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Force Field. No, Really
tqft points out news of "a working force field, using plasma. Now to scale the sucker up." Here's the
Brookhaven press release.
I can think of so many uses for this.
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Finally, a solution to the "Dad, he keeps touching me!" dilemma.
There was a guy down the street from me who was in a force field. Can't remember his name but he had a black and white striped shirt, white face paint and he didn't speak that much.
Mother, do you think they'll like this sig?
are some borg implants so I can walk through the force field unaffected.
I can think of so many uses for this.
;)
Like keeping PHBs out of the server room?
My journal has hot
or is all its blocking at the moment air? then again 14k kelvin might keep us out.
Finally a decent way to protect your *nix server
from physical contact!
Yipee!
*snicker*
- Don't do what I do, it's probably not healthy nor safe. -
I asked the guy how he did it, but he won't tell me.
Hasn't anyone explained to him the wonders of open force?
-JDF
Yes, but can it stop plasma torps? what about phasers?? :-)
Just read here
Brookhaven Lab and Argonne Lab Scientists Invent a Plasma Valve
UPTON, NY â" Scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory and Argonne National Laboratory have received U.S. patent number 6,528,948 for a device that shuts off airflow into a vacuum about one million times faster than mechanical valves or shutters that are currently in use. The new device, called a plasma valve, was developed through research funded by DOEâ(TM)s Office of Basic Energy Sciences in the Office of Science.
In synchrotron light sources, other particle accelerators, and various other scientific instruments, where plasma valves can be put to use, a vacuum allows very high-energy electron beams to circulate in rings for hours. These electron beams interact with magnetic fields to generate x-rays, ultraviolet light, and other forms of radiation that travel unimpeded through beam lines used for experiments. When the vacuum is breached, air moves in with great force, the electron beam loses confinement, and its energy is deposited on vacuum walls. The faster the breach can be contained, the less damage there will be to the ring, beam lines, and the experiments that use those beam lines.
The need for a fast valve at Argonneâ(TM)s Advanced Photon Source led Argonne engineers to explore the potential use of plasma arcs previously developed for electron welding guns. The Argonne team â" Sushil Sharma, John Noonan, Elbio Rotela, and Ali Khounsary â" joined Ady Hershcovitch from Brookhaven to develop the plasma valve.
Hershcovitch explained the advantages of the plasma valve: "Unlike traditional valves, a plasma valve has no moving parts, does not require much maintenance, and establishes a vacuum-air separation much faster. Also, it is completely nondestructive. In contrast, existing ultra-fast valves and shutters can cause damage to machinery when triggered."
When activated, the plasma valve is composed of an ionized gas, or a gas with charged particles confined by electric and magnetic fields, that fills an airtight aperture. When the plasma reaches certain temperature and density parameters, it separates atmospheric pressure from a vacuum, which must be devoid of pressure.
When a vacuum is breached, a plasma arc is ignited in less than one nanosecond inside the plasma valve. The valve's outer structure is comprised of a hollow, water-cooled copper cylinder located between three cathodes and a hollow anode ring at the opposite end of the cylinder.
At 15,000 degrees Celsius (27,032 degrees Fahrenheit), the plasma valve is about 50 times hotter than room temperature when measured in degrees Kelvin. This intense heat makes the ionized atoms and molecules move around and collide with air molecules so rapidly that the ions block any air molecules that might pass through the plasma valve.
Researchers from around the world study a wide variety of materials at light sources such as the Advanced Photon Source at Argonne and the National Synchrotron Light Source at
Brookhaven. For example, they use their bright beams of light to examine the minute details of computer chips to make more efficient computers, decipher the structures of viruses to work on developing new pharmaceuticals, investigate magnetic materials to make better recording devices, and study corrosion to develop new methods for its prevention.
A. Rightmann
What if the electrically charged particles collide with the plasma particles does it mean just loss of energy ? or can it also portend a weakening plasma field !! does plasma particles affect the charge on the accelerating particles ?
Phah! Primitives! :P
;)
:o
Using my portable force-field
I managed to block all the trolls
and hence...I got first post
(It also blocks noxious ga^H^Hodours - much appreciated by my other half
But ehh...(I probably misread this...)
Unfortunately it appears this new forcefield technology only works in very hot conditions
- 50x room temperature
Now all we need is heat-and-flame-resistant people...
They use the word plasma so many times in the last sentence of the first link, that for some strange reason (closely related to my sense of humor, I'm sure), I'm reminded of Monty Python and Spam:
A much faster, more complex version of a previously introduced "spam window" (see New Scientist, 12 April 2003), the spam valve is the latest example of novel uses of spam for particle-beam applications; other recent ones include spam acceleration of antimatter (Update 634), a spam lens (Update 508), and spam deflection of high-energy beams (Update 540).
Niiieeeeeeeeeeeeee!
You are checking your backups, aren't you?
Yes, its a working force-field, unfortunately it uses a 15,000 degree plasma in the process. If you tried this in say a jail cell, you would fairly quickly cook the occupant. And if you could get around that, if the occupant touched the field, his finger would cease to exist. Not to mention that it can only be created when surrounded by a magnet, so star trek "shields" are still a long way off.
COuld be used on spacecraft. Less weight!! (unless equipment used to produce the barrier is heavy)
Clean decapitation. You lower a loop onto a person until it levels his neck. Turn on the plasma field, and it chops his head off? I wonder if this can be used to cut trees as well! Cut anything!
The nerds standing near it and working on it will generate sufficient repulsive force to keep any "physical contact" impossible.
Voila! Free force field for the price of a shitty ThinkGeek T-shirt!
Room temperature is around 290 Kelvin (about 25 degrees Celsius, or 77 Fahrenheit). Remember, 0 Kelvin is absolute zero - -273.something degrees C.
The forks! The forks!
Can you guys think of any reason to use this? I sure cant! probably expensive too. Sorry if its answered in the artical , i just barely skimmed it.
15,000 / 50 = 300 kelvin
300 kelvin = 26.85 C = 80.33 F
[Temperature Conversion Page]
So, about 50 times room temp.
SPAM
15,000 over 50 is 300.
300 Kelvin is about 26 Celcius, 80 Fahrenheit.
Does that help?
J.
You're only jealous cos the little penguins are talking to me.
I'd hate to see the "Room Temperature" the guy who wrote that lives in.
/50 = 300 K.
Umm. 15000 K
300 K - 273,15 = 26,85 degrees Celcius, about 80 Fahrenheit. A bit warm, but nothing extreme..
Don't mix your temperature scales!
The factor 50 is correct, given room temperature of about 295 Kelvin.
