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Multiple studies have shown that 100% of energy needs can be met by renewables. We don't need fossil fuels. Here's a few... try Google for more... https://interestingengineering... https://physicsworld.com/a/100... https://www.sciencedirect.com/...

Then how come we aren't?

Because of rich guys in top hats smoking cigars, cackling with glee as the planet burns?

Multiple studies have shown that 100% of energy needs can be met by renewables. We don't need fossil fuels.
Here's a few... try Google for more...
https://interestingengineering...
https://physicsworld.com/a/100...
https://www.sciencedirect.com/...

Numerous studies have uncovered they myth of baseload and shown that renewables can easily cover 100% of energy needs.
Here's one.
https://physicsworld.com/a/100...

Plants are warm as well.

https://physicsworld.com/a/is-...

So then, is photosynthesis “quantum” or not? “The observations show that there is correlation between the wavefunctions of the states involved in energy or electron transfer,” says Romero. “But these effects are not considered by some scientists as truly quantum coherence in the sense that entangled states of quantum computing are understood.” And Engel agrees that to compare the two is to invoke “the wrong language”.

physicsworld: How to make a quantum random-number generator from a mobile phone

I do in fact.
Here's a citation:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy_in_thermodynamics_and_information_theory#Information_is_physical
and the relevant portion:

Using a phase-contrast microscope equipped with a high speed camera connected to a computer, as demon, the principle has been actually demonstrated.[3] In this experiment, information to energy conversion is performed on a Brownian particle by means of feedback control; that is, synchronizing the work given to the particle with the information obtained on its position. Computing energy balances for different feedback protocols, has confirmed that the Jarzynski equality requires a generalization that accounts for the amount of information involved in the feedback.

Additional links:
http://physicsworld.com/cws/ar...
https://physics.stackexchange....
https://www.newscientist.com/a...

-natch

Well, that may not be entirely true. The Casimir effect and Hawking radiation are both potential examples of "negative energy". Hawking radiation is still entirely theoretical, and the few (I think maybe singular) experiment that actually measured Casimir forces (as described here makes no mention of negative energy. And, of course, this experiment was not designed to detect anything like this; especially seeing as Hawking radiation would only be right outside the event horizon of a black hole.

Harold White, working with NASA, theorizes that the Casimer effect may be able to produce the type of negative energy required to create a working Alcubierre warp drive but it's all still highly theoretical. Well, mostly theoretical but there have been some tantalizing results from a few experiments.

The hard part is figuring out that you need to "add asteroid dust to the hull to block radiation".

This is how you shield a spaceship

But there's no question that radiation is one of those issues that we really don't have a good "magic bullet" for.

But there are workable half-measures, like this one >>

Hmm. I think you're not quite seeing what my point was. Or maybe you do, but we're talking about other possible applications. That the casimir affect is real, is not something science doubts, since it has been proven by numerous experiments. They even managed to get photons out of it. http://physicsworld.com/cws/ar...

However, what is impossible is getting 'free' energy out of it. Since vacuum energy is in its lowest state, you can not *derive* energy out of it, at least, not while putting much more energy in it in the first place. In short, it's completely useless as a free-energy machine, a perpetuum mobile, an over-unity device, or a reactionless drive like the EMdrive, etc.

Mars isn't going anywhere. There is no need to rush, just to say we got there.

What they should be spending money on is building a for real ship.

What is a "Ship"?

1. Long term and adequate power source...nuclear reactor of some kind.
2. Artificial gravity (no, not Star Trek, Centripetal Wheel living quarters).
3. Magnetic shielding
4. A non-chemical Power source.
5. Built to last...no one and done crap.

Accomplishing this alone will stimulate more technological development that a mission to mars would. And you would end up with something reusable, versatile and useful.

How do we know time doesn't go backward? Maybe it does. We'd never know it if it did. (think about it.)

Surprising as it seems we would actually know if time reversed because of what seems to be one of the most forgotten results of particle physics: the laws of physics do not work the same if time is reversed due to something called "T-violation": literally time-reversal symmetry violation. This is NOT the same thing as a glass falling off a table will not reassemble itself and flying back onto the same because this is an effect of entropy.

The first evidence for T-violation came from the CP-LEAR kaon experiment at CERN in 1998 [Phys. Lett. B 444 43 (1998)] and was confirmed in B-decays by Babar in 2012 (and as evidence that this result is always forgotten they forgot about the CP-LEAR measurement in this article!!). These experiments looked at how a particle oscillates back and forth between two possible states. What they found is that a particle in state A will oscillate into state B faster than one in state B will oscillate into state A. Hence the process prefers to go in one direction more than the other even though in this case the two states have identical entropy.

