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Oh wow, you took junior high physics too! That's nice, but Thermodynamics doesn't get taught, at least at UIUC, until sophomore standing.

First of all, for god's sake, if you're gonna use a physics link use some like Hyperphysics

Secondly, he's talking about heat pumps - so the first law of themodynamics would say that delta U = Q - W, and since the work is being done by the peltier to the system (car interior), it's negative, so you get the delta U = Q + W, where resistive heating would only get you delta U = W, hence > 100% heating efficiency.

Knee jerk reactions based on very limited phyiscs knowledge make you look both arrogant and stupid.

Then what does a centrifuge do?

Perhaps you need a force refresher course:

http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/corf.ht ml

No intent to troll, that's for sure. It is my understanding that generating H2 by electrolysis is practically about 67% efficient, with Carnot efficiency of 83% ... here and here

Combined with the efficiency of fuel cell cars, that leads to a total cost of about $4/gallon-equivalent, BUT with about 50 mpg efficiency, that translates to equivalent cost per mile driven.

Given lower environmental costs, I'd say that's pretty decent, wouldn't you?

Of course, if H2 could be made more efficiently by thermal processes, which is what GGGP appears to be insinuating, then great.

Partly incorrect.

Entropy
Entropy: a state variable whose change is defined for a reversible process at T where Q is the heat absorbed.
Entropy: a measure of the amount of energy which is unavailable to do work.
Entropy: a measure of the disorder of a system.
Entropy: a measure of the multiplicity of a system.

The salt and pepper analogy is a very accuate example, and making ad homiem attacks about my knowledge of physics doesn't support your point at all.

The useful energy defn is proabably the only one really taught to engineers, since they shouldn't really care about the math/physics behind it.

1) An object travelling in a circular (or eliptical) orbit requires a certain force toward the center of the focus of the orbit, called centripetal force. It is proportional to the product of the mass times the radius of the orbiting body, and inversely proportional to the square of the period of the orbit.

2) Two massive objects will assert an attractive gravitational force on each other, proportional to the product of their masses, and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between the objects.

All astonomers do is equate one force to another. Astronomers believe that they can calculate the mass of the star by observing the star's apparent brightness, and looking at the star's spectrum to figure out what kind of star it is. Unfortunately, the observed brightness of a star is a function of its distance from Earth, and this measurement has a large degree of error for most stars.

Next, astronomers look at how quickly the star "wobbles" due to the orbit of the planet. This gives a good measure of the period of the planet's rotation.

The final step is to figure out how far the planet is from the star. After entering in all the data, you are left with the mass of the planet being a function of its distance from the star. If you apply some trickery in the form of Kepler's Laws, you can see that the period and radius of an orbit are related.

And that's it! Put all the pieces of the puzzle together, and you have an equation for the mass of the planet. If you are lucky, then the plain of the orbit is end-on when observed from Earth--this allows you to see how much of the star's light is blocked from the eclipsing planet, giving you some measure of the planet's size and composition.

1) An object travelling in a circular (or eliptical) orbit requires a certain force toward the center of the focus of the orbit, called centripetal force. It is proportional to the product of the mass times the radius of the orbiting body, and inversely proportional to the square of the period of the orbit.

2) Two massive objects will assert an attractive gravitational force on each other, proportional to the product of their masses, and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between the objects.

All astonomers do is equate one force to another. Astronomers believe that they can calculate the mass of the star by observing the star's apparent brightness, and looking at the star's spectrum to figure out what kind of star it is. Unfortunately, the observed brightness of a star is a function of its distance from Earth, and this measurement has a large degree of error for most stars.

Next, astronomers look at how quickly the star "wobbles" due to the orbit of the planet. This gives a good measure of the period of the planet's rotation.

The final step is to figure out how far the planet is from the star. After entering in all the data, you are left with the mass of the planet being a function of its distance from the star. If you apply some trickery in the form of Kepler's Laws, you can see that the period and radius of an orbit are related.

