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You disproved your own argument. You say at first that humanity has this grand power to burn all this carbon, but then point out that it would only be about 1.8 cubic kilometers if it were the density of water. Is that a typo? Frankly, it's a very SMALL number, which would indicate that humanity has a very small impact.

To give you some idea - the volume of the earth's oceans has been computed to be 1.37 BILLION CUBIC KILOMETERS. (See here.) So that carbon, if it were in the density of water, would be 1 billionth of the size of the oceans.

Now, as it relates to carbon, imagine that the earth itself is practically made of the stuff, as is most life!

[peeve]
"... all intents and purposes ..."
[/peeve]

Unfortunately, you've performed the apples/oranges comparison yourself. For your argument to be valid, you need to scale-up the power generation capabilities of your car's tank of gas to be comparable to that of a nuclear power station. Lesse ... time for some napkin math - let's say your typical nuclear power station churns out 1000MW. A typical energy density of gasoline is about 130MJ/gallon. Your 10-gallon tank contains about 1300MJ. Estimating that you'll burn that whole tank at highway speeds in about 4 hours, the car's energy consumption rate is about (1300MJ/(4h*3600s/h)) = 90.2kW. Now we're taling a kW-to-kW comparison here. The 1000MW nuclear plant is about equivalent to 11086 cars ... running 24/7 at highway speeds. From this point, you should be able to mathematically compare deaths/kW for both automobiles and nuclear power stations. (I don't feel like hunting down the statistics.)

As for the car analogy being safer because the problem is localized ... that's crap. In 2000 we managed to kill 41000 people with our cars in the US, and injure another 3.2 million. We have lots of cars, and that's a big multiplier. Just because you spread the issue out into a really large volume, doesn't make it inherently safer.

The bottom line is that electricity has a certain value. It doesn't matter how it is generated.

Of course it does. That's why people willingly pay *more* for power generated from clean sources. There are utility companies that *offer* people the chance to pay *higher* utility rates for the assurance that they'll be using windpower, and people pay that.

Currently electricity is valued much higher than chemical (gasoline) energy per kWh.

I'm certainly not aware of where you're getting *that* notion. A gallon of gas right by my house sells for $3.19 at the moment, and a gallon of gas comes out to about 33 kilowatt-hours. Electricity, on the other hand, goes for about 8 cents per kilowatt-hour, so 33 kilowatt-hours comes out to only $2.64. So it's *not* valued much higher than gasoline.

If I am a power company who can sell electricity for $0.25/kWh on the retail market, why in the world would I bother converting that to hydrogen which would sell to consumers for a lot less as auto fuel.

Because you stand to profit from the sale of hydrogen. You can't just make more money by increasing the supply of electricity.

A gallon of gasoline contains about 60 kWh or energy. Say gas costs $3/gallon. Even at this relatively high gas price, you're only paying $0.05 per kWh!

You're off by a factor of two. Here.

Just to check my figures. The figures on that page average 44.6 MJ/kg, gasoline has a density of .8 g/cc, so one US gallon (3785cc) weighs about 3 kilograms, that's 133.8 MJ, that's 37 kilowatt-hours. Still less expensive than an equivalent energy-amount of gasoline.

Granted, a lot of that cost/gallon is taxes, not the real cost of the gas, but that sort of artificial price inflation is also at work in the retail cost of electricity.

If you were to convert electricty (at $.25/kWh) to hydrogen, you would pay $15 for a gallon of gas worth of energy!


No, you wouldn't. At that price of electricity (Which is really a high figure, according to the DOE, for the year 2003 the average cost nationwide was 8.7 cents per kWh, so most power companies *can't* sell electricity for $.25/kWh. Those same DOE figures claim that the highest electricity costs in the nation are in Hawaii, at 14.47 cents/kWh. I believe that during the Enron debacle in California, prices went up to 20 cents. So, really, you're using a 'typical' value that is actually considerably higher than the worst absurdities the market has been able to generate. But moving on... ), you'd be paying $9.25.