295 x 50 = 14750
Why? 300K is pretty damn near a normal room temp...
~80F isn't so bad....
That room temperature is 300 K (about 27 degrees C, 80 degrees F). A bit warm by US standards, but not unbearable.
It's not as bad as you think - 300K = 27C = about 77F.
!#@%*)anks for hanging up the phone, dear.
15,000/50=300
273.15K = 0C
300K = 27C
27C = 81F
It is a bit warm for room temperature, but its not that bad. Its well within a football field or LOC error.
--sig fault--
>>the plasma reaches a temperature of 15,000 degrees
>>Kelvin (about 50 times greater than room temperature)
>I'd hate to see the "Room Temperature" the guy who wrote that lives in
That's in Kelvin. Did you convert to celcius, then to farhenhiet?
( ( 15000 / 50 ) - 273 ) * ( 9 / 5 ) ) + 32 = 80.6 degrees Farhenhiet. That's about what the temp in my room sits at when all of my machines are humming along.....
300 degrees kelvin sounds pretty much like room temperature to me, as it would be in most of the inhabited world!
- Chuq
Using entry-level physics and math, 15000K/50 yields 300K - roughly 27 Celcius. What's to hate about 27 degrees Celcius? Maybe the guy wrote it on his Athlon powered desktop PC?
How did parent get modded Funny?
Black holes are where God divided by zero
30C is approximately 300K
and
300K * 50 = 15000 K
What's your point?
Ahem...Kelvin exists on the same scale as Celsius but 273.15 degrees lower (unless my memory of high-school physics is even hazier than I care to admit).
15,000 / 50 = 300
300 - 273.15 = 26.85
Or approximately 27 degrees Celsius.
Now, I would concur with anyone who might argue this is rather misleading to the average reader, accustomed as we are to Celsius and Fahrenheit. If you translate it to Celsius, then
15,000 - 273 = 14,727
14,727 / 27 = 545.4 recurring
Which means in Celsius it's about 545 times greater than room temperature.
Proving once again that, yes, consistency in measurement units isn't just a Martha Stewart good thing, it should be the law!
Actually that does come out to around room temp:
15,000 / 50 = 300 Kelvin
Kelvin starts at absolute zero using equivalent units to Celsius so...
Absolute zero in C = -273
-273 + 300 = 27 degrees C
in Fahrenheit that comes out to 80.6 degrees F, a little on the warm side but not bad.
i felt your presents ...
I love the idea, and the science around it, but the article sucks! No pics, diagrams or any actual detail on the way the thing works. I'm sick of this kind of 'it works because of herbs!' reporting; it's way too simple for any inquiring mind and because of that it's non-informative.
:)
A shame, 'cause I'd be interested in the practical implementation of this valve system. And I want pretty movies and/or pictures, of course
-- Waht? Tehr's a preveiw buottn?
>the plasma reaches a temperature of 15,000 degrees
>Kelvin (about 50 times greater than room temperature)
I'd hate to see the "Room Temperature" the guy who wrote that lives in.
That'd be 300 degrees kelvin.
That's 300 - 273.15 = 26.85 degrees centigrade.
For those of you who can't do the conversion in your head, that's 80.33 degrees fahrenheit. Just means his roommates won't let him turn on the air conditioner 'cause of the power bill...
-JDF
To keep all of the vampires and blood drive workers* from getting too anxious, the plasma this article refers to is not a component of blood (medical jargon). This other plasma (physics jargon) is matter that has been charged with so much energy it begins exhibiting characteristics of a liquid rather than a gas.
*After seeing some of the workers running our corporate guilt-a-thon, I suspect this may be redundant.
All they need to do is cool it down by a factor of 50 and make it transparent, then regular windows are a thing of the past. The fact that one side is supposed to be a vacuum and the high heat is basically what makes it work is beside the point. Meow.
--ShadowKatmandu
"It only takes one true believer to make a thing real..."
Since this does a great job at separating air, and a vacuum, this has great applications in space.
Think launch bays that really can be opened up to have a shuttle pass though, and leave the air inside the bay intact.
Yes, this idea has a lot of promise.
3000 dead over past 2 years, still no free Palestinians, still
Silly Americans... still converting to Fahrenheit. ;)
They say they take this Slurm(tm) thing from the Slurm(tm) Factory(c) produced by the Ompa Lompas(c), and they heat it up very much you see. Very much, like 50 times the air in your room. And when it gets that hot, these Slurm(tm)-particles start to freak out and dance around you see. And they dance so wild are are so happy, that if any air-particles where to come and join them, they would just push them away and say "your not welcome here! go make your own air-dancedot, air-commies!"
2) The plasma valve is INSIDE a copper container.
If you think this is a "force field" then you might also be interested in the "ray gun" in your television tube.
An interesting story nonetheless, spoiled only by the fatuous ignorance of the submitter and editor.
Well. Room temperature is a little more than 20 C. [I use metric system, You insensitive clod!] That's just below 300K. (0 C == 273.15K) 15000K is actually about 50 times more, than 300K. Hm. I don't see your point.
I'm fully aware that 0 Kelvin is absolute zero (- 273 Celcius) calibrated off the triple point of water (0.01 Celcius), blah, blah.
I just found it funny that one article failed to clarify it.
Because I brought my DINOSAUR! Who EATS force field dogs!
i know you are trying to be funny, but realistically, the amount of energy a high-temperature "thing" contains can be a lot less than you think.
for example, some ions trapped by the earth's magnetic field goes up to some 14 MILLION kelvins (notice it's hotter than anywhere on, around, or inside the sun). However, as there are maybe one or two such high-temperature particles per cubic centimeter, you will still freeze to death standing (erm, floating) in the middle of it.
just a pedantic monday morning, i guess. I'll stop now.
My life in the land of the rising sun.
Extended Warranty? How can I lose!
I can think of one user for this. Making a space that cannot be crossed. Sorta like a wall really only has one purpose.
Just playinwitcha, this is a cool concept.
Ignore the "p2p is theft" trolls, they're just uninformed
First, its degrees only when it is Fahrenheit or Centigrade, which are not absolute units. Second, its Kelvins, damn it! (at least when it is more than 1K). People have no problem with Joules, Newtons, Pascals etc which are all people's names, why is Kelvins so different??
[I haven't done any physics after high school, so if I'm wrong correct me.]
15,000 is a lot more than 50 times room temp. Assuming the room temperature is 26 degrees, thats 26+275 degrees above absolute zero, around 300 kelvins. I think the writer meant 500 times room temperature. I dont think plasma is 1500 kelvins.
