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Japanese Train Sets A Speed Record Of 581 kph
Azuma writes "Last night, on December 2, a high-speed Japanese train set a new record of 581 kph, breaking its own previous record. The new Maglev high speed had real passengers on board this time. They proved that the distance between Osaka and Tokyo can be covered in one hour's time. However, we wouldn't see real trains for a while now since the cost is prohibitively expensive at this time. However, they expect that the cost would come down over the next 20 years. This seems to be the future of transportation, at least in Japan. Here is a detailed article from The Japan Times."
Bet those passengers were scared out of their pants. With it flying that fast, I'd be...if the thing derailed, you'd be really screwed.
"There's nearly [a train] that can out run a greased Scotsman"
Well ok its close
Rus
Cheap UK and US VPS
for those of us who don't use that artificial metric crap. I mean, really, if God wanted us to use the Metric system, he would have made the distance between the King's nose and his thumb to be exactly one meter.
I just wish the US would invest in more passenger trains. They don't have to be super fast (like the one in this article), but imagine how much fuel/electricity we could save if we could all easily commute by train. And hey, you can always sleep on the train on the way to work, something you can't do while driving. (Or rather, something you shouldn't do, I'm sure someone's tried it.)
The maximum speed for a maglev train is considered to be around 580 kph due to limits in electrical facilities for the train, the engineers said.
We haven't seen nothing yet. It seems the more juice, the higher the speed. I for one hope to see mass production of Maglev trains. They will be vastly superior to planes at less cost.
I can't help thinking that maglev train development will help achieve cheap spaceflight as well. Imagine a spaceplane taking off from a maglev hitting 1000+ kph.
Living in Las Vegas, I would love a high speed rail to LA. It is all desert, plenty of room for a right of way! I'm sure the casino's would love getting people from LA to the city in an hour as well!
:)
Just remember in ten years, it was my idea
Considering that commercial airliners don't travel this fast, this could be a really interesting development...
Personally I think it would be pretty cool to have trains over airplanes as the standard of travel in the US.
If you consider the Terrorist Threat factor. Free Roaming Plains are inherently more dangerous than trains stuck on rails.
kph parses as kilo*pico*hour. It makes no sense.
You probably mean km/h.
No need to bastardize a fine international standard.
If you are going to visit Japan, there is a special travel pass you can get, which is only for tourists. It allows you to travel on any train in Japan over one, two, three or four weeks. It is well worth it.
Having spent three weeks travelling around Japan on their trains, I can confirm that they are very impressive. Many of the trains have the kind of luxury fittings that you'd expect to find flying first class. But they are expensive.
Although I believe that Europe is currently developing a Europe-wide high-speed rail system, Japan has had one for years. Why is it only Japan that has such an advanced train system? Travelling by train is great - much more environmentally sound and safer than travelling by car, and of course you get to use the travelling time productively, especially when the trains have plugs for laptops and network connections/WiFi.
How long before some terrorist group finds a way to sabotage a portion of the easily accesible track to wipe out a large group of passengers that close to the ground?
I don't know how long, but if you have any information you should contact the police quickly.
I'll do it for cheesy poofs.
Uhhhh "how long?" indeed. A normal train carrying just as much traffic and passengers can be derailed by as much as a couple of dimes on the rails, what makes you think there's going to need to be any "finding a way"?
RST
For those who don't want to look it up, 581 kph converts to 361 mph.
I've been on the Channel Tunnel Eurostar train from London to Paris and that tops out at 186mph. That was quite amazing. To think that this thing can hit twice that speed is mind boggling.
Macka
is if it stopped in Osaka or just kept on going from the inertia.
"Trademarks are the heraldry of the new feudalism."
How generic and vacid a statement can you make? More trains, where prey tell would you place your precious trains? Most cities that are dense enough to benefit already have rail systems (e.g. subways). The majority of light rail systems are failures since they suffer from the same problem that any mass transit system does in those cities that don't support the densities required to truely make them useful. Now if you're talking inter city trains, then you run into the issue to having to have feeder bus lines which limits their usefulness.