So if time were reversed you would be able to detect it by doing the same experiment and finding that now the particles would go from B to A faster than from A to B. Incidentally this symmetry is also closely related by special relativity to the symmetry between matter and anti-matter so reversing time would switch our universe into one which prefers anti-matter over matter and we could detect this flip again with particle physics experiments.

So amazing as it seems we could detect a flip in the direction of time and the article is just plain wrong when it says that the laws of physics don't care which way time goes: they do and we have evidence to show it!

We should not be in such a hurry that we are sending people in fragile tin cans reliant on chemical rockets. Instead we should be working on building an actual Ship in orbit.

What is a "Ship"? First, it is a vessel with ample power: some kind of reactor that can run all the ship's systems, plus a magnetic shield. The other systems a reactor would power is the engines...Ion or those EM drives (should they pan out. I expect the truth should be sorted out by the time they get around to building something like this). Sure...they are low thrust, but you can have a lot of them. And they have some pretty powerful ones in development.

Another thing it would have to be is big. Room for rotating sections for artificial gravity, hydroponics, a workshop (because AAA doesn't serve Space yet). Storage for fuel, water, a lander of some sort, etc.

Sure, it sounds all futuristic, but we have the essential technologies or they are on the drawing boards, or can be with just a bit of political will. It's time we took the next step in Space Travel...the step where it's actual travel and not just joy rides to lower orbit. We can put off Mars for a decade or and instead focus on building something that is safe, reliable and not a one and done soda pop can.

Hmm... Wasn't there talk of being able to store data, permanently, in crystals? It popped up on /. quite a while back. I don't think I've seen anything about it in years.

Hmm... Looks like it was back in 2013 actually. I thought it was a bit further back than that? Anyhow, if you've never seen anything about it:
http://physicsworld.com/cws/ar...

I have no idea where it currently resides, as far as progress goes, in the development stages or commercial viability so it may be vaporware.

I have never heard of this, and I am interested. Can you name an example of a respectable scientist (not a "fringe" controversial person, I mean) who has been banned?

Marni Sheppeard.
Peter Woit.

Note that they are not (as far as I can tell) banned, just blocked. Nothing is made public, it's just that certain things seem to happen consistently. And, in my experience, moderated papers are not available to the public.

Note that the real problem here is not that papers are moderated. I understand the desire for moderation. It's the way it's being done that is problematic.

Here is half, if not all of the answer,
Radioactive decay accounts for half of Earth's heat. http://physicsworld.com/cws/ar...
The rest of the answer may be in the data (if known) about the distribution of heavy radioactive elements throughout the Solar System.

It will be possible to transport and/or deploy an artificial magnetic field. They'll be operatinng around 2020. So, problem solved,

Read more...

Inkjet transistors http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/2011/jul/14/inkjet-printing-produces-high-performance-transistors

If they lofted a multi-megawatt reactor, they could generate a magenetic shield to protect from radiation.

It's also been established that sound can put out fires.

http://physicsworld.com/cws/ar...

I think Microsoft may be able to get away with this on a technicality because the waveguide used in the glasses may be a holographic material. Kind of like this http://physicsworld.com/cws/ar...

The problem of find an object siting on the bottom of the ocean is different from finding an object actively propelling itself through the ocean.

One possible method of detecting submarines is looking at the wake they produce. As submarines move through the water they leave an underwater wake that slightly modifies the wave pattern at the surface. One can use radar or lidar along with a bunch of computing power to detect these wakes and thus reveal submarines. Implementing such a system could be done relatively cheaply by mounting such systems on a UAV. Submarines have allegedly been detected from SAR satellites.

Acoustic cancellation is no countermeasure for this, one would have to find a way for the submarine to be propelled without making a wake, which is possible, but probably not practical. Although this detection technique does not work well when there are a lot of breaking waves.

liquider sodium.

It's really liquid sodium all the way down.

That said, a good thermionic generator could use the heat for electricity.
http://physicsworld.com/cws/ar...

Anyone know what the efficiencies are on these sorts of "tabletop" laser particle accelerators versus say a linac? I'm curious as to whether it'd make an effective "tabletop" spallation neutron source - protons in the range of a couple hundred MEv to a few GEv are ideal for that purpose. (yes, I know this one is an electron accelerator, but ultrashort laser pulses can also accelerate protons, although I don't know if you can hit the same sorts of energies).