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
This thing is for use in sci-tech research only, for creating air tight vacums. It can't be used to protect / encase eevryday objects. For example, I quote:
At 15,000 degrees Celsius (27,032 degrees Fahrenheit), the plasma valve is about 50 times hotter than room temperature when measured in degrees Kelvin. This intense heat makes the ionized atoms and molecules move around and collide with air molecules so rapidly that the ions block any air molecules that might pass through the plasma valve.
In short, don't expect this force field to be in use at your neighborhood brig / jail anytime soon :) A really cool advancement though.
At 15,000 degrees Celsius (27,032 degrees Fahrenheit), the plasma valve is about 50 times hotter than room temperature when measured in degrees Kelvin.
I want to say something about this, but the sentence makes my brain hurt, and not in a good way.
So... converting temperatures to Kelvin makes them lower? It may be that I'm too far removed from my math and science classes, but... well, come to think of it, I never learned it that way.
Sheesh, they didn't even say "in Kelvins." "Degrees Kelvin" indeed... amateurs...
*honk*
This is my sig. It's prescription, I swear. I need it for reading things... on the other side of things
You're welcome.
Erik
YOU ARE SAYING IMPUDENCE TO ME! THAT IS IMPUDENCE!
Actually, no, you said "I'd hate to see this guy's room temperature"... you didn't know how to do a kelvin conversion, and now you were caught as a non-geek. Just apologize, or at least make up a better excuse. I.E. I was drunk.
We'll have it ported to Linux in no time.
80 degrees Fahrenheit! Ye gods, where is the humanity!
I gotta have the a/c on to at least a max of 75!
So, would that be 53 times room temp or what?
It ONLY works inside special equipment where there are concentrated, high power, elector/magnetic, fields to direct the plasma. Also, this is only stopping AIR from gettin in. Saying this is a force field is like saying that I have surrounded myself with a "force field" when I submerge myself in water, it stops air from getting to be, but I would not want to take my chances with a speeding bullet...How about we change the title on this one ?
Install this as ground FX on my car, can I levitate finally?
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
Man he stinks. Can't be within 10 feet of him.
It's supposed to be short. That's the whole point of the online AIP: short summaries of articles.
Why the poster linked to it instead of to a full published article, I don't know. Perhaps a full published writeup hasn't been made yet. Perhaps the poster thought that short sound bites are all that the /. crowd has attention for.
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
Celsius? Fahrenheit? Is temp a matter of the metric system? I thought the metric system was just measures of size and weight.
Excuse me. I'm just an ignorant american.
Big whoop he makes a heat source of 15,000 and says that atoms can't pass through it. Let me know when he can do that at about 37 C. Opps, I read the artical that's not even what he was working towards. He was playing we plasma. He's never going to get down to temps. that won't vaporize most things. Now, on the otherhand if he could make it a weapon he might have something.
... all over the surface of a modern designed aircraft, so that it held back air friction, gee... how fast could it go, and what would the appearance be, a general "glowing" maybe?
ain't that sumthin...
I'm glad to see there are two dozen plus nerds combing slashdot waiting to pounce on anyone who does their math wrong. Keep up the noble work, boys and girls.
Personally, I'm busier trying to figure out if we will be able to see the shield, a la episode I, or if it is invisible, a la tech advances of episode IV and beyond. If invisible, will Billy D. Williams be available to tell us if it is up or down?
-t
http://unmoldable.com W:"No one of consequence" I:"I must know" W:"Get used to disappointment"
I've already got one of these. It's called a 'closet door'...
/sig
If you could make a huge-scale forcefield that wouldn't repel matter but allow it to rest on it you could make ... TRANSPARENT AIRCRAFT!
The military would probably be interested, but I'm more into the idea of see-through 747s- just think of the view!
I suppose you'd still have to have most of the aircraft solid, unless force fields can act as wings etc for aerodynamic purposes (IANAP), but you'd still end up with the equivalent of glass-bottomed boats, except far cooler.
graspee
I had to log-in through my campus proxy server to get to the article, so I assume some would have problems getting it. Here's the text:
Number 640 #2, June 5, 2003 by Phil Schewe, James Riordon, and Ben Stein
A Plasma Valve
A plasma valve, a device that uses electrically charged particles to act as a barrier between air and vacuum, has been invented by a Brookhaven-Argonne collaboration. These two DOE labs joined forces to provide a needed component for Argonne's Advanced Photon Source and similar facilities worldwide. Inside the walls of accelerators, synchrotrons and storage rings, a good vacuum--empty space mostly devoid of matter--enables particle beams to travel unimpeded for hours. However, if a leak causes air to rush into the vacuum, the particle beam spreads out and deposits its energy onto surrounding walls, disrupting the beam and damaging valuable equipment. The faster the leak can be closed, the less damage will be done to the walls. The plasma valve, which has no moving parts, can activate in a nanosecond, a million times faster than mechanical valves. To keep air from rushing in, the Brookhaven-Argonne team create a dense, high-temperature plasma (collection of charged particles) held together by electric and magnetic fields. Housed inside a hollow copper cylinder, the plasma reaches a temperature of 15,000 degrees Kelvin (about 50 times greater than room temperature)--making the plasma particles bounce around so vigorously that they collide with air molecules and prevent them from passing into the vacuum. Moreover, the valve's confining electromagnetic fields prevent the plasma itself from rushing into the vacuum. (Brookhaven press release, May 28). A much faster, more complex version of a previously introduced "plasma window" (see New Scientist, 12 April 2003), the plasma valve is the latest example of novel uses of plasma for particle-beam applications; other recent ones include plasma acceleration of antimatter (Update 634), a plasma lens (Update 508), and plasma deflection of high-energy beams (Update 540).
-R
Brookhaven National Labs is awsome man. I interned there one summer and forcefields are the least of their toys. The place is out in the middle of Long Island NY and looks almost totally harmless from the outside. Inside they have all the latest and greatest science tools, everything from nuclear reactors to partical accelators. 10 Years ago they figured out how to do 3D medical imaging like you see in science fiction movies and methods to do surgury with radiation beams. If your ever out that way sign up for the tour, its enlightening.
BOFH, My model for being a sysadmin :)
It's because you keep showing up on their gaydar. Does the word 'latent' mean anything to you?
ah, so nasa does have measurement conversion pages. so why aren't nasa engineers using them?
Now, the high voltage shock might give you pause before touching it again though...
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
290 Kelvin is about 17ÂC, not 25
could be to surround the space aircraft with that, in case of, you know, a breach!??
:-)
O my god I have to patent this idea, before they realise the enourmous implications of their discovery.
2:?