And that's it! Put all the pieces of the puzzle together, and you have an equation for the mass of the planet. If you are lucky, then the plain of the orbit is end-on when observed from Earth--this allows you to see how much of the star's light is blocked from the eclipsing planet, giving you some measure of the planet's size and composition.

1) An object travelling in a circular (or eliptical) orbit requires a certain force toward the center of the focus of the orbit, called centripetal force. It is proportional to the product of the mass times the radius of the orbiting body, and inversely proportional to the square of the period of the orbit.

2) Two massive objects will assert an attractive gravitational force on each other, proportional to the product of their masses, and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between the objects.

All astonomers do is equate one force to another. Astronomers believe that they can calculate the mass of the star by observing the star's apparent brightness, and looking at the star's spectrum to figure out what kind of star it is. Unfortunately, the observed brightness of a star is a function of its distance from Earth, and this measurement has a large degree of error for most stars.

Next, astronomers look at how quickly the star "wobbles" due to the orbit of the planet. This gives a good measure of the period of the planet's rotation.

The final step is to figure out how far the planet is from the star. After entering in all the data, you are left with the mass of the planet being a function of its distance from the star. If you apply some trickery in the form of Kepler's Laws, you can see that the period and radius of an orbit are related.

And that's it! Put all the pieces of the puzzle together, and you have an equation for the mass of the planet. If you are lucky, then the plain of the orbit is end-on when observed from Earth--this allows you to see how much of the star's light is blocked from the eclipsing planet, giving you some measure of the planet's size and composition.

1) An object travelling in a circular (or eliptical) orbit requires a certain force toward the center of the focus of the orbit, called centripetal force. It is proportional to the product of the mass times the radius of the orbiting body, and inversely proportional to the square of the period of the orbit.

2) Two massive objects will assert an attractive gravitational force on each other, proportional to the product of their masses, and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between the objects.

All astonomers do is equate one force to another. Astronomers believe that they can calculate the mass of the star by observing the star's apparent brightness, and looking at the star's spectrum to figure out what kind of star it is. Unfortunately, the observed brightness of a star is a function of its distance from Earth, and this measurement has a large degree of error for most stars.

Next, astronomers look at how quickly the star "wobbles" due to the orbit of the planet. This gives a good measure of the period of the planet's rotation.

The final step is to figure out how far the planet is from the star. After entering in all the data, you are left with the mass of the planet being a function of its distance from the star. If you apply some trickery in the form of Kepler's Laws, you can see that the period and radius of an orbit are related.

And that's it! Put all the pieces of the puzzle together, and you have an equation for the mass of the planet. If you are lucky, then the plain of the orbit is end-on when observed from Earth--this allows you to see how much of the star's light is blocked from the eclipsing planet, giving you some measure of the planet's size and composition.

1) An object travelling in a circular (or eliptical) orbit requires a certain force toward the center of the focus of the orbit, called centripetal force. It is proportional to the product of the mass times the radius of the orbiting body, and inversely proportional to the square of the period of the orbit.

2) Two massive objects will assert an attractive gravitational force on each other, proportional to the product of their masses, and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between the objects.

All astonomers do is equate one force to another. Astronomers believe that they can calculate the mass of the star by observing the star's apparent brightness, and looking at the star's spectrum to figure out what kind of star it is. Unfortunately, the observed brightness of a star is a function of its distance from Earth, and this measurement has a large degree of error for most stars.

Next, astronomers look at how quickly the star "wobbles" due to the orbit of the planet. This gives a good measure of the period of the planet's rotation.

The final step is to figure out how far the planet is from the star. After entering in all the data, you are left with the mass of the planet being a function of its distance from the star. If you apply some trickery in the form of Kepler's Laws, you can see that the period and radius of an orbit are related.

And that's it! Put all the pieces of the puzzle together, and you have an equation for the mass of the planet. If you are lucky, then the plain of the orbit is end-on when observed from Earth--this allows you to see how much of the star's light is blocked from the eclipsing planet, giving you some measure of the planet's size and composition.