Manufacturing at scale is a big problem

http://cdn.shopify.com/s/files...

The stuff is still monumentally more expensive than its competition, even with the price dropping fast, because it's new and we haven't figured out how to scale it yet. The stuff coming out of your dvd burner is not the high quality stuff, and low quality graphene is worse than non-graphene alternatives at most things.

Its use in electronics is also inhibited by the lack of bandgap, which people are looking into: http://physicsworld.com/cws/ar.... It's just another material, and pricing will dictate its use vs. less effective but still perfectly viable alternatives. While its new, this has an odd chicken-and-egg supply-and-demand relationship.

'Was the universe born spinning?' http://physicsworld.com/cws/ar... "The universe was born spinning and continues to do so around a preferred axis" Our Universe spins around a preferred axis because it is a larger version of a galactic polar jet. 'Mysterious Cosmic 'Dark Flow' Tracked Deeper into Universe' http://www.nasa.gov/centers/go... "The clusters appear to be moving along a line extending from our solar system toward Centaurus/Hydra, but the direction of this motion is less certain. Evidence indicates that the clusters are headed outward along this path, away from Earth, but the team cannot yet rule out the opposite flow. "We detect motion along this axis, but right now our data cannot state as strongly as we'd like whether the clusters are coming or going," Kashlinsky said." The clusters are headed along this path because our Universe is a larger version of a polar jet. It's not the Big Bang; it's the Big Ongoing. Dark energy is dark matter continuously emitted into the Universal jet.

More information: New approach to fusion delivers copious neutrons

"temperature of about 35 million degrees and the production of about 1012 neutrons. These results imply an energy output of only about 1 , but Gomez says that a deuterium–tritium fuel would produce around 300 J."

"He estimates that it will require a roughly 3000-fold increase in the current deuterium–tritium energy output – to around 1 MJ" to get ot ignition. And only about a billion dollars for the upgrade to try it out.

So, what are those big honking things seeing?

Don't know. Sometimes you think you've seen one thing but then it turns out it's something entirely different. That's the joy of learning. Our understanding (generally) improves over time.

Is this a case where something has been mathematically proven to not exist after it's been observationally confirmed?

Could be. Or not. I don't have the background to know if this paper is factually correct or not. But that's the thing about radio astronomy regarding things massively distant... you're not actually observing anything. You're taking in massive amounts of data then interpreting it. Sure, your eye does that when you look at a banana but it's not quite the same thing when you point a telescope at the far reaches of the universe and conclude "we've seen X". We've had a lot of cases recently where - for instance - some exoplanets have been found to not actually exist, because... reasons. It's all about how you interpret the data. If the math says that black holes cannot exist, perhaps you reinterpret your observational data and come to a better understanding of what you are seeing.

So, what are those big honking things seeing?

Is this a case where something has been mathematically proven to not exist after it's been observationally confirmed?

Analysis of an actual experiment found that measurement alone (for example by a Geiger counter) is sufficient to collapse a quantum wave function before there is any conscious observation of the measurement

Haven't scientists been making progress with weak measurements of quantum states?
This comes to mind

If we can create a reliable "weak" geiger counter, would that allow the particle to remain superposed?

A high energy electromagnetic field will do just fine. Works on earth... it will work in space.

You just need a fusion reactor.

I don't think electromagnetic shielding is that far fetched anymore. http://physicsworld.com/cws/ar...

Seat of the pants calculation says, its probably smaller than an MRI machine and could be powered with with a similarly sized fission reactor.

Not small by any standard, but completely doable with today's technology.

You're only as good as your last RAE :-)

http://physicsworld.com/cws/ar...

"An unofficial Physics World ranking that lists departments according to their average research score shows Lancaster on top and Cambridge close behind. Both departments also received the maximum 5* rating in the last RAE in 2001, but the other 5* departments - Oxford, Southampton and Imperial College London - fell outside the top 10 this time round. "

I think the ultimate energy source is seen in the Casimir Effect, but our
science budget would have to be scaled up to 10% of what we spend
on military, lol.

Maybe we could close 10% of the 700+ baes in 100+ countries ??? ROFL

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

http://www.scientificamerican....

http://physicsworld.com/cws/ar...