3: Profit!!
assert(expired(knowldege)); core dump
I suppose next we'll be hearing about a new sort of sci-fi device called a "laser". Perhaps this "laser" can be used with the "force field" to sculpt pictures of world leaders onto the face of the moon...
Escaping the atmosphere. If the force-field can be generated without consuming too much power, then you can create a "virtual balloon" above your ship, and get the first 20 miles or so for nothing. Then you fire up the regular rockets.
Of course, since they are talking about temperaturs of 70,000K it doesn't sound like this will be competitive with rocket boosters anytime soon.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
This plasma valve blocks air particles from moving across (and, in this case, into a vacum chamber).
It wouldn't stop a bullet or other moving objects or energy beams, so it's not your next spaceship shielf (let alone, it blocks air particles).
Heck, at 15,000 celcius, I wouldn't use it as a patio door screen mesh replacement either (mind you, it would make a good mosquito zapper, but your dog would fry through it as well).
I wonder, really, what this could be used for, other than very specific lab stuff.
Ummm... it looks like a typo in the Physics News Update article. The Brookhaven press release says 15,000 degrees Celsius, not Kelvin :)
- Robin
Since when could the U.S. government or government sponsered projects receive a patent? They can be top secret, but not patented. It says, "U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory and Argonne National Laboratory have received U.S. patent number 6,528,948".
The parent is absolutely correct (at least in the content :-P). It's a volume of very hot gas enclosed in an electromagnetic field. Nothing spectacular about this, and still requires an enclosing apparatus (rather than, say, generating a forcefield around the apparatus).
This is an advance in technology, for sure - it's a very fast valve. But there's no physics breakthrough involved. It's just an application of an old theory to an old problem, made possible by advances in technological expertise and practice. It's a clever hack but it's not a force field.
Daniel
Carpe Diem
It's an invisible force field. You already have seen as much of it as you ever will!
This line no sig
Man, fhqwhgads, you're just making yourself look worse, you know? I mean, everybody's just gonna feel sorry for you. I mean, I do.
Maxwell's Demon is a physics problem the is the basis of quantum mechanics. Simply, suppose you had a tank of air that was divided in 2 by a tiny split, with a gate. At the gate is a "demon" who lets high energy particle in on side, and low-energy particles in the other.
Theoretically, by expending no energy save that to open and close the gate (plus whatever overhead the Demon requires) you could thwart the laws of physics. Soon one side of the tank would be "cold" and the other "hot" even if they both started off at the same temperature.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
Walls have many purposes.
1) Organizing space
2) Preventing access
3) Posters/calendars
4) Wall-mounted displays
5) An excuse to use Windows
6) Wacky martial-art stunts
7) Climate control
8) Holding up ceilings
9) Blocking noise
10) Paint retention
How about first converting to C first? 15,000 K = 14726.85 C 14726.85C/50 = 294.537C = 530.8066F So....530F is your typical room temperature? -Chris
Cube door!
Chris
So Buddha walks into a pizza parlor and says: "Hey, make me one with everything."
How about first converting to C first?
15,000 K = 14726.85 C
14726.85C/50 = 294.537C = 530.8066F
So....530F is your typical room temperature?
Does THAT help?
-Chris
Correction:
15,000 / 50 = 300
50 is completely reasonable here...
I'm not as sure about this, but I found a link in Google to something that looks reputable... some plasmas exist at temparatures as low as 1,500 degrees. According to this [www.co.san-bernardino.ca.us] water turns to plasma at 1,500 degrees - but unspecified Kelvin, Celsius, or Fahrenheit. If it's Fahrenheit (a farely safe assumption that it's either F or K because it's US,) then 1,500 F = 1088.7055555556 Kelvin, so it's still within reason. If it's Celsius, then 1,500 C = 1773.15 Kelvins, still not so bad...
"We are not always what we seem, and hardly ever what we dream."
Schmendrick the Magician
I think the sci-fi "force field" metaphor is pretty justified in this case and isn't even stretched too far beyond its specs. This thing has vacuum on one side, air on the other and no solid object in between. This is pretty damn cool.
Stop worrying about the risks of nuclear power and start worrying about the risks of not using nuclear power.
... does it make that cool "Bzzzzt" sound when you walk into it?
Miko O'Sullivan
we could have invented a warp drive? then we could join the federation and trade forcefield tecknologie with some race who has already worked ages on it.
Does this open the way to blasters and lightsabers a la Star Wars? It looks to my untrained eye that it very well might.
You should use AdiumX on your Mac.
Modded "Troll"??? It wasn't meant as a troll, just a friendly jibe.
Chill, mods.
We are the Moonanites and we are far superior to your pitiful earth force fields. An air / vacume barrier. Our two demensional technology is so far advanced that no earthling could possibly understand. We laugh at your silly barbarian ways. HA HA
Now smoke up and get your drink on while shoplifting this stereo deep with in your body.
Any link to a quick and easy diy plasma chamber?
we've been hit by a volley of bullshit, shields to 10%
I don't mean this to sound troll-like, but are we really that surprised? Electric fields and magnetic fields (err, electromagnetic fields) are considered force fields (at least the last time I checked) and are used as such... they're used in fusion research to contain the plasma (at least in one reactor they are) -- as most people learn in introductory physics. Is this such a shock?
Mike.
Mmmm......sacrelicious.
The units are the same as the units in Kelvin in fact, the only difference is the zero point. Kelvin is zeroed at absolute zero, centigrade at water's freezing point under standard pressure. That doesn't mean that the units are any different. They are both an absolute scale and not a relitive one.
Fucking faggots.
Could this thing be scaled up to the point where it could either be used for an airlock (ala Star Trek "shuttle bay" forcefield), or could the mechanism be used inside of space station structural walls in case of emergency to hold the air in until a patch can be applied?
Damn. Lameness filter crushed my carefully crafted ascii diagram.
it went
atmosphere: vacuum wall with gap: area at atmos - x: plasma wall: vacuum
If you can't think of something nice to say then don't say anything at all. No, REALLY.
(sorry couldn't resist)
try harder next time.
I've read both articles, and understand the basic of the switch (which is very much like a plasma window, only works a lot faster).
But I'm having a hard time understanding how this valve would stop a leak. Since that seems to be the primary function of such a valve.
Is it supposed to be placed "on top" of an existing mechanical valve, so that if that valve leaks the plasma one will jump in close it off ?
Murphy(c)
just build a heat-shielding wall between said force-field and said prisoner.
(oh, right...)
Wrong, wrong, and wrong.
/.ers who can't do simple math (or even fairly simple logic)...