By comparison the post office runs several propane powered vehicles around the city here. These poor performing vehicles run on a fuel with an energy density of 7.5 kwh/liter.

It isn't just the floating ice that is an issue. Greenland plenty, on land: "It extends 1,570 miles (2,530 km) north-south, has a maximum width of 680 miles (1,094 km) near its northern margin, and has an average thickness of about 5,000 feet (1,500 m)." http://hypertextbook.com/facts/2000/EmmanuelleStJe an.shtml

ATP isn't an energy storage molecule - it's more like an energy transfer one. Fats are the main long term energy store.

IIRC fats do almost as well as Gasoline, which is very good indeed, 30x better than Lithium ion batteries.

http://www.tinaja.com/glib/energfun.pdf
http://hypertextbook.com/physics/matter/energy-che mical/

My back of the envelope calculation says that we should get 25x the energy density in fat based power source. Which is pretty impressive. Mind you, getting all the energy out of burning fat would be tricky. Plus, it's a nasty idea.

Personally, I like the idea of running laptops on butane or propane - you could buy lighter fuel like pressurised containers from a shop, and burn the contents in some suitable engine - maybe a gas turbine or a Stirling engine connected to a dynamo.

I don't personally use the word "accuse", but he bears some responsibility for the events of 60 years ago, and for the nuclear arms race that followed.

Just over 1kg of coal, depending on what type. And that assumes that you're running the power supply at its limit rather than the nominal 30W that most computers use. So about 100g of coal.

Centripetal-force-generated artificial gravity systems, like those envitioned by Arthur C. Clarke shown in the film 2001, have been studied by NASA and the Air Force for decades. Basically, it would require a structure of a few hundred meters radius rotating at a few rpm. The scale of such a habitat would be enormous, and the cost associated has not been shown to be warranted as of yet. However, the commercialization of space will probably bring about such an innovation out of necessity (for comfort).
Links here, here, and here.

According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars, http://hypertextbook.com/facts/2001/AlbertEydelman .shtml and http://www-k12.atmos.washington.edu/k12/resources/ mars_data-information/temperature_overview.html (the latter are the first 2 results on Google for "mars temperature"), Mars can already reach about 20C/70F near the equator. With that in mind, 50C doesn't seem too high, especially for an equatorial plane. Still, it's strange to think that Mars could be as hot as the heat record in Phoenix (though 45C is pretty common).

There are some 200 Million cars in the U.S. alone.

Total land area of eart is about 150,000,000 http://hypertextbook.com/facts/2001/DanielChen.sht ml sq km, which is 15,000,000,000 hectares.

This means that we have (about) 2.5 hectares of land area each. That's a space 250m x 100m, per person.

We need to live on this area, grow our food, grow our fuels (when fossil fuels run out, or when we realise we've got to stopp using them), which will be needed in reasonable quantities to get people into space. We'd probably also like a bit of rainforest left, and some of that is going to be desert and arctic, and pretty useless. I don't see what resources you could possibly bring back from space that could solve this problem. But I'd be interested to see what you thought they could be.

"The average air pressure at the surface of Mars is 6 millibars (compared to 1013 millibars on Earth)."
So it seems to be just barely possible.

Actually, I did some research, and I realize I wasn't completely on the mark with my comments. I think the big two chip companies are moving somewhat in the right direction, with dual-core chips, though there is certainly a need for low power Transmeta chips for reading Slashdot, or at least the big players should drop the clockspeed to 1 Mhz when the CPU is idle, and only crank it to 5GHz when needed.

As far as off the mark goes, did you know that the human brain consumes humongous amounts of power? More exactly 20 Watts out of a 100 Watts resting pace, so even though it makes up only 2% of the body's weight, it consumes 20% of total energy/oxygen needs? So even this ever-perfected life runs the cpu "hot" relative to the rest of the system.

Also, by 2020-2050 we can expect real artificial intelligence if things keep up they way they do. We better start thinking about the consequences of what happens when machines are smarter, more intelligent, can hold wittier conversations, and make better supreme court judges than human beings. Is that something we can deal with, or trust?

