

How useful is this much power? Consider that a cheap Nokia phone requires 3.7 volts at 140, which equates to 0.518 watts of power needed to charge it. That means one of the cells above,no larger than a square foot, could do the job... on a sunny day. http://www.knowprose.com/node/8906

Interesting note that a 14 year old girl won a Discovery Channel Science Award testing one of these home-made TiO2 cells. http://school.discovery.com/sciencefaircentral/dys c/finalists/profiles/kumar_asmita.html

I think the Sigourney Weaver narration is only available from the discovery channel store. I can't work out why they didn't just release one version with both narrations.

Wikipedia to the rescue. It seems that they did only release on version, the David Attenborough one (thank god). Sigourney Weaver only did the narration on the Discovery channel broadcast

The Discovery store confirms this: http://shopping.discovery.com/product-65763.html?e ndecaSID=113B1FCBBE40#desc "Award-winning actress and conservationist Sigourney Weaver narrates this 11-part series."

Try the March 7, 2006 episode of Dirty Jobs.

In that episode, the host spends a day working as a mushroom farm laborer in a coverted factory building near an urban area. Interesting, albeit smelly, stuff. Apparently, it's already quite profitable to grow some crops indoors with manual labor.

The other problem is Americans. No matter how bad off people are, they will not go out in the mid-day sun and pick cotton or build houses for the pennies illegal people will do it for.

I think it's that last part that really needs to be emphasized. There are a lot of people running around -- usually politicians, but I've seen some newspaper editorials where it was said -- claiming that illegals do work that "Americans won't do." This is false.

Anyone who doesn't believe it's false, can just turn on the Discovery Channel the next time they're running that "Dirty Jobs" program. There are people who do pretty unbelievable stuff for a living; shoveling garbage, standing waist-deep in feces, working ridiculous hours in uncomfortable conditions, dodging machinery that could crush or tear you in half if you're not quick. But they don't do it for cheap. There's a reason why sanitation workers in NYC get paid more than cops -- otherwise, there wouldn't be any sanitation workers.

There isn't anything that somebody in this country won't do, for the right compensation. All illegal workers do is allow big companies to get away with paying workers less than they ought to get, for dangerous/uncomfortable/unsafe/unsavory jobs. Ultimately, this hurts all legitimate workers, across the board: low-skilled workers are impacted the most, because it directly depresses their wages, but higher-skilled workers are hurt, too, because of the increased labor pool being pushed up from below, and also the increased tax burden (which is shouldered mostly by high-skilled, high-income workers) of supporting a surplus of low-skilled workers and their attendant medical/educational/social costs.

Sounds like a case for Mythbusters.

if you can have each OS copy on a separate monitor (most cards today handle 2 monitors at least by standard), it's a really really good thing to have.

on the linked page
http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2007/05/04/splitscre en_tec.html?category=technology&guid=2007042009153 0
the thumbnail of the split screens have start-taskbark-minimized tasks/clock

but the full size image does not...

what?

Spacewalks are hard on astronauts' hands

I know there is more to the sentence, but this clause made me chuckle. "Heh - they're doing it wrong."

I need more coffee...

PS Here is the link to the printer-friendly version, i.e. the article on one page.

But you need concentrated power for many real world applications. Things like,
    * mine smelter,
    * cities - especially high density cities that are more environmentally friendly than giant suburbs,
    * internet server hosts

All of these require a large energy source in a small area *and* that is reliable. Solar is not reliable because of clouds and transmission costs.

Now I'm not 100% nuclear. There are environmentally friendly ways of generating power like hydro (see Manitoba, Canada) and solar and even wind (but solar is better, though a pipe dream at this point in the game).

Until solar is comparable to cost of electricity it produces for 5-10 years and installation costs are not a lot more than installing shingles, it will not really be a good solution. When solar power is cheap enough to put on top of every house, then we are talking a lot of power. But we will still need nuclear as a backup and as energy source for large users although that means 100s not 10,000s of power stations.

But you must admit that nuclear is better than coal/oil/gas power stations, right? After all, nuclear allows us to handle ALL of the costs directly in power production (transmission, waste management/processing, etc.) unlike the fossil fuels alternative where pollution just goes *poof* and affects all of us.