15,000 degrees Kelvin (the article clearly states 15000 Celsius or 27,032 degrees Fahrenheit) is close to 14,727 Celsius. Divide that by 50 and you get 294.5 degrees Celsius, or about 560 degrees fahrenheit. My kitchen oven does not go that high - except for the cleaning cycle.
NOT room temp.
15,000 degrees Kelvin is about 340 times room temp, not 50.
Amazing the number of
The problem with your logic is simply demonstrated.
As you wrote, 300 K = 26.85 C = 80.33 F. BUT 300K*2 (600K) != 53.7C, 600 K = 327C, or 620 F, NOT 80.33F*2 (160.66F).
Using the link you provided, 15000K = 26540.33F.
26540.33F/50 = 530.81F
26540.33F/78F = 340.26 times room temperature.
Acts of massive stupidity are almost never covered by warranty. --me.
FUCK YOU for driving a good joke into the ground. Eat shit and die.
Dude, you're just retarded. It says kelvin, and solving it with kelvin gives a normal result. Why will you complicate it just to try and be right when it's so fucking obvious you screwed up?
"If God created us in his own image we have more than reciprocated." - Voltaire
I'm not paying you to sing & dance. You just used up your bathroom break. Or, my other favorite quote from the slurm episode: So, I could fire my whole staff and hire grunka lunkas? Yes, they think they have a good union, but they don't.
That still wouldn't be a big problem, as 15000degC is 15273K. One-fiftieth of that is about 32.5degC, an uncomfortably hot but still realistic room temperature.
Yes, it did take him a few years to turn around Bush the Elder's record unemployment...
A company is developing a plasma taser that sends an electric shock through a charged aerosol cloud that it sprays towards the victim. See Yahoo for English article, or Spiegel for German article with picture. All under the heading of non-leathal weapons.
Using sci-fi terminology for real science can't make it look good. Would we have CD players now if the inventors of lasers had called them ray-guns?
you are an idiot. But I especially liked your comments claiming to be better than the average slashdotter while mathematically demonstrating your stupidity.
I stand corrected and looking bad. Live and learn
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
((80.6 degrees fahrenheit* 50) +32 * (5/9))=
4030 + 32 * (5/9) =
2256.66 degrees C +273 = 2529.66K, or about a sixth of 15,000K
( ( ( ( 15000 - 273 ) * 9 / 5 ) + 32 ) / 50 ) =
( ( ( 14727 * 9 / 5 ) + 32 ) / 50 ) =
( ( 265083.6 + 32 ) / 50 ) =
265115.6 / 50 =
530.17F
If that is the temp in your CPU room, you need to turn the air conditioning up a notch...
Acts of massive stupidity are almost never covered by warranty. --me.
your order of operations are foobared. the comparison is done after both temps are in fehrenheit. I.e., your dividing by 50 at the wrong point.
Is there any connection to this device and the HAARP project? Tesla had his 'teleforce' idea about a plasma forcefield about 50 years ago, and I found the connection between the teleforce, HAARP, and this recent article about a forcefield to be...eerie. (Sorry, I was just reading about HAARP yesterday.)
Zodiac Survey
Point is 15,000K = 14,727C, not 30C*50 or 1,500C - so your answer is about 90% off - or totally wrong.
30C + 273 = 300K
50 * (30C + 273) = 50 * 300K
(30C * 50) + (273 * 50) = (300k * 50)
1500C + 13650 = 15150K
Acts of massive stupidity are almost never covered by warranty. --me.
damnit, now your screwing me up. the comparison is supposed to be when they're in celcius, not fehrenheit
A simple minded aproach would have a ship inside a big bug zapper. Enough juice might be able to vaporize micro meteors. It would be more interesting to create magnetic fields with current flow and so reduce ionic bombardment from solar flares.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Hey sparky: try keeping it in Kelvins and then converting afterwards. You know, the correct way to do simple math?
Note that when measured in Gold Sparrows, the temperature is only twice as large as room temperature.
Am I the only one who *doesn't* see this as the same as a popularized interpretation of force field?
It's more akin to a plasma-based instant tire fixing goop!
-psy
Please stop spreading ignorance. If you don't know what you're talking about (hint: try taking into account the constant you added in there on the sly), shut the hell up and leave it to the scientists.
14 psig one side, vocuum the other, I'd say it was exerting a force. Sure, there's plasma in the middle that actually exerts the force and that plasma is held in place by a powerful magnet. What did you expect, someone to magnitise the air for you?
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
You are right, the order of operations is important, but you are the one getting it wrong.
15000K is what in F?
15000-273=14727C, and (C *9/5)+32 = F, so
14727C = 26540.6F.
What number times room temperature in F gives 26540.6F? Assuming room temp is 78F, 26540.6/78 = 340.26 times room temp.
For giggles, what is 1/50 of 26540.6F?
530.8F
Or work it the other way 'round. Room temp is about 20C. 50 times this is 1000C, convert it to K and you get 1273K. Still not even close to 15,000K.
Acts of massive stupidity are almost never covered by warranty. --me.
If the heat is less than I think, why did they have to water cool the coper tube wall? Oh yeah, it's kind of like arc welding equipment. Me thinks there might be heat involved, though they have made it so it won't melt that coper.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Here, let's try a little abstact math to see if that helps you:
Y = (X/50) - 273 to divide and then convert to deg C
What you just did was subtract 273 from X, then divide by 50. Which is:
Y = (X-273)/50 = (X/50) - (273/50) = (X/50) - 5.5
So instead of subtracting 273 to convert K to C, what you effectively did was only subtract 5.5 If you take your answer and then subtract out the 267.5 that you didn't account for, you come out with the correct answer of 27 deg C. Think about it.
I'd explain why but I don't have time and other posters have already done it.
J.
You're only jealous cos the little penguins are talking to me.
i know all about force fields. apparently i've been in possession of a personal force field that repels women for many years now.
The body can stand immense positive pressure, but nasty things happen with very low pressures. The boiling points for things like water (which your flesh has in abundance) come way down. Check out the water phase diagram sometime. Interesting things happen at sufficiently low pressures, like room temperature boiling, sublimation, etc that are beyond the normal intuitive understanding of everyday materials.
A much faster, more complex version of a previously introduced "spam window" (see New Scientist, 12 April 2003), the spam valve is the latest example of novel uses of spam for particle-beam applications; other recent ones include spam acceleration of antimatter (Update 634), a spam lens (Update 508), and spam deflection of high-energy beams (Update 540).
Niiieeeeeeeeeeeeee!
Warning: Your anti-theft .sig was provided by Microsoft.