Another good test of General Relativity was measuring the precession of the perihelion of Mercury.
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/relativ /grel.html

This is a common misconception... your brain paints an aural picture alright, but still, whether it is accurate or not is completely unverifiable. You only THINK that you know where sound is coming from... unless you actually know (because you set the system up) your brain will FOOL you into thinking that you know. see Direction and Distance

It was proved that the mathematical model matches the observed results, atomic clocks in accelerated reference frames, explaining the orbit of Mercury and all.

E.g. http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/relativ /airtim.html

http://phyun5.ucr.edu/~wudka/Physics7/Notes_www/no de98.html

Well, at least I know what to do with all of my old orange Fiestaware now.

Power Generation:
Pipes draw warm water from the ocean surface and cold water from the seabed. The warm water enters a vacuum chamber and is evaporated into steam that drives an electricity-producing turbine. The cold water condenses the steam back into water for drinking and irrigation.

363000000 km^2 x (12000 ft - 3000 ft) x (90 F - 32 F) x (4.186 J/gC)

I found a table which lists different materials: Speed of Sound in Various Bulk Media

Because metals have a high thermal conductivity. A metal walled grow room would put off an even bigger IR signature.

Geeze, why does /. keep on linking to physorg, which has crappy articles and no links to real information about stuff.

Here's a more in depth article on X-bit [xbitlabs.com]. NanoCoolers has a pretty in depth description [nanocoolers.com] of the product. It's basically a watercooling loop but using a molten metal. The really cool part is that because the metal is obviously electrically conductive, they're using a DC current combined with some magnets to take advantage of Lorentz force [gsu.edu] to propel the fluid.

Geeze, why does /. keep on linking to physorg, which has crappy articles and no links to real information about stuff.

Here's a more in depth article on X-bit [xbitlabs.com]. NanoCoolers has a pretty in depth description [nanocoolers.com] of the product. It's basically a watercooling loop but using a molten metal. The really cool part is that because the metal is obviously electrically conductive, they're using a DC current combined with some magnets to take advantage of Lorentz force [gsu.edu] to propel the fluid.

Geeze, why does /. keep on linking to physorg, which has crappy articles and no links to real information about stuff.

Here's a more in depth article on X-bit. NanoCoolers has a pretty in depth description of the product. It's basically a watercooling loop but using a molten metal. The really cool part is that because the metal is obviously electrically conductive, they're using a DC current combined with some magnets to take advantage of Lorentz force to propel the fluid.

Except not all p-n junctions rectify current. In fact, your own link refers to such a thing as "Non-rectifying Junctions".

See inverse square law.

Since nitrogen accounts for 78% of our atmosphere, blue light gets scattered quite a bit, which is why the sky is blue. Since blue light scatters so much, it tends to blur vision.

While blue light does get scattered by the atmosphere, this is not the reason why humans don't get sharp vision in the blue tones. The eye is good at telling apart tones of blue - as opposed to green - but not only the spacial resolution for blue is pretty bad - only about 2% of the cones are for blue (the rest are for red and green) the lens doen't refract light uniformly for all wavelengths, so that blue is essentially out of focus by design of the eye. While the rods are more light sensitive, the cones have a higher resolution, and are used for focussing, but even that just doesn't work well with blue or violet due to the low number of blue cones.

Googling for "rods", "cones" etc. reveals some interesing articles like this one.

There were no details because Slashdot is now Non-news for Nerds. Ads that work. (plus push Taco's conservative agenda)

A heat pump AKA airconditioner uses much less energy than it transfers. Typically 1/3 to 1/4.

From the article on Jupiter

A. Composition of Jupiter

The fact that Jupiter's radius is 11.2 times larger than Earth's means that its volume is more than 1,300 times the volume of Earth. The mass of Jupiter, however, is only 318 times the mass of Earth. Jupiter's density (1.33 g/cm3) is therefore less than one-fourth of Earth's density (5.52 g/cm3). Jupiter's low density indicates that the planet is composed primarily of the lightest elements--hydrogen and helium.