But with a cheap launch technology, it's the individuals who will truly explore space. Once we're out of Earth's gravity well, private explorers could pretty much go anywhere provided they stocked enough food. Solar cells will provide unlimited energy, and a solar sail the unlimited propulsion. Advanced recycling equipment will minimize the loss of water and other necessities, and a decent internet connection will keep the travelers from feeling too cut off.


Many of those problems have already been solved by the ocean liner industry. Under financial pressure to reduce operating costs, they have been working on ways of make cruise ships more fuel efficient (using azipods), along with working out ways to make life comfortable for passengers, the 'space ratio').

Some (the Queen Mary 2) even have their own planetarium.

If we could work out how to build or launch something like one of these liners in Earth orbit (using standard construction techniques), and add radiation shielding, we could cruise the solar system in style and safety.

The specification of an ocean liner read like something out of Star Trek.

Power consumption = 118 Megawatts,
Propulsive power = 86 Megawatts
Steering = 4 azipods (2 fixed, 2 directional)
Decks = 15
Cabins = 1330 (all with Internet access)
Passengers = 2620
Crew = 1310

For comparision, the space shuttle can transport 200 tonnes back to Earth (landing weight), and consumes 7 - 12 Kilowatts of power for all of its electrical systems, while the booster rockets and main engines are rated at 11.7 GigaWatts

Probably just the author's inexperience showing there. Cyan is a mix of green and blue, and to one who is not familiar with design or color theory it could be easily construed as just being blue.

Here's what cyan looks like.

Well, the thing is you simply can't upgrade it enough. A typical energy density for gasoline is 8KWH/l [1], which translates to a good 400KWH in a tank. If we assume that an electrical car is twice as efficient in terms of getting energy out of batteries (which is probably optimistic), 200KWH of batteries would be needed. I found [2] a figure of 300V for a hybrid car battery, so that gives us a recharge rate of 666AH.

To recharge your car in 1 hour, you'd have to connect it to the ditribution transformer with solid copper plates.

Jw

[1] http://hypertextbook.com/facts/2003/ArthurGolnik.s html
[2] http://www.hybridcars.com/battery-comparison.html

Troll -- A Troll is similar to Flamebait, but slightly more refined. This is a prank comment intended to provoke indignant (or just confused) responses. A Troll might mix up vital facts or otherwise distort reality, to make other readers react with helpful "corrections." Trolling is the online equivalent of intentionally dialing wrong numbers just to waste other people's time.

With just over a billion cubic kilometers, that is about 1/10 of a cubic kilometer per person. If you want to use that over 10 years (give it some time to cool) you get about 27 cubic meters per day (that is for all your food, cooling, desalination, and power). Not sure that will cut it for all our power. But maybe you would care to 'do some math' that disagrees with mine?

Mars' atmospheric pressure is MUCH lower than Earth's though. This is due to a couple intertwined factors.

Mainly, Mars' lower gravity combined with the lack of a significant protective magnetosphere has allowed the solar wind to strip Mars of most of its atmosphere. What remains is what little Mars can hold onto. Some fun reading if you're up for it.

"graphite beats diamond only if the heat can be forced to conduct in a direction parallel to the crystal layers. The material with the greatest thermal conductivity is a superfluid form of liquid helium called helium II, which only exists at temperatures below 2.17 K"

http://hypertextbook.com/physics/thermal/conductio n/

And how many people died as a direct result of the Protestant reformation?

That was in the era when, e.g., duels to restore "offended honor" were commonplace and often resulted in deaths for both. How many people died as a result of Vatican II?

Compare, please, to the number of people who died as a part of the revolution in physics at the advent of quantum mechanics and general relativity.

What's all this about Albert Einstein encouraging Roosevelt to develop the atomic bomb? Even if you argue this was solely for defense against Germany, a) America is the only country so far to have used atomic /nuclear weapons in war, and b) it was the "revolution in physics," as you said, that gave government scientists in both Germany and America the foundation to build atomic weapons.

The destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki would have been impossible without the physics developed at the beginning of the 20th century. Compare that, please, to the number of people killed in the Protestant reformation...which probably numbers in the thousands, but definitely not in the millions.

Yes!
Let the UN general assembly do it!
No, wait, maybe it should be the ITU!
No, wait, maybe it should be the ISO!
Hmm... maybe the International electrotechnical commission?

Oh, wait... the US doesn't like standards-setting bodies. OR international organizations, for that matter.

It's better to have a hodgepodge of cell phone technologies that don't talk to each other, a silly measurement system based on bodyparts and british wheat, a TV broadcast system that never twice gives you the same color, never mind a digital TV standard that the rest of the world won't use.

I'm sure Bolton will take care of it once he's in the UN as our ambassador. Yeah, that's the ticket...

Thermal conductivity chart.
Please note plane parallel thermsl conductivity of graphite which greatly exceeds diamond.
If you don't want to peruse the linked material...thermal conductivity(W/m - K):copper = 401, diamond = 895, Graphite = 1950.

Drilling two miles isn't that hard and has certainly been done before. The deepest drill hole on land goes down some 12 km.

But this isn't the same thing. This is trying to drill down 3+ km below the bottom of the Atlantic. In this case the drilling starts under 750 m of water (and only because Atlantis Massif is a relatively high spot on the sea floor). The mid-ocean ridge in the Atlantic is their target because it has some of the shallowest Moho in the world. To reach the Moho from a continental section you would probably have to drill 25 km or more even with a good choice of location.

A quick Google search shows that on earth every square meter receives about 4.2kwh of energy per day over a 24 hour period.

A quick look at my electric bill says I use about 20kwh/day as a rough average -- another Google search suggests that the average US household uses approximately 25kwh/day

...So, finishing the math: using 15% efficiency solar cells, the Average US Household needs only 40 square meters (430 square feet) of solar cells to cover all its energy needs. Heck, I could use 5% solar cells on my roof in downtown San Francisco, and STILL have 2x extra capacity to sell back to the grid!

Don't get me wrong: Solar won't solve everything, particularly in applications like transportation where energy storage is an issue --- and cheap Fission IS something we should have figured out a long time ago --- but please don't resort to misinformation to make your points, it only weakens what you are saying.

You're way off.

Let's be generous and assume a very high 5 kw-Hr/m^2 solar intensity over our land mass

Solar intensity is usually measured in kw/m^2, not kw-Hr/m^2. A high estimate of solar intensity would therefor be 5 kw-Hr/m^2 per hour, so you only need something the size of Arizona if you want to capture a year's worth of energy in just one hour.

20 gallons of gas = 20*121 MJ/gal = 2420MJ


Another serious problem with your calculations is ignoring the relative efficiency of gasoline and electric systems.

I don't know how authoritative or accurate this information is, but this site says electric motors are in the neighborhood of 80% efficient, with gasoline in the neighborhood of 40% efficient.

So even if you could somehow create a fully electric car with the same weight and driving range as a gasoline car, your calculations are incorrect because the 60% of the energy stored in the 20 gallons of gas you base your calculations on is lost in the conversion to mechanical energy by the motor.

Yet another stupid unit of measure "almost faster than a speeding bullet."

Also what the heck kind of slow lazy bullets are almost slower than 80mph.

because I was curious I checked out the speed of a bullet. referencing this link:
http://hypertextbook.com/facts/1999/MariaPereyra.s html
puts the lower end of bullet speed at about 750mph and the upper end at 6700mph.

At least "almost as fast as a carrier pigeon in a tornado" would have been more accurate.

From some random site, the volume of Earth's oceans is 1.3*10^9 km^3. That's roughly 40,000 times as much water as what was just found on Mars. Inferring the existance of even more water on Mars, and taking into account the fact that Mars is smaller than Earth (surface area of Earth is ~ 6.65 times that of Mars?), you might say the avearge ocean depth of Earth is at most 6000 times greater than that of Mars. Not too friggin bad, let's terraform this sucker.