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
Are you sure? With that math skill? I think i'll go post another correction.. ;)
It's been one of those 1 + 1 = 3 afteronnos alright ;-)
I knew something was wrong when I ran mutt and my inbox had 15 replies to a simple joke.
from the article (my highlights):
:-)
"At 15,000 degrees Celsius (27,032 degrees Fahrenheit), the plasma valve is about 50 times hotter than room temperature when measured in degrees Kelvin"
Did the reported think that by using 4 different temperature notations he would please everyone? Or did the reporter not think at all.
You ignorant tard
Finally something to secure the xbox with.
"It's so convenient to have a system where everyone is a criminal" - A. Hitler
I think the problem everyone is having is that a room temp (~27C) of 300 means 300 measuring divisions away from absolute zero. If you move another 300 divisions away from absolute zero to 600K, you have not doubled the ~27C to ~54C, you have gone to ~327C!
The conversion factor of 273 is only applied ONCE, not each time; unless you really mean that you have doubled the room temp by going from 80.3F to 620.6F, and that 1700.6F is 'only' 3 times room temp, then 15,000K is NOT "50 times room temperature.", it is 50 times as far away from absolute zero as room temperature is from absolute zero.
The math being presented is proving the second part, not the first; and 1/50th of 15,000K (in Fahrenheit) is NOT room temperature.
Acts of massive stupidity are almost never covered by warranty. --me.
Heck, large quantities of youths get smallish (~1 square inch) regions of flesh exposed to near vacuum conditions all the time with nothing worse than a red welt to show for it.
Bill - aka taniwha
--
Leave others their otherness. -- Aratak
Hey genius-boy: You are wrong. Wrong wrong wrong. Any scientist worth their salt will tell you so. Celcius is not an absolute scale; it has a constant added in. Would you say 10 C is -1 times hotter than -10 C? That would suggest that 10 C is actually colder than -10 C!
Or here's another example: you're playing golf. Par is 70. You hit one under. The winner hits 7 under. By your logic, you hit 7 times as many strokes as he did. But if you divide using the absolute scale (69/63), you get the correct answer that you only hit 1.1 times as many strokes.
That's why you need a scale where 0 is 0, and nothing can be lower. Which is Kelvin. When you convert to Kelvin, you see that 283 K (10 C) is actually only 1.07 times hotter than 263 K (-10 C).
What you did was subtract 273, then divide by 50. Say RT = 15000/50. Now, by doing it the correct way, RT = 300 K = 27 C. By doing it your way, RT = (15000-273)/50 = 300 - 5.5, which you claim to already be in deg C.
Last I checked, 273, not 5.5 was the correct conversion from K to C. If you do want to convert to C right off, the correct way to do it is to subtract 13650 (273*50), so that you are also scaling the constant that you sneaked in there.
Because the press release made no mention of Star Trek, Phasers or "battlefields of the future". They only mentioned "plasma valves".
It's so refreshing somehow.
Question: If room temp is 27C and you double the room temperature, what would it be in degrees Kelvin? Would it be 273 + ( 27 * 2), or would it be 2* (273 + 27)?
The first would be 327K or 54C, while the second would be 600K or 327C.
27C = 80.6F
54C = 129.2F
327C = 620.6F
Acts of massive stupidity are almost never covered by warranty. --me.
Maxwell's Demon is a thought experiment designed to show up the second law of thermodynamics (which states that entropy must never decrease in a closed system). In this example the "force field" (the plasma valve) isn't really doing any sorting of particles; it's just sitting as a static barrier between the air on one side and the (expensive-to-maintain) vacuum on the other.
Incidentally, Maxwell's demon doesn't violate either quantum mechanics or the second law of thermodynamics, for the simple reason that he has to _see and remember_ the particles to be able to sort them. Since the demon doesn't accumulate and store an infinite amount of information, he has to forget about each particle after a while. Landauer argued and Bennett proved (1982) that erasing the demon's memory introduces a tiny amount of entropy that makes up for his devious sorting. Entropy does not decrease, and the second law is preserved.
Well DUH.
haven't you ever been to a restaurant where they've got the Smoking Section and the Non-Smoking Section?
They've used this to keep the smoke over in the Smoking Section for years and years.
This is not insightful, it's wrong. If I posted that 2+2=5 would I get a +4 insightful?
So let's see what Star Trek technologies we have so far, even if it's in the labs still, but working.
1) Matter Transporter - check. Then can transport light particles.
2) Create or use Anti-matter - check. Although we haven't learned how to harness or even control outside of a huge lab. Or even come close to using it in an engine.
3) Force field - check. Here we have it being used as a valve. It works, albeit not ready for prime time.
4) Ray guns - check. We have different forms of ray guns, tv tube, microwave guns, military rifles using other types of rays.
Need still:
1) Warp technology - not yet, still working on atom particle engines.
2) Universal translator - nope.
Right. Done a quick bit of Googling for a copy of the water phase diagram. Looked at it - check. ;)
:)
So 10e5 Pa should be (about 1 bar) atmosphere and quite rightly the diagram shows around 273K as the freezing point of water and around +100 as the boiling point.
Dropping to about 10e3 Pa (about 10mbar) and the boiling point has dropped but the freezing point is very much unchanged. Getting close to the sublimation pressure at room temp though.
From then on there is a nice steady curve - the diagram I'm looking at goes down to about 0.1 Pa (about 10e-4 mbar) by which point the sublimation point is around 200K.
OK - so the sublimation temperature is lower than room temperature and will get lower (though slowly) as pressure decreases. Reasonable vacuum for a scientific experiment - 10e-6 mbar. Lets say 10e-8 for good performance. Can go lower if really necessary but it can be tough under real world conditions especially if you want to stick your hand in to see what happens
The sublimation temperature will have decreased by little from the 200K mark. So by sticking your hand into this vacuum your hand will start losing water through sublimation until your hand reaches the sublimation point through general loss of temperature. So that means your hand will get colder. Seems to me somebody said that before. Heh.
Though the effect will get worse through longer exposure. But you weren't planning to leave your hand in there were you?
Hmmn. Reading through that came out as more sarcastic than I intended. Sorry 'bout that. Just put it down to my cranky lack of coffee or something.
If you can't think of something nice to say then don't say anything at all. No, REALLY.
Please learn. You use an absolute scale, and everything works out.
/-1 = -22 L. How did you get negative volume? Because you divided with deg C. Now do your division with K:
Y = 15000 K/50 = 300 K. 300 K = 27 C = 80 F.