Now there are a few cities that probably could benefit from improved rail services. But these cities truely are few. I love trains, when I lived in SJ I took their new light rail whenever possible and rode BART and the CalTrain whenever possible. But the reality is that it requires a very specific environment to be successful.
But I thought I'd bring it up. Inevitably there are going to be long threads of why the US doesn't have this leading to conspiracies involving auto manufactures, oil companies, and congessmen payed for by Amtrak.
Before all that gets carried away, a minor side note. There was an article online, and if I find the citation I'll respond to my own post with it, that spoke of why using innerstates as guides for high speed railways was impossible. Basically innerstates have very frequent curves in them, and at the speeds these trains are going, you'd either be making everybody motion sick, or worse, throwing them back and forth inside the train. You need very straight shots for long distances for these to work right.
And, I might add, there's _very_ little incentive to have ultra-high speed trains from a legal perspective. The first time one of these has an accident every blood sucking vermin of a low-life profession would come sniffing around through the remains looking for anyone remotely related to anyone with at least a hangnail to sue the pants off whatever company was running this system.
I demand a million helicopters and a DOLLAR!
That's a very fast train set. Er. Maybe I should RTFHeadline again.
"How long before some terrorist group finds a way to sabotage a portion of the easily accesible track to wipe out a large group of passengers that close to the ground?"
Hmmm bomb going off as train passes.
Bomb destroying track before train passes.
Seems about the same problem as ANY rail system. Although the fact that they use maglev tech should in theory lessen the total effect of acceleration as compared to say a conventional train derailment. I would hypothesize that the train would still go forward as it decelerated but the actual downward impact of breaking the magnetic field would be negligable. Any math, physics or engineering majors care to explain why this would or would not be the case?
This is obviously very impressive. Maglev trains are very expensive (especially the track), but they reach enormous speeds. It gets even better if you let them run in a depressurised tunnel, allowing them to reach speeds of several thousand kilometers per hour. Of course, that costs lots of extra moolah, but its an upgrade possibility once maglevs have become more commonplace.
Concerning the question of why other countries don't have trains as cool as Japan - well, several reasons. The US just aren't interested. Appearantly, the American Way means having two cars per family and getting stuck in a traffic jam at least once a week. Besides, there are geographical concerns. America, as well as my home country (Germany) are definitely two-dimensional, rather than a linear strip of settlement like Japan, meaning that one requires a grid of synchronised train lines. Trust me, that's hard.
Also, for the US there's the problem of population density. Sure, in the cities, public transport has customers. But in the rural regions, there isn't enough demand to make narrow-interval trains profitable. And the broader the intervals (say, twice a day?) the lower the interest. After all, why wait two hours for the next train, when you can jump in your car now?
Divide et impera!
... the average speed of our trains is about 5-10% of that! Or at least it seems like it.
A german firm just had to deliberately trash a 10-mile section of railway line, just to reduce it to the conditions that UK trains run on. It actually cost them money (a few million pounds) to simulate the pathetic condition of UK trains.
Unless you're in London, of course, where the tube is pretty good...
Simon
Physicists get Hadrons!
God measured in cubits.
Also, 581 kph = 116.5050712 microparsecs per century.
But other than test units, none have been deployed.
Why? Because the cost is exponentially higher than simple steel rails. Not just in construction costs, but also in the cost to power the trains.
Once you have maglev, you are restricted to long-distance trips because there is no maglev track feature similar to a "switch" which allows the trains to change tracks without slowing down to a crawl. Either you have just a few trains running the length of the track, meaning it isn't really "mass transit", or you operate like the current bullet trains do right now and stop at every station, losing the advantage of the high-speed capability due to frequent stops.
Remember that in order to stop on a siding, or to allow other trains to pass, you need the aformentioned "switches" which do not exist for maglev, thus they are only practical for long-distance hi-speed trips.
Given the lack of developable land in Japan, where do they expect to put the tracks, since they would have to serve the existing stations which feed regional, metro, and local rail? Would they replace the existing bullet trains?
Seems unlikely because you'd then move 10% of the passengers at 1000% of the cost.