Let's see. A typical car uses about 15KW at around 50MPH (See for example, http://hypertextbook.com/facts/2001/JaeheeJoh.shtm l) , and the efficiency of solar generation of hydrogen via electrolysis is about 10% (See http://gcep.stanford.edu/pdfs/hydrogen_workshop/Ma cQueen.pdf).
Now on a good day, you can't expect more than 1KW of sunlight square meter. So with a 1 square meter solar cell, if you wanted to drive for a measely one hour, you would need your solar cell to be exposed to full sun-light for 15KW/(0.1 x 1KW) = 150 hours. Oops!

I saw a documentary about oil and energy efficiency a while ago that stated that solar power would required 1/3 of the world's land in solar panels in order to meet the world's energy needs. Hmm...

http://www.jc-solarhomes.com/solar_energy_facts.ht m

Assume each square metre can receives 1 KW hr per hr. Assume 20% efficiency for photovoltaics. So 0.2 KW hr per hr per metre.

http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0001729.html says a kw hour is 3412 BTUs, so photo voltaics produce 0.2 * 3412 = 682.4 BTU/hr per square metre.

http://energy.cr.usgs.gov/energy/stats_ctry/Stat1. html says the 1998 U.S. energy consumption was about 94 quadrillion BTUs Assumong 8 * 365 hours of decent sunshine in the desert year around. So that's 100 * 10^15 / (8 * 365 ) = 34 * 10^12 BTUs/sunshine hour.

(34 * 10^12 ) / (682.4 ) = 49 * 10^9 square metres = 49 * 10^9 / 10^6 = 49000 square kilometres = 223 KM by 223 KM or 140 miles by 140 miles.

If you "want" the entire world to consume energy at per-capita rates like the USA, then assuming the US population is 300M, and the world population is 6B, then 6*10^9/(300*10^6) * 49000 = 980000 square km. The Earth's land surface area is claimed to be 148,300,000 sq km, so 980000 / 148300000 = .006608 or less than 1% of the Earth's land surface area.

Mind you, for infrastructure that huge, you have to build roads, support buldings, etc. So even if a factor of 3 off, that's still about 2% of the surface area.

Also, once demand for photovoltaics reached 1% of the above, I imagine the industry would drive efficiency from 20% to higher levels. So 1/3 of the land surface area is way too high.

The real problem with photovoltaics is the cost. http://store.yahoo.com/sancor/50w.html will sell you a 502mm x 939mm panel for $588, or 588 / (502 * 939) * 1000000 = $1247 per sq metre. Let's be hopeful that in quantity, wholesale lots, we could buy this for $1000 per sq metre. 980000 * 1000 * 1000 * 1000 = $980 trillion. Note that the annual GDP for Earth, according to http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/print /xx.html is $51.48 trillion. That figure is at purchasing power parity. I'll leave it others to speculate whether photovoltaics can be manufactured cheaper in third world countries or not. If you don't think so, then considering that the U.S. economy is about $11 trillion, and that it is blamed for consuming about 1/2 the world's resources, the non purchasing power parity world GDP is probably closer to $22 trillion.

There needs to be a 10X reduction in the price/energy ratio of photovoltaics. Do that, i.e. reduce the cost of the solar energy to meet the world's needs to an investment of about $100 trillion, amortize it over 30 years, and I'm sure we can find the money and land to do this.

"It's literally a million pound weapon of death"

And that's just the loco.

simply owing to the earth's rotation, you are, at this moment, moving at a rate of approximately 1000 mph? Probably less since you are probably not at the equator.

Also, Due to the earth's orbit around the sun, were are traveling at approximately 67000mph.

According to findings of COBE, our galaxy is traveling at 300 k/s or about 1.34 million mph.