What you are doing is wrong. Think of a number line labeled 0 through 10. Take point A (0) and point B (5), and point C (10). We all agree that C is 2 times further from A than B. Now, Celcius is the equivalent of rescaling everything so what was 4 is now 0. So A = -4, B = 1, and C = 6. C/B is 6, but C is not 6 times further from A than B is. Because each division is the same, you can still subtract and add fine (C is 5 units from B), but division doesn't work until you use an absolute scale.
So:
In Kelvin, where 0 is as cold as possible (and therefore an absolute scale, 15000 = 50*300, where 300 is a reasonable room temp.
In Celcius, your zero point is not a true zero, so you can't just divide two temperatures. Try it out with any scientific formula. Where you have delta T, you can use either scale because the zero point doesn't change addition or subtraction, but where you have T or T1/T2, it's easy to devise cases where if you just plug in deg C, wrong results come out.
As somebody pointed out above, take PV=nRT and say you have one mole of an ideal gas at 1 atm pressure and -1 deg C, which takes up about 22 L. Now, raise the temp to +1 deg C but keep the pressure constant (it's harder than keeping the volume constant, but can be done). By Boyle's Law:
V1/V2 = T1/T2 ==> 22L/V2 = -1 C/1 C
Therefore, V2 = 22L
22L/V2 = 272K/274K
V2 = 22L/.9927 = 22.16 L.
Just like intution tells us, you heat it a little and the volume goes up. This is a perfect example of why you must use Kelvin when dividing or multiplying temperatures.
Fahrenheit has more of a feeling to it. If the temperature is 75F and you feel the [room] getting hotter, chances are it is now 76 or 77F. With celcius if the [room] is 30c and you feel hotter, chances are it is still 30c. Case and point: Fahrenheit is more suitable for living organisms.
--- I'm going to get a score of -1 for this post because the mods are fuckers.
Look, you are making a Chem 101 mistake. There are about a million replies telling you what you are doing wrong, with examples, but I will give it a shot.
27 C = 300 K.
300K * 50 = 15000 K.
You cannot multiply using Celcius or you will get the wrong answer. When you divide 14727 C by 50, all you are saying is that 14727 C is 50 times further from the freezing point of water than 294 C. This doesn not make it 50 times hotter, though, any more than 1C alcohol is infinitely warmer than 0C alcohol, or -1 times warmer than -1 deg C alcohol.
If you use Kelvin, you can see that 14727 C (1500K) is only 26 times further from absolute 0 than 567 K (294 C).
Please, try using negative or 0 values of degrees Celcius in any scientific equation other than those with a delta T (because the unit size is the same, addition and subtraction work in either scale). You will get wrong results. If you use 0 deg C in PV = nRT, you get that any number of moles of gas at 0 C and 1 atm take up no space! The correct answer is obtained by using K, in which case 1 mole gas at 1 atm and 273 K (0 C) takes up 22L.
Well, I'd like argue that point...
I like the base for Celcius... water's freezing and boiling points at standard pressure for the 0 and 100 mark respectively.
The zero point in particularly easy to relate to in terms of weather. Also, I'd suggest that humidity causes a bigger fudge factor for measuring human comfort than the lower resolution of the Celcius scale anyway.
a beowulf cluster of those!
[/obligatory joke]
While it may seem counter-intuitive, the second is the only correct answer in an real sense. For common-day usage, obviously most people mean the first, but for a scientific article, they have to be correct. 600K is twice as far from absolute 0 as 300 K, and therefore twice as hot. 54 C is only 1.09 times further from absolute 0, and therefore barely an increase. The only reason it seems so much to you is that we're optimized for a very narrow range of temps, so 129 F seems like it ought to be much hotter than 80.6 F.
This sounds like Philo T. Farnsworth's Ion Transport Vacuum Pump, patent #3,240,421
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
World Hunger is a political problem, not a scientific one.
As in, there already IS enough food for everybody. All you gotta do is convince the leaders and food producers to give it away for the price the market can bear.
"America has done some terrible things. But I know that Americans don't cheer when innocents die." -Dave Barry
In point of fact, that's probably more commercially viable than achieving high altitude: sell devices which can easily draw an all-but-perfect vacuum.
Reality has a conservative bias: it conserves mass, energy, momentum...
Jamie wrote:
I can think of so many uses for this
Or, "I can only think of the obvious to say about this."
Go easy on the guy. He was able to come up with a one line mathematical proof of stupidity. But imagine if he'd done it in Perl!
And it IS Awesome!
I worked on the pre-cursor to the plasma valve at BNL, the Vaunted "Plasma Window" (ooooh, ahhh)
The thing really is incredible, and yes, I accepted the project because I read the description, and went..."Holy C*ap! That is just like the shuttle bay!" And it is, well...if the shuttle bay were ~4-6mm in diameter =)
And about the 15K Kelvin thing, yes plasmas do get that hot, but lets get real here, the thing is tiny...I bet the lights above your head get just as hot in the middle of their plasmas.
Anyway, the project I worked on was very robust and partially scaleable, just would require a boatload of power. It was very "loud" but not "noisy" as we could put very sensitive equipment right next to it and there would be no interference (you physics types should get this) and when you take a collimated beam of light...in one case a green laser, it will shine clear through it with next to no loss, which is a huge improvement over any other method of separating Atmosphere from Vacuum.
Mind you, this would be only the first stage in a series of differential pumping to get down to UHVacuum.
Gratz to Ady, he is one helluv a guy!
-Chris
And remember folks, voltage is not the same thing as current. 10 MV won't do anything if it can't source sufficient current.
this has been around since the 60's. watch any old star trek re-run.
Couldn't this contain a possible fusion reaction? I mean, sure you'd have to set off a fission bomb to ignite the thing, but if it's contained, no big deal right? This could make cold fusion a moot point.
Speak for yourself.
I knew at least one post would show up.
From the article:
the plasma reaches a temperature of 15,000 degrees Kelvin (about 50 times greater than room temperature)
"50 times greater than room temperature" doesn't mean anything unless you state what scale you're measuring room temperature on. 80 degrees centigrade is more than double room temperature. If you take room temperature as a measurement on the Kelvin scale, and double it, it'll be MUCH hotter than that.
Follow me
I'm at Brookhaven right now working as a summer intern. Woot!
OK, so I've got my plasma force field on, now how do I set my laser printer to stun?
"I am Heisenborg. You will probably be assimilated"
Befor I started my carrer as an Alcoholic, I use to play around a lot with math. At one point, I derived a mathamatical model for a so called "force field" wich realy should be called a momentum filter. The cool thing about the model, was that it demonstrated that the laws of teh univers allows such a thing. The other neat thing was that it actualy affected particals according to wavelength. One can construct high pass, low pass, or band pass filtering. The only serious problem was the energies required.