Further, Japan is subject to earthquakes more frequently than most developed nations, often causing tremendous damage.
High-speed rail demands extremely precise rail alignment and a continuous maintenance program.
Fortunately, after an earthquake, existing rail lines can be quickly repaired with little more than sledgehammers, shovels and a welder in the back of a truck. Service is reestablished quickly, and the trains can run again.
Rail trains can even run efficiently at low speeds, as opposed to maglev.
Maglev relies on the aerodynamic flow between train and track to generate a "cushion" on which the train rides. At low speeds, this cushion is inadequate or nonexistant.
At low speeds, the power consumption skyrockets as the same coils remain energized for longer periods of time rather than rapidly cycling to the next zone. Resistance grows with heat and more power is required to do the same thing.
Thus the trains have to run fast to be tenable to operate. But if they run fast, they cannot make the stops necessary to carry the load necesary to sustain operations. Then to service these loads, they would need to build far more tracks, or sacrifice speed for stops, negating the touted speed of the train.
There is also the environmental/health impact of intense, uncontained magnetic fields. When you go for an MRI, you remove all metal from your body. People with metal implants cannot be MRId, else they be thrown about by the magnetic field, or the implant be torn from their flesh. Here, we have staggeringly powerful magnetic fields laid out linearly through the countryside. While cycled, LIMs must energize both in front of, and behind the moving payload, and are thus unshielded.
As I recall from riding the Shin extensively, you are rarely if ever more than 20 minutes between stops. The few "express" trains are curtailed in top speed and times available so they do not run into or get run into by the other trains making more stops.
Summary?
Great rail technology, as usual from Japan, but difficult to see how it will be utilized in their existing infrastructure on basis of facilities sharing, construction cost, maintenance requirements, earthquake survivability, and ability to generate sustaining revenue.
And of course, kids can't put coins on the rails any more!
Its sad that you've been brainwashed into thinking that.
As we've seen home built roller costers and rockets on /., now is the time to build your own Maglev train. All you need is posterboard, foamboard, or cardboard, 20-30 square or rectangular magnets, masking tape. Then follow the instructions. Have fun!
my other sig is a 500 page novel
If that's what the scenery looks like, I'm not sure I'd want to fly by it at 581 kph.
Twenty Years ago the first maglevs were build in Germany. Increadibly fast and very quiet. For Testingpurposes. Since then ... nothing happened. Oh, yes, they sold the whole stuff for a piece of bread to china which also build the first "german maglev" for public use. Well, in germany we still have no public maglev.
At least in central europa (germany, france, benelux) we have conventional trains running at speeds of 150-300kph since decades. But then europa has a highly incompatible trainsystem. Western Europa (except once Great Britain) uses one type of track, eastern europa another one and while the british system closely resembles western europas tracks its not safe for high speeds.
Thank goodness china desided to use western-europa tracks which will more or less force eastern europa and russia to adopt or wither away.
"Life is short and in most cases it ends with death." Sir Sinclair
Oh, wait they did that already. They also crashed 2 planes into very tall buildings and wiped out lots of people high up in the buildings. Better not live or work in or near any very tall buildings.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
How long before someone thinks of the possible terrorist implications... Oh wait.
While I do not fully agree with your assesment of Chicago->LA, the most important route to build would be NY->Pit->Det->Chg->Mil.
These 4 cities have more traffic between them than any other route in the USA. In fact, most airlines make all their profits doing cargo between NY/Chg.
As to Chi->LA, well, I would argue for 3 East-west high-speed maglevs with stops every 1000M. Likeiwise, 4 North-South (W, Rocky, Missisppi River, E coast) to carry cargo.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Whilst there are inter-country trains, it's still a damn long way between, say, Hamburg and Rome, and planes would be quicker than the current generation of very fast trains. 600 km/h maglevs will increase considerably the distance over which a train's travel times are comparable to city-airport-airport-city.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
they don't read much of anything, except maybe how their phonIE funnIE monIE, & or pending stock markup fraud execrable indictmeNTs are doing.
lookout bullow. the daze of the phonIE felons is WANing into coolapps/the abyss at the speed of right/?light? all 'measurements' produced by the pateNTdead eyecon0meter kode are guaranteed accurate within won or two billyonerrors.