The computer models predict that Jupiter's outer layer, composed of a gaseous mixture of hydrogen, helium, and traces of hydrogen-rich compounds such as ammonia, methane, and water vapor, is about 1,000 km (about 600 mi) thick. Beneath this layer, the pressure is so great and the atmosphere is so hot and compressed that the hydrogen and helium atoms do not behave as a gas, but as what physicists call a supercritical fluid. Supercritical fluids form at high temperatures and pressures and have properties similar to those of both gases and liquids. The supercritical zone extends 20,000 to 30,000 km (12,000 to 19,000 mi) into Jupiter, which is about one-fourth to one-third of the radius of the planet.

Beneath the supercritical fluid zone, the pressure reaches 3 million Earth atmospheres. At this depth, the atoms collide so frequently and violently that the hydrogen atoms are ionized--that is, the negatively charged electrons are stripped away from the positively charged protons of the hydrogen nuclei. This ionization results in a sea of electrically charged particles that resembles a liquid metal and gives rise to Jupiter's magnetic field. This liquid metallic hydrogen zone is 30,000 to 40,000 km (19,000 to 25,000 mi) thick--about half the radius of the planet--and extends to the molten rock core at Jupiter's center. The molten rock core occupies a sphere with a radius of about 10,000 km (about 6,000 mi)--about one-fourth of Jupiter's total radius--and has a mass perhaps 10 to 15 times the mass of Earth.

In order for a cloud of hydrogen gas to form a star, both gravity and pressure have to overcome the various fundamental forces that prevent atoms from fusing together,/a> (weak, electromagnetic).

In ratio to the "strong force" which holds the nucleus of the atom together, the electromagnetic force is 1/137, the weak force is 1/(10^6), and gravity is 1/(10^39).

Thus gravity is 10^37 times weaker than the electronmagnetic force, and 10^33 times weaker than the weak force. So you are going to need a considerable amount of mass to overcome these forces.

Another factor is Newton's Universal Law of Gravitation:

F = G . m1 . m2 / ( r^2)

where G is the Gravitational constant
m1 and m2 are the masses of two objects (eg. hydrogen atoms, dust, asteroids, ...)
and r is the distance between the two objects

The implication of this equation is that gravitational forces become greater the closer the two objects are. So the gas cloud has to pull itself together from gas to liquid (a liquid cannot be compressed any further). At this stage, pressure is created, and gets converted into heat (electromagnetic force)

If there isn't enough mass, a sufficiently deep gravity well won't form, and you will end up with a superhot liquid gas planet - which is more or less what Jupiter is.

According to this link uranium occurs about 4ppm in the earth's crust.

This site seems to agree, although I'm not overly sure how the whole "log" thing works with abundance - it's parts per million, but put into a log scale. Perhaps a geologist would like to comment on that.

Neither one suggests that uranium is the 8th most abundant material in the earth's crust As far as the mantle and core go, who cares? It's not like we'll be able to get to them any time soon.

These Links both suggest that uranium is certainly not the 8th most abundant element in the crust. although they disagree on if it's potassium or magnesium. Uranium isn't anywhere near those scales, since 4ppm is 0.0004%.

Comments from someone with geology training would be helpful here.

Renewable? No. Clean? It depends.

Renewable? YES! It's called reprocessing. We recycle the used radioactive material that comes out of a nuclear power plant and reprocess it in a breeder reactor to get more useable nuclear material. The result is more material suitable for a reactor and some (as in very little) low level radioative material that is much easier to hand and dispose of.

The original plan back in the 50's when we staretd using nuclear power was to use reprocessing on the fuel and make waste management easier. Carter nixed this. So as for "Clean? It depends." well, it still depends.

Here's some links on the matter, please actually read them, they give a better explanation than I can:
http://www.argee.net/DefenseWatch/Nuclear%20Waste% 20and%20Breeder%20Reactors.htm http://library.thinkquest.org/17940/texts/nuclear_ waste_future/nuclear_waste_future.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_reprocessing http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/nucene/ fasbre.html

You are right about the efficiency problems. However, you are mistaken on your definition of a full-wave rectifier. You are probably thinking of a voltage doubler (which are commonly used in SMPSs). A full-wave rectifier is just 4 diodes, and it will produce 120V * sqrt(2) which is approximately 170Vpeak. The waveform from it looks like abs(sin(120*pi*t)). It can then be filtered, and the voltage will be ~170VDC. A voltage doubler charges one capacitor with the positive voltage swing and another with the negative swing, so you double the voltage. Here's a link to a voltage doubler circuit. This is a full-wave rectifier.