And don't point to Chernobyl. I was actually within 500km of there and exposed to some radiation due to the cover up BS. But now that entire no-go area and its contamination is a huge win for the wildlife in the region [1]. Sad but true - the only way to save the Amazon and other ecologically important areas of the planet is to spread all the nuclear waste there. We, not nuclear power, are our biggest threat. :)

[1] - http://animal.discovery.com/news/afp/20060417/cher nobyl.html

discovery.com | Discovery Channel | TLC | Animal Planet | Travel Channel | Discovery Health Discovery Times | Discovery Kids | The Science Channel | Discovery Home | Military Channel | Discovery HD Theater | FitTV | Turbo

It should probably be noted that Grant has a BS in EE from USC.

They have stated both on the show and in other interviews that a lot more testing goes on than just what we see on the show. For the "showcase" experiment on each show (the one that opens and closes the program), the producers have taken to placing video of most or all of the tests on their Discovery website: http://www.discovery.com/mythbusters

The biggest problem I had with it is they did the test on a boat trailer and not actually in the water. They assumed that a moving boat in water performs the same as a moving boat on a boat trailer and my novice understanding of hydraulics would tell me that the test would have been vastly different if they had actually recreated the test in the water with a boat being propelled by an engine/propeller. A moving boat in water behaves more like something on rails. That is while moving through the water it would be hard to be pushed sideways even when bumping into an object. Air on the other hand (the trailer method) provides very little resistance to sideways movement.

Also, if you look at pictures of the actual boat from different angles it is apparent that it actually hit the channel marker on the nose of the boat and not on the side. It also appears that the boat was making a right turn and the angle of the boat was tilted right. There is no doubt that the boat actually hit the channel marker and cuased the damage in the picture. There is no disputing this even by the police/patrol. The question was how fast the boat was going to cause that damage. It was claimed that the boat was going 25 mph and the Mythbusters just magically said it must have been going faster than that because they didn't get the same damage in the experiment that in no way recreated the conditions of the original accident.

I believe 25 mph would have been close to accurate if you throw a couple of big block Chevys in the boat, set it at 25 mph and hit the channel marker head on while in a slight turn. Anything faster than that and I would expect more than a broken arm and a couple of other miner injuries by the people who were in the boat.

I just did a little google searching and it appears I am not alone in thinking this was bogus:
http://community.discovery.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/ 9401967776/m/7701992688

Original images:
http://www.cockpitgps.com/bgpsnavweb/basicGPSnavig ation_files/image008.jpg
http://www.apg.army.mil/sibo/fountain.htm

Extremely poor episode in my opinion.

(I'm the cowtard stanwoman)

The Discovery channel show 'Extreme engineering' did an episode about building a bridge across the Bering strait.

It seemed fairly plausible, and quite well researched.
Whether a tunnel is more practical than a bridge is another matter I guess.
Personally I wouldnt expect so since bridges, if built well, have been proven to last hundreds of years until they're bombed to prevent troop movements. I'm of the understanding that some bridges in Europe destroyed during WWII had stood since Roman times. Are tunnels as durable?

If you'd like to check out the episode, here's their site;

http://dsc.discovery.com/convergence/engineering/b eringstrait/interactive/interactive.html

I can think of *lots* of instances where m4's have torn up troops wielding ak47's at range granted in an urban enviroment ak's are handy, but then again jackhammers are more so, all around I'd have to say the m4 is the better weapon. But from a historical veiw point the ak matches with the m16, not the m4 as far as history is concerned the ak is probably the best most successful assault rifle of all time. The G3 is closing the gap though, but with the 10x series and Dragunov( on a side note the new lupa's are bad a$$) its unlikely the any competition will nock it out of the top slot anytime soon. You realy shouldn't be compary ww2 stuff with modern weaponry, its like comparing the sten to a http://www.military.com/soldiertech/0,14632,Soldie rtech_HK,,00.html the comparison just isn't relevant. http://search.discovery.com/search?proxystylesheet =wwwMain&site=wwwContent&client=wwwMain&output=xml _no_dtd&filter=0&getfields=*&q=mp7&go.x=0&go.y=0

You laugh at that, but I saw a Discovery Channel show that actually implied that there was an infinite miles per gallon car. In their "Futurecars" special, the last car that they covered was powered by compressed air. What followed was something along the lines of:

"Plug it in, and electricity from the grid runs a compressor in the car, filling its tanks. However, the system can also run in reverse; compressed air from the tanks can turn a generator, producing electric power. Such a car could produce the very power it needs to run,l fuelling itself forever."