Why aren't you torn apart?

simply owing to the earth's rotation, you are, at this moment, moving at a rate of approximately 1000 mph? Probably less since you are probably not at the equator.

Also, Due to the earth's orbit around the sun, were are traveling at approximately 67000mph.

According to findings of COBE, our galaxy is traveling at 300 k/s or about 1.34 million mph.

Why aren't you torn apart?

The Earth's average distance from the Sun is governed by it's orbital velocity and nothing else, for the same reason that the period of a pendulum depends soley upon it's length and the prevailing gravitational field, it's mass having no relevance.

Short answer - We couldn't affect the orbit of Mars, and it would have no effect on that of Earth if we could.

Regardless of the temperature rise, how is melting *all* of the world's ice in Antarctica and general land mass going to cause sea levels to rise substantially? One figure I saw reported this week was a 10 metre sea level rise. (Countdown to global catastrophe)

Area of Earth's surface (Area of Earth's Land Surface):

• Water ~70%;
• Land ~30%
• Percentage of land covered in snow: ~20%

So snow and ice covers around 6% of the planet overall and would have to be on average 116 metres thick (assuming 100% compaction, which it isn't becuase ice is full of air) to achieve a 10 metre sea level rise - does that sound right to you? Melting the entire Arctic ice mass will have no effect whatsoever because its weight is already supported by the water it floats in, so it can be ignored - people do seem to forget that.

Media hype, anyone?

Yes, higher temperatures will probably accelerate evaporation and increase the rain cycle. But who *really* knows? It's all theory and conjecture - people need to stop treating it as fact.

Okay. The Earth has roughly 150M km^2 of land surface. If a small-yield warhead renders 100 km^2 uninhabitable (just a guess based on your "several square miles" per weapon), then 140 weapons would render 14000 km^2 uninhabitable. That's 0.01% of the Earth's land surface area.

So a beetle is at least 3.49140639x10^9 meters wide? (This number found by using the smallest estimate for the diameter of a human hair from here.)

A rifle bullet will have a velocity that's a relatively small multiple of the airliner's velocity.

You know alot about bullets and rifles, right? ;-)

Actually a bullet fired from a good rifle is supersonic, compare to
Mach 1.

What was the last time you flew on a supersonic aircraft?

The real difference is that the beam from that kind of laser is continuos, so it works both as a "spot mark" AND as a "bullet", with an infinite number of rounds per minute.

Paul B.

I suggest you look into new diesel engines. They can be even cleaner than their non-diesel counterparts with recent innovations in diesel catalytic converters and filters.


Particulates will always be changing because of changing engine designs. However, one mole of diesel will always produce more exhause gas than one mole of gasoline because the average molecular weight is much greater despite being made of the same atoms. From http://hypertextbook.com/physics/matter/density/
we have:

diesel 800 kg/m^3
gasoline 803 kg/m^3

Since their densities are about the same, we can say one unit volume of diesel contains more stuff to burn than gas.

A diesel engine may weigh slightly more than a regular gasoline engine (not if you use modern materials), but it certainly weighs less than a gasoline engine, an electric motor, and a pack of batteries.

a) The engine in the hybrid is smaller, because it runs at one speed (full-out) if it is ever running. This means it does not need to be designed for low end power.

b) You forgot to include that despite the extra generator and batteries, we now get to remove the transmission and can, in the future remove the transfer case (awd/4wd), driveshaft (rwd), steering shaft & powersteering pump (electric replacement + drive by wire), power brake vacuum chamber (electric assist) because we now have an electric unit powerful enough to take care of all these things built in.

Some recent numbers from Honda/Acura's new diesel engine in their... I think it's the new Accord, but they don't call it that: 76 MPG, 130 MPH stop speed, 8 second 0-60 acceleration. That's amazing numbers, and better than any hybrid system out there.

As I said before, gas and diesel doesn't compare because a gallon of diesel produces energy (and emissions) equivellent to perhaps 2 gallons of gas.