Superconductors must be able to form so-called Cooper Pairs in order for electrons to move in the coherent manner in which no energy is lost.

This describes type-I superconductors very well, but not type-II.
I don't think anyone really understands type-II superconductivity.

Superconductors must be able to form so-called Cooper Pairs in order for electrons to move in the coherent manner in which no energy is lost.

This describes type-I superconductors very well, but not type-II.
I don't think anyone really understands type-II superconductivity.

The most essential thing about a superconductor isn't the zero resistance, but the meissner effect. So if they manage to create wires with near-zero resistance, they will not have created `near-superconductors'.

For energy transportation and storage it doesn't matter all that much, cause zero resistance (even without superconductivity) would make energy transportation and storage better

According to the accepted formulation of relativity, photons do indeed have relativistic momentum.

A photon is not 'merely' an electromagnetic radiation packet. It is the force-carrying particle (gauge boson) of the quantized EM-field. It *is* a fundamental subatomic particle, and it *is* valid to say that it has a zero rest mass.

Without mass a photon exerts no gravitational force on other particles, but it is indeed deflected by a gravitation field (distortion in space-time, if you like).

A cpu chip is a layered silicon sandwich consisting of transistors, resistors and capacitors.

Two or three transistors are combined to create a nand gate http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/electro nic/nand.html#c2 which can be paired to form a nand gate latch or flip-flop http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/electro nic/nand.html#c1

The flip-flop is the basic component of the discreet electronic computational device. It represents either a one, or a zero.

Three flip-flops, representing the A register, the B register and the Accumulator are wired so that the A and the B register are compared, the results are placed in the accumulator.

The results of a 0 + 0 = 0
The results of a 1 + 0 = 1
The results of a 0 + 1 = 1
The results of a 1 + 1 = 0 (and the carry bit is set)

This is addition in its simplest form.

Repeating this operation over multiple bits, allows an integer of fixed length to be summed.

Subtraction is handled by a handy trick that is available only to binary. The trick is that if you invert a bit and add, the result is subtraction. This is called the ones complement.

Computers do subtraction by ADDING the ones complement.

Multiplication is handled by repetition of the ADD operation.

Division is done by Repeated Subtraction http://courses.cs.vt.edu/~cs1104/BuildingBlocks/di vide.020.html

Upon this foundation we build microcode. Upon the microcode we can build an Assembler Language, and from Assembler, we build Perl.

And yes, in Perl, you can add, subtract, multiply and divide numbers in any base you want.

Perhaps I should have been more clear in my original post... Computers are dumb. At their heart, they can only add ones and zeros.

A cpu chip is a layered silicon sandwich consisting of transistors, resistors and capacitors.

Two or three transistors are combined to create a nand gate http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/electro nic/nand.html#c2 which can be paired to form a nand gate latch or flip-flop http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/electro nic/nand.html#c1

The flip-flop is the basic component of the discreet electronic computational device. It represents either a one, or a zero.

Three flip-flops, representing the A register, the B register and the Accumulator are wired so that the A and the B register are compared, the results are placed in the accumulator.

The results of a 0 + 0 = 0
The results of a 1 + 0 = 1
The results of a 0 + 1 = 1
The results of a 1 + 1 = 0 (and the carry bit is set)

This is addition in its simplest form.

Repeating this operation over multiple bits, allows an integer of fixed length to be summed.

Subtraction is handled by a handy trick that is available only to binary. The trick is that if you invert a bit and add, the result is subtraction. This is called the ones complement.

Computers do subtraction by ADDING the ones complement.

Multiplication is handled by repetition of the ADD operation.

Division is done by Repeated Subtraction http://courses.cs.vt.edu/~cs1104/BuildingBlocks/di vide.020.html

Upon this foundation we build microcode. Upon the microcode we can build an Assembler Language, and from Assembler, we build Perl.