People people, have you forgotten your undergrad physics lessons so soon? the second law of thermodynamics is nothing but statistics. that is it . period.
.19% (.5^9) 100? 1.5E-28% (.5^99) one trillion? my calculator says zero (HP-48G) there are ~2.7E19 molecules in one cubic centimeter of gas (0 C and 1 atm)
take your container of gas. all conditions are equally likely, assume 2 gas molecules. there are 4 conditions, both on one side (pressure difference - low entropy) both on the other side (ditto) and two ways for one on each side. start with a low entropy state, what is your chance of going to a high entropy state? 50/50, so the second law here has a 50% chance of being true here. now scale it up to a 'real' system with oh say a few trillion gas molecules. the chance that all, or even a significant majority of gas molecules ending up on one side or the other is essentially zero. which means the second law will always be followed.
to put this in another light. what is the chance of getting two heads(or tails) in a row? 50/50. (.5^1) three? 25% (.5^2) four 12.5% (.5^3) 10?
This is all there is to the second law, probabilities. I was very specific about this in class, One of the replys to the parent said that the second law had been broken for microscopic systems (nanometer scale). This should come as no supprise. fewer particles in the system, and the more likely that the second law will be broken - it is basic statistics, nothing more.
I've got a pretty good force field, I'm told, after I pull a 24-hour programming run. A juicy pimple on the tip of the nose may work as well from the front, but my force field is effective in all directions, especially upwind.
Then you'll believe me.
Come on, give it up, that's
Uhm, I'm no physicist, but isn't it so that the universe doesn't give a shit about "information" stored in memory (beyond the processes in the memory banks)? When we talk about "information" in physics we mean parameters of particles, right? Storing that info in computer memory does absolutely have *nothing* to do with that and storing/deleting that info can't possibly have any influence on the measured particles. Aren't we mixing two meanings of information here?
(To take that a step further, if you could mix those meanings of realword info and info in memory systems, and changing info in memory really affected the measured particles, we would be able to control the world with the information stored in our brains, I mean directly, wouldn't we?)
Repeat after me: Memory is just an abstract and entirely arbitrary representation of a measurement, nothing more.
Shocking but not high voltage
Extended Warranty? How can I lose!
As SymphonicMan pointed out, you're right in that the fact that the demon _remembers_ the particles doesn't affect the particles themselves, but the process of _erasing_ the information in his memory DOES affect the system's total entropy, which is all the Second Law cares about. The fact that the memory process doesn't affect the particles is completely irrelevant to that part of Bennett's argument.
Memory is just an abstract and entirely arbitrary representation of a measurement, nothing more.
Wrong. Storing information in "memory" really means arranging matter or energy according to some input pattern. It's a physical process subject to physical laws. In this case, there's an entropy increase when those patterns are destroyed.
> Except this wall has a very small, negligable mass.
>
> Thus, you could also make a balloon with extra lifting capasity just by vacuuming out the inside of a field.
Except for all the equipment required to create the plasma, and create the powerful magnetic fields that hold it in place. No balloons.
> Or you could have containment for mass-sensitive matter (antimatter, etc.)
Except that this technology fundamentally involves contact with the matter in the plasma. No antimatter containment.
> How about a see-through wall with zero heat transfer by contact?
That would work, but the wall could only restrain air - it wouldn't have enough mass in it to block anything more solid (like water or people).
> How about a wall that cannot melt, because there is nothing there to melt?
Except the equipment creating and maintaining the plasma.
> We may finally have something we can melt diamond/carbon in
So? We can already do that if we can find a material with a higher liquid density and a lower evaporation temperature - just melt the carbon in a liquid bath.
Moreover, we could always use directed heat (lasers) to melt a portion of a larger carbon solid.
> Sometimes you have to think outside the ridgid plasma cube
Yes, but one still must be sure to think the ideas through. "Creative and right" is sweet; "creative and wrong" isn't much more useful than "just plain wrong".
Ummm... force fields are all over the place. Around a magnet, between the plates of a capacitor, around your neighborhood planet...
rj
So, about 50 times room temp.
Of course, it's still a pretty useless way of describing the temperature. Describing it as "50 times room temp" makes it almost seem friendly. Think about distances: If something is 50 times as far, then maybe you can't walk, but you can drive. Or you can't drive, but you can take a plane.
But a room temperature 50 times normal? An increase of 10 Kelvin --- "1.03 times room temperature" --- is uncomfortably hot. "1.25 times room temperature" is the boiling point of water. 50 times room temp is accurate, but not very helpful..
Repton.
They say that only an experienced wizard can do the tengu shuffle.
I'd have to agree with that last statement; Ady is a hell of a guy. Eric too.
I worked on this project as well (summer of 98) with Troy who had come back to work on it a second time. And actually (I think) worked on it a third semester as well.
The best part was when a friend of mine who receives the APL letter sent it to me. I read it and almost fell out of my chair!
Yeah, it made more sense that way. You can't fire up a little vaccum turbine all that fast and oil pumps only have yay good an ultimate pressure, but this obviously ::For Emergency Use Only:: ::Use for fun on Wednesday 5-11AM is lethal:: kind of device for letting -other- things at high temps cool down or get gated away before they get hit by air, that's pretty neat.
:) *sigh* How about HD sleeves (Noise Control) that don't cost $60 or boil the drive?
Now, when is CoolerMaster going to offer it as a way to get hot air out of a case, STAT? Yes folks, cooling can be silent when your PC is suspended in a vacuum. Need some new grease for -those- conditions, folks.
>The worst that happens to flesh exposed to vacuum is a modest amount of cell damage at the surfrace...
>Heck, large quantities of youths get smallish (~1 square inch) regions
>of flesh exposed to near vacuum conditions all the time with nothing worse than a red welt to show for it.
Yeah, but on a larger scale... well that'd be one hell of a hickey!
In space no-one can hear you scream...
...first, appologies for OT, but this thread seems to be all over the place anyway :-) ...
.NET"); .NET");
Anyone else find this Microsoft ad on Slashdot amusing?
switch (DevelopmentPlatform) {
case "Interoperable":
Choose ("Visual Studio
case "Standards-based":
Choose ("Visual Studio
...all I could think of was:
a) Redundant code
b) Hard-coded language prompts
c) Unterminated statement
...irony?
Or maybe you meant "It's so good..."
Yeah, I know, grammar police are lame. You should flame me. Or maybe take a second to realize people take you more seriously if you seem more than barely literate when you write.
I can't help it - I'm a 19D.