I should also metion that the molecules in diesel's weight range are more likely overlapping with polymers and other organtic products which have other uses. Gas is more of a byproduct that doesn't have much function other than as a fuel (and thus is better spent that way)

What diesel engines DOES provide is alternatives to pumping form the ground entirely, which is sweet. However, this is separate from petrolium diesel fuel which is not good

about twice as much

Gasoline, automotive 45.8 MJ/Kg
Carbohydrates 17.2
Proteins 17.2
Fats 38.9

They say 50.000 at the end of a human hair. Do anybody know the actual size of this cell?

First match on Google for diameter of human hair is:
http://hypertextbook.com/facts/1999/BrianLey.shtml

Quote: "In my research, I have found the diameter of human hair to range from 17 to 181 [micrometer/microns]."

Assume a circular hair of 100 microns diameter, and assume the end of it is a flat circle of area Pi*Rad^2, or 7854 micron^2, divide this by 50000 and you get 0.157 micron^2 per SRAM cell.

The article mentions how IBM's SRAM cell is 10 times smaller than the current smallest. A Google for smallest SRAM cell gets you the Intel press release in March 2002 (too old?) that claims a 1 micron^2 SRAM cell.

Sounds about right to me. Given the range of hair diameter from 17 micron to 181 micron, the corresponding SRAM sizes would range from 0.0045 micron^2 to 0.51 micron^2. For exactly 0.1 micron^2 (a tenth of Intel's 2002 record), the hair diameter should be 80 micron.

Also, looks like the hair width varies too much from person to person to make it a realiable metric!

The Earth's rotation causes a 20-kilometre bulge at the equator, making Chimborazo volcano in Ecuador the highest mountain above sea level.

However, there are two other reasonable ways to measure the height of a mountain. You can measure the radial distance from the center of the Earth to the summit. This is the one that makes Chimborazo a winner, since the equatorial bulge counts for this measurement.

You can also measure from the height of the surrounding terrain. This is obviously trickier, since the surrounding terrain is seldom entirely flat. But it happens that there is an unambiguous winner in this category, too: Mauna Kea, the tallest peak on the big island of Hawaii. All of that island is in fact a large volcano rising from the depths of the Pacific Ocean; the overall height from base to peak (including the submerged part) is over 33,000 feet.

This site provides a nice summary of the data, with references.

No. Water used with coffee should be in the neighborhood of 190 degrees F. Any more or less and you risk over or underextraction respectively.

200 x 10**6 x 1 x 10**6
200 x 10**12

I doubt that the resulution is sufficient to track individuals yet.

With a resolution of 5cm (2 inches) or 10cm (4 inches), the spy satellites can certainly track people. Source: Resolution of a Spy Satellite.

Note that a satellite does not have to be able to recognize your face to track you (it is hard to see it from the sky anyway). You can be identified by many other details.

plate has 25,000 neurons in a roughly two-dimensonal matrix (from the Wired article), so it's probably not even as smart as a bug so far (I am just guessing about this, does anyone have figures to compare this to?), but given enough space and time, might it not become sentient?

The human brain has roughly 100 billion neurons.

I recall reading elsewhere that each neuron has on average 10 connections (remember, a neuron is useles without its connections). That that comes out to 1 trillion connections!

Compare that to this 25,000 neuron petri dish where applying the same 10-connection rule yields only a quarter-million connections. That's only .000025% of the number of connections in a human brain. The 25,000 neurons have roughly 1/4,000,000th of the power of a human brain

This is an exmaple of why I'm so baffled when people think that the human brain is something mystical. Why do they so easily discount the power of a neural network? It takes a t neuron ANN (artificial neural network) to do decent text-to-speech. A 35 neuron ANN steered a car by vision to keep it on the road. This 25,000 neuron experiment to fly a plain is probably a grotesquely ineffecient use of that many neurons, but still only a drop in a bucket.

then use a DC to AC converter.

Need to do some math, along with getting an over night battery recharger. But several of these should do.

See this article, seems that car batteries are typically rated in hundreds of amp hours (100 to 500), so two or three might do the job.