And yes, in Perl, you can add, subtract, multiply and divide numbers in any base you want.

Perhaps I should have been more clear in my original post... Computers are dumb. At their heart, they can only add ones and zeros.

It's not due to your blind spot, but instead has to do with color. When you focus directly on an object, you'll be centering it in your retina where you predominantly have color receptors (cones). Outside of this region you have more rods, which are more sensitive to intensity/contrast, but not color. When you shift your eyes, you're seeing the stars that are too dim to see with your cones, but are sufficient to see with your rods. I find that I'll focus just to the left or right of a star that I might be interested in.

Also, check out this link:
Rod/Cone Distribution

If you're thinking of quieting a PC, here's something to consider: Human hearing is approximately logarithmic, so reducing the sound output by half doesn't correlate to half the perceived loudness. Many people start down the road of silencing their system, only to find that it's more work than they thought. I was one of them :-)

The problem with using solar cells is in order to make enough power, you want the solar cell to be bigger in order to absorb the most light. You also want the solar cells to be small in order to increase the resolution. The research here is increasing efficiency like crazy.

The problem with Stanford's research is releasing and recapturing the chemicals needed for stimulus. And the chemical approach is behind the electrical approach. The electrical approach already has had success with patients.

Salt and pure water are not considered conductors, while salt water is. Your dude did a great job of explaining how that works (ions). Now we know that pure water contains ions. I'm not sure when that was discovered, but it must have been later. Anyway these ions allow pure water to conduct electricity, just not anywhere close to the levels that would classify it as a conductor.

Even insulators like glass and quarts conduct electricity. I've never heard of a substance with inifinite resistively, yet you are claiming that pure water is. If you look it up, you'll see that glass is a better insulator than water, so water is more conductive.

And I don't regret it one bit. I do database and web development for our School of Public Health and in addition to the low stress, I also feel like I'm contributing to something much more meaningful than making some jackass investors rich. Hope to start doing master's work in CS soon - I could take a few hours a semester here for free, but I'll probably take the tuition reimbursement for another institution instead.

A flat response curve is highly desirable for a production or recording studio, because it lets you hear all the problems in the levels of various frequency ranges of the program material, and being in the studio, it's your job to fix those.

In a consumer portable MP3 player, and for most consumer grade audio playback, a flat frequency response is not such a good thing. Music will sound "flat" and dull, which is why pretty much all hi-fi systems have a built in EQ curve to add some depth to the mix, in addition to whatever other EQ options are provided.

Furthermore, the human ear doesn't perceive all frequencies equally loudly, as illustrated by the lines on an Equal Loudness Contour chart. If that ipod really does produce a near-flat response, users will be missing out on lo and hi frequency ranges, as we are much better at hearing frequencies in the 1kHz-4kHz range.

I know we're referring to the shuttle here, which is a budget player, but most current gen mp3 players provide user adjustable graphic EQ (not sure if big ipods do or not), enabling you to get around this whole issue in the first place.

Actually, it will engulf the first three planets, but not extend to Jupiter.

"The Earth's mass does affect it's orbit around the Sun. See Kepler's laws of planetary motion."

That's not correct.

• Kepler's 1st Law: "The orbits of the planets are ellipses, with the Sun at one focus of the ellipse."
• Kepler's 2nd Law: "The line joining the planet to the Sun sweeps out equal areas in equal times as the planet travels around the ellipse."
• Kepler's 3rd Law: "The ratio of the squares of the revolutionary periods for two planets is equal to the ratio of the cubes of their semimajor axes."

You can prove it algebraically: Taking the simple case of a circular orbit, let r = orbital radius, M = mass of sun, m = mass of earth, G = gravitational constant, F = attractive force between sun and earth due to gravity, v = instantaneous linear velocity of earth

From Newton's law of gravitation, F = GMm/r^2

Since the orbit describes a circular path and no other forces act on the Earth, the centripetal force acting on it must be F. (Any object moving in a circle requires a centripetal force acting towards the center of the circle)

Centripetal force F = mv^2 / r

Since the forces are the same, equate them:

mv^2/r = GMm/r^2

Multiply both sides by r:

mv^2 = GMm/r

Divide both sides by m

v^2 = GM/r

As you can see, the orbital radius depends only on the Sun's mass (M) and the instantaneous velocity (v) since G is a universal constant. It is unaffected by the mass of the Earth.