It isn't.
There are no coherent policies within the European Union, certainly nothing like a "Europe-wide high-speed rail system". The European Union is a bunch of countries who don't really like each other very much getting together to prevent from becoming financially irrelevant as the size of the superstate increases.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
I'm not sure what exactly "Nozomi" means, but a search on images.google.com sure didn't give me a bullet train :/
Modern trains are amazingly fast, but they face certan limitations compared to planes. For example, you just can't go through a tunnel at 580 kph. Even at 200 kph, when you hit a train tunnel, your ears pop. Try that a double the speed and the train would implode. Fast train already have fancy air conditioning systems to deal with the problem, but there are limits to what you can do.
so this train would be 361000 kiloMILES per hour or 581000 km/(kilometers)h
Of course, this article talks about 581 kiloMETERs an hour, which is equivalent to 361 MILES per hour, not kilomiles...
Not really. Security is something that should be designed in rather than added as an after thought. Look at how long it took Unix to be secure and how Windows is still not secure (not their fault; it was not designed in from the gitgo).
Maglevs have to be suspended, so that makes them a bit easier target (RPG, Missle, etc). Of course, somebody could simply hit the engine of the a number of trains here and that would cause similiar damage (hit one that carries loads of chemicals and see how politicians and citizens react).
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
This sounds great, but a lot of the time spent when catching a train is the time spent travelling to/from the station, and waiting for the train to arrive. I've often spent longer waiting for trains to arrive than the actual length of the journey especially when the train is delayed (yes I am in the UK).
:> )
This applies to airplanes as well, when you're expected to get to the airport 2 or 3 hours before international flights.
Does anyone think these magnetic rails could eventually be used for long distance overseas/international trips? (Hmm, rail tracks over the ocean, could look like something out of F-Zero
If you follow the interstate that would be true. But, a maglev is not on the ground. It has its' own ROW as it is elevated. So a maglev could simply pick a straightline and proceed. Now, as to Conspiracies, .... :)
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
And Spain is getting there, so before long you'll be able to travel, for instance, Seville-Berlin on high-speed train.
I have read that AirFrance and Lufthansa are having to close some internal routes because they can't compete with the high-speed trains.
Maybe next time you Americans read what are abbreviations in metric system, before write an article that uses them.
Hey dude, at least we americans know that Kelvin is abbreviated with a capital K.
Like what I said? You might like my music
Godzilla's gonna break a sweat trying to get this one!
In Southern California, our trains break the speed records on the other end of the scale! And they do it consistently, too!
</cheap-jab-at-metrolink>
Put in a failsafe switch, which, when tripped (automatically if anything has gone wrong), reverses the electromagnets and the train stops in a very short distance - since it's not attracted to the track.
What do you mean, suspended? They are 4 inches off the ground inside a concrete track - not floating 20 feet in mid air. Arguably harder to derail than a normal train which essentially has an inch, if that, overlap with a comparatively thin metal track. And no, force fields are not going to be built in to counter the RPG threat.
at least on the Paris-Lyon-Marseille line.
Planes can move people but they aren't so economical for many kinds of manufactured goods. Trucks are a non-issue for the distances involved. Planes can only move a limited number of people and currently too many people travel between St. Petersburg and Moscow, so a high-speed rail link has been proposed.
See my journal, I write things there
boners & cheese!
=my ideas be more important than urs=
The power needed to overcome air resistance is related to the cube of the velocity.
This is so wrong.
SWITCHES?
Nothing deployed? The Germans and chinese will be very upset that they do not exist
Then the mention of lack of land, all the while ignoring that the train is elevated.
Earthquakes? well, since the train is elevated, the supports are designed to handle earthquakes. It is LRT and Heavy Rail that has problems due to the fact that they are heavily anchored to the earth through every inch of the rail. This allows for the rail to be moved from underneath the train while it is moving.
BTW, In japan, the monorails have had NO problems with earthquakes/Typhons, etc, while LRT has to be stopped and adjusted after each item.