(thread on the subject here)

Yeah. You enjoy your perpetual motion machine over there. In this house, we obey the laws of thermodynamics.

Wait a minute, I had no idea BBC also carried a show titled Planet Earth -- I've been watching Planet Earth on Discovery HD for the past few weeks. Are they the same show?

Just a month ago I agreed that there wouldn't be much demand for HD DVD/Blu-Ray since few people have HDTVs. But I've been noticing more and more television programming being broadcast in high-definition and got interested in two particular types of show: sports and nature documentaries. The series Planet Earth looks particularly cool so I checked into HDTV prices.

I found a nice 32" LCD 720p set for $904, having fallen from around $1200 a few months ago to below the magic $1000 mark. I've always thought that $1000 for a TV is really expensive but then realized that I just spent $2000 on a MacBook Pro in November. Maybe it's not so crazy to spend that much on a nice 32" display with at least the same resolution as my computer.

I was about to buy that set, but then saw a newer 32" LCD 1080p set for $1100. So I'm selling my old Powerbook and 25" conventional TV to buy a cool new HDTV.

I'm missing the airing of Planet Earth in the meantime and I'd like to buy it on disc, but DVDs would miss tons of resolution. So I'll likely be in the market for a high-definition player within a year. HD DVD and Blu-Ray discs might not be selling much yet, but I bet sales will grow tremendously as more affordable sets become popular and one of the discs wins the format war.

AlpineR

That sounds like a job for Mike Rowe
http://dsc.discovery.com/fansites/dirtyjobs/about/ about.html

Here is a story claiming we still have the genes present in modern humans. If it was a seperate species, we would find simular genes but not the same ones. I cannot find the refernce to the movie making the claim. It would probably help if I could remeber the name. I'm sure someone else will help us with it.

A quick google search lead me to this site hosted at Natural History Museum but claims This is the web version of a Smithsonian publication on Natural History for Educators. Museum professionals write articles on current topics in natural history and include a teacher resource section to help translate these articles into the classroom. It also includes links to backs issues. in the authors notes. It seems to be the actual Smithsonian Institution so I'm not sure how much credit you will give it. I'm not ditching the Smithsonian Institution, It is just that it is government funded and that could skew the results.

Surpisingly, It seems to indicate that people were suggesting we are the same species a lot longer then I originaly thought. The paper cites the 60s I think.

OK, I think I might have found it. It apear to be called "Neanderthal, the rebirth". I don't know if it is the same one, but after clicking on the link, it describes some of what the one I watched showed. And It looks like we are in luck. It is going to be on this month. I saw it last year.

Here is a story claiming we still have the genes present in modern humans. If it was a seperate species, we would find simular genes but not the same ones. I cannot find the refernce to the movie making the claim. It would probably help if I could remeber the name. I'm sure someone else will help us with it.

A quick google search lead me to this site hosted at Natural History Museum but claims This is the web version of a Smithsonian publication on Natural History for Educators. Museum professionals write articles on current topics in natural history and include a teacher resource section to help translate these articles into the classroom. It also includes links to backs issues. in the authors notes. It seems to be the actual Smithsonian Institution so I'm not sure how much credit you will give it. I'm not ditching the Smithsonian Institution, It is just that it is government funded and that could skew the results.

Surpisingly, It seems to indicate that people were suggesting we are the same species a lot longer then I originaly thought. The paper cites the 60s I think.

OK, I think I might have found it. It apear to be called "Neanderthal, the rebirth". I don't know if it is the same one, but after clicking on the link, it describes some of what the one I watched showed. And It looks like we are in luck. It is going to be on this month. I saw it last year.

Do you have some facts to back this up? I confess I'm not up on the cutting edge in palaeontology, but the last I heard the interbreeding theory had almost no evidence to support it. This article from Discovery's web site from November of 2006 states there is no evidence for this so far and that the two species separated over 500,000 years ago:

http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2006/11/15/neanderth al_hum.html?category=archaeology

I'm guessing from your harsh criticism of Wiki and the author of the specific page that you must have some pretty solid evidence that I haven't stumbled across yet.

The Discovery Channel's website has a pretty neat and informative Flash presentation on the Yellowstone hotspot.

Brilliant.

But that would avert our plan for endless war.