The maths is a bit trickier for an elliptical orbit but the 'm's still cancel.

It is worth noting that in practice the Sun experiences the same force and is therefore displaced, but only by a tiny amount because it has a much greater mass than the Earth. I'm not sure if this is measurable but it has very little to do with the Earth's orbit.

Ack! For those of us who actually work with water-borne polymer systems, there's an incredible lack of detail here. One of the challenges in getting a coating that's easily removable is making a polymer system (either solution, emulsion, or dispersion) that forms a highly uniform, cohesive, and integral film that doesn't have a great deal of affinity (either physical or chemical) for the surface to which it's applied. Aside from wondering what the polymer technology is, I have to wonder how much of this is surface-specific.

Did they rely on an application surface that has a very low surface energy? If so, what happens when the car's "original" finish has either a lousy morphology (non-smooth) and/or a high surface energy (overcomes surface tension of the applied liquid - think water beading on a waxed car [low surface energy] versus water "sheeting" on raw steel)? Did they solve the problem strictly through polarity or specific adhesion, and if so, what happens if the "original" finish is of a different chemistry?

And the polymer - maybe they relied on one that has high cohesion but lousy adhesion. Okay, but if it's a hard/high-modulus polymer, how does it not flake off easily? If it's a softer polymer, then how does it not stretch or sag? Tough to do when you're not relying on adhesive bonding to the substrate to help with structure.

Too many questions, and not enough answers in the linked docs or in a Google search. Fooey.

Interesting, my Googling turned up a value of 1.07 for Saturn here and here, so I assumed that 1.07 was the correct value. Further googling reveals estimates of Saturn's surface gravity ranging from 0.74 to 1.19.

Also, you're off by a factor of one hundred. The latency over 26 miles is 0.14ms, not 14ms.

A bridge, switch, or router is going to introduce latency. On a 10Mbps network, it takes about 0.5 ms to receive a 64-byte packet. So, even if an ISP provides full 10Mbps, the first time a packet hits a store-and-forward point would add at least one millisecond (store 0.5ms, forward 0.5 ms) to a packet's travel time. That's more than seven times the latency due to radio transmission over 26 miles.

All that said, it still sounds like a scam. :-)

IANANP (I am not a nuclear physicist) but a lot of people don't seem to know much about fusion so here are some links which explain a bit more about it:

http://www.jet.efda.org/pages/content/fusion2.html
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/nucene/ fusion.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_nuclear_f usion
http://www.fusion.org.uk/
http://www.iter.org/

Hm...the volume of the sun is something like 1,000,000 earths and the sun is composed of about 27% helium by mass, so it seems to me that there's about 270,000 Earth-fulls of helium waiting to be picked up.

Now:
1. Drive Earth over to the sun
2. Collect helium
3. PROFIT!!!!

Oh...wait...there's the little matter of the temperature being millions of degrees... :-(

The "Cold" in Cold fusion relates to the fusion phenomenon occuring at temperatures way colder than current (working) fusion reactors work at.

Normal thermonuclear fusion reactors operate at around 100 million degrees Celsius. (see abstract at http://www.osti.gov/energycitations/product.biblio .jsp?osti_id=7146984)

In the sun, at extremely high densities, thermonuclear fusion is able to take place at much colder temperatures, around 15 million degrees Celsius. (see http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/astro/p rocyc.html#c1)

Cold fusion refers to fusion taking place at temperatures almost a million times colder than that - around room temperature, 25 degrees Celsius.

An interesting cold fusion product is available from Clean Energy Technologies Inc. A news article about is found here: http://www.padrak.com/ine/CFARNOSIX.html.

HTH.

While I agree about fusion research being the most important, for fission here's always breeder reactor technology.

http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/nucene/ fasbre.html