28 high-energy neutrinos, great! Nuclear submarines can now communicate at faster rates than 1 bit/s while deep under water without raising an antenna wire to the surface!

http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/2012/mar/19/neutrino-based-communication-is-a-first

I would suggest that such aliens have something better than radio to use.

I'm curious what can we imagine the aliens could use to communicate. I found this bit on neutrino communication. It also mentions axions (which might not even exist). Gravitational waves are suggested in the comments. Are there any other potential communication technologies we can read about?

Since what's being presented in this article is nothing particularly new (it's been discussed and demonstrated for over 10 years now), inkjet-printed transistors have also been tried and demonstrated.

See: http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/2011/jul/14/inkjet-printing-produces-high-performance-transistors which includes a reference to a Nature paper at the bottom.

You are quite right about the wobble effect used to help find candidates. It's extremely difficult to get direct pictures, however we have done it. Since it sounds like you have some interest in the subject I'll provide some links for you to read on. Interestingly enough the planet first planet we directly pictured had been captured by Hubble and overlooked for years as we didn't have the technique for combing through the data at the time!

http://www.universetoday.com/26353/new-technique-allows-astronomers-to-discover-exoplanets-in-old-hubble-images/

I like the list of habitable exoplanets, as this is where the future of humanity has to go someday.

http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/bad_astronomy/2012/11/exoplanet_pictures_astronomers_have_photos_of_alien_planets.html

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2452217/A-lonely-planet-Giant-gas-world-sun-orbit-floating-space.html

http://www.google.com/imgres?biw=1920&bih=963&tbm=isch&tbnid=kjlHVn7dUiT4lM:&imgrefurl=http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/3453478/First-direct-pictures-of-planets-outside-our-solar-system.html&docid=WY-uZHkJtvY5FM&imgurl=http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/01113/HR_8799_1113907c.jpg&w=460&h=288&ei=qp5aUonvOYnM9QTa1IHICw&zoom=1&ved=1t:3588,r:89,s:0,i:354&iact=rc&page=3&tbnh=178&tbnw=284&start=76&ndsp=38&tx=85&ty=84

http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/2008/nov/13/first-bona-fide-direct-images-of-exoplanets

And way not a video? Some oscilloscope at least.
Where photo is, video ain't far. http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/2013/may/23/quantum-microscope-peers-into-the-hydrogen-atom

You can only store data in 3 dimensions in quartz like materials. The problem is writing and reading and I just don't think the technical level is just there yet. They are now testing 5 dimensional storage. I am not sure how stable that is (due to quantum factors that is impossible to predict for) in the short and long run.

I am sure they are going to work out the issues in the end. It might take 30 to 100 years until they do so. I am not up to speed on how the progress has been going in this research.

Information:
http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/2013/jul/17/5d-superman-memory-crystal-heralds-unlimited-lifetime-data-storage
http://www.southampton.ac.uk/mediacentre/news/2013/jul/13_131.shtml

Except in reality, you have to deal with actual implementation of endpoints which can be a problem.

Check your reading comprehension buddy.

Bamford told physicsworld.com that more work needs to be done in scaling the technique up before it can be tested aboard a satellite, but reckons that it could be perfected in time for a return to the Moon in around 2020. She does point out, however, that even if the technology works it will not provide complete protection. For one thing, it could not shield astronauts against very high energy intergalactic cosmic rays. “Getting in a tin can with a rocket on your back and flying to Mars is never going to be a safe thing to do,” she says.dgatwood's magnetic shielding article

Looks like they didn't solve the problem of cosmic rays which if you had read the article, I know blasphemy, you would know is the real problem.

Now it would be really interesting to know what kind of magnetic field would be required to shield a space ship from cosmic rays and if it could be build, transported, and used in space.

Wasn't the magnetic shielding problem basically solved, at least in lab simulations, many years ago, using materials that are well understood and well within our ability to carry into orbit? So how is this still a "huge problem"?

Dr. Stoyan Sarg already predicted such atomic nuclei shape in his "Basic Structures of Matter - Supergravitation Unified Theory":
http://www.sbwire.com/press-releases/ground-breaking-new-book-offers-scientific-reasoning-for-cold-fusion-energy-248341.htm

BTW here is a better article from Physics World:
http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/2013/may/08/nuclear-physics-goes-pear-shaped

That is the thing. How hard is it to just make a mould to mass produce regular plastic stuff.

Ummm... good question. Would you like to try making a mold for this?
What? You say it's art but doesn't have a practical use? mmmm?!

Blackholes might not be that uncommon.
http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/2013/mar/15/micro-black-holes-could-form-at-lower-than-expected-energies
There are even some theories that some ball lightning could be due to blackholes:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ball_lightning#Black_hole_hypothesis

Imagine a tiny blackhole with literally tons of charged particles beyond the event horizon (which is not far away for a tiny blackhole) in close very high speed orbit around it. Those particles might still be affected by magnetic fields, and how about their gravitational effect on the blackhole itself?

Perhaps some real physicists can explain what would happen in such a scenario.

The telescope has been recommended for defunding by the NSF's radio astronomy committee (along with five other radio telescope programs) according to this six-month-old article at Physics World. It's been around and doing great science for over half a century. For me, as a nerdy kid in the Sixties, Green Bank was the stuff of legends, with the added bonus of being real. A sensitive, steerable antenna is an amazingly powerful tool for doing radio astronomy, and it has more than justified its existence. I'll be sad if and when it is defunded by the NSF, but why the sudden concern over RF emission constraints that people near the site have been *voluntarily* living under for the last fifty-odd years? The GBT and the other five programs (including the VLBA!) that have been recommended for defunding by the NSF can (in theory, anyway) still get alternative funding from other sources than the NSF. This controversy over the RF emission constraints doesn't make any sense to me, unless there is somebody trying to discourage those other sources of funding, by creating a public controversy. Tin foil hat aside, who stands to benefit by seeing GBT closed down?

2. It'll need to be such high (analog) bandwidth, it'll not comply with any spectrum or power regulations, anywhere

There may be a twisted solution to the spectrum problem, at least.

You sure it's tens of millions of years? Carbon dating has been found to be possibly inaccurate recently.

It could just be tens or hundreds of thousands...or depending on if you're a Creationist or not, it could be [ n] thousand years.

http://www.nytimes.com/1990/05/31/us/errors-are-feared-in-carbon-dating.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm
http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/2001/may/10/carbon-clock-could-show-the-wrong-time

Physics World has a slightly more in-depth article.

The reasoning behind my speculation is as follows:

(1) According to an article in Science News and others referenced from Slashdot, the Moon appears to be from 2 moons, both from the mantle, no major asteroid content, thus no mars-sized asteroid.

(2) If that is the case, then the best explanation is de Meijer's critical georeactor theory: calcium bergs blew up in the mantle. But...

(3) the de Meijer theory falls down based on the fact that the uranium/calcium bergs would create enough vapor pressure in going critical, that they wouldn't go sufficiently supercritical to blow out a major fraction of the moon, unless a *small* asteroid knocked one of them into the center of a group, or if another blast created shockwaves that compressed a collection of U-Ca bergs together. So it *does* require a small asteroid.

(4) If that is so, then due to the neutron bombardment, the U-Th, U-Pb, Pb-Pb dating of rocks is going to be off, but there will be great scatter in the estimated ages, and the event will be more recent than the dating indicates (2.3- billion years). But

(5) we have earth rocks that date older than that, too. So we should have evidence of the locations. That is, the Earth's crust should show evidence of the blast.

(6) Such a blast would shatter the Earth's crust, leaving rings of Kimberlites around the blast zone, that dated younger (because the rings are structural failures, and less contaminated by neutrons), while the center would date older, being more contaminated.

(7) Two such locations exist: the 850 mi-radius ring of Kimberlites around the Hudson Bay (search Canada kimberlite, and Greenland kimberlite), and the ring of Kimberlites around Vredefort that stretches from Brazil, through Africa, through North India, and into Austrailia.

(8) According to plate tectonics, both rings align correctly at the Permian extinction. Both rings have central rocks dating to about the age of the moon,

(9) At the site of the Vredefort blast, you have an area called the African Karoo. The lava sills (light gray in this picture) are excluded from a region which is heavy in Kimberlites, and indeed includes the city of Kimberly. The shape, size, and location of the excluded zone, at 230 ma ago, exactly matches the shape size and location of the Scotia plate, which remains volcanic to this day.

What this makes me think happened, is that an asteroid hit at an oblique angle at the location of a collection of georeactors, near the South Sandwich islands. The blast went supercritical, and blew out a close to half of the moon. most of the blast going back through the asteroid scar, but a lot of it going straight out. Crustally speaking, the blast destroyed whatever continent existed to the west.

The blast also sent shock waves through the earth. 1/3 of the way around the globe, another collection of georeactors was forced supercritical, creating a symmetrically round blast (the Hudson and its k