Cusion of air for aerodynamics???? It is a "MAGLEV"; it is supported by magnetic force, not aerodynamics.
As to evironmental impact, give me a break. The amount of force is FAR less than an MRI.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
(no text, slashcode is a bit stupid)
Check http://www.transrapid.de/en/index.html
1. How are us trainspotters supposed to get numbers of trains that travel that fast?
2. I would imagine there are health issues if you stick your head out of a window.
Also,
Are the tracks effected by fallen leaves?
Can we ride Back To The Future style skateboards down the track?
Do commuters have to worry about their magnetic media on a Maglev train?
What do you mean, suspended? They are 4 inches off the ground inside a concrete track - not floating 20 feet in mid air.
Elevated rail. and yes, the rail is 5-10 meters in the air, so they make easy targets.
I kid, I kid.
--- INSERT TrOlL HeRe---
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
Seriously, if you're not willing to pay tax dollars for rail infrastsructure, why also pay for roads and bridges? And while you're at it, why not dismantle the education system and courts as well? When private enterprise performs all of these civic functions, will "freedom" have been expanded or will we simply have seen a net transfer of power away from voters into private hands? Just asking. --M
Google better and you jaw may well drop.
Use ISO 8601 dates [YYYY-MM-DD]
Every post-1870 train is using boggies.
What made the TGV survive its derailments are:
1. it's designed so that the train sets, once the cars are attached one to the next, is very rigid, so if it goes out of the track, you have a long big dildo slipping through the country until it stops
2. so far, it encountered no overpassing bridge during a derailment (the track is designed to overpass as much as possible, but sometimes it's not possible)
The ICE at Eschede didn't have the luck of point 2.
I really don't want to be in the first TGV to derail 1.5km before the entrance of a tunnel.
OTOH, I love the damn thing. Too bad they are still at the big yellow Caterpillar stage near the A4! (and still at the political bickering stage for the Dijon-Mulhouse-Basel, damn, damn, damn)
The support structure, yes. Like a raised highway (in a city), but in the countryside it really doesn't change the possibility of a threat if you are at ground level in the middle of a field, or 10m above - there is a clear line of sight from a considerable distance either way. The fact that it's going faster than normal train would actually make it harder to hit, but I'm not saying that it can't be done.
It's time that is the major issue. The US massive, so taking a train is no small matter. You can fly from New York City to Miami in 2 hours, but it's a 30 hour train ride (and NY to LA would be almost 3 days). For a business that moves people between the two cities, the simple numbers ensure that flying will be more profitable - for every round trip by train, you can make 15 with a plane.
GL
*grmbl*
Transrapid test track switch system
The record commercial speed for a train is Calais-Marseille (1027km) in a little less than 3h 29min.
There's an unbelievable amount of bridges and tunnels on the Lyon-Marseille leg of the line.
And an amazing piece of software which avoids a "double blast" with trains crossing at tunnel entries.
IIRC, the current "TGV Reseau" (2nd gen, bulk of rolling stock) cars can withstand tunnels at a routine 400km/h.
500 Hz at 900 MHz is less than 1 ppm.
.5 ppm, so a 500 Hz shift isn't that much.
The TCXOs (temperature compensated crystal oscillators ("X" being the industry standard abbreviation for crystal - get over it)) used in moble equipment are usually rated about
The more important aspect is the timing skew - GSM and CDMA require the mobile and the base station to have a VERY accurate idea of the time of flight delay between them, so as to keep the transmissions in their allocated time slots (IIRC GSM requires something like a 5 microsecond accuracy, but not being at work yet I can't get the specs right now.)
Moving that fast means the timing skew is going to shift significantly between bursts.
However, most high speed trains are moving to having a cell on the train itself, which then links to the landline system via a dedicated link from train to land.
www.eFax.com are spammers
If that was likely to happen, why hasn't "some terrorist group" blown up some electrical substations, or destroyed long distance fiber optic regneration sites? Those places are extremely vulnerable, yet noone hits them. Seems a bit curious, but that's another conspiracy theory. :)
reverses the electromagnets and the train stops in a very short distance
:D
:D
:D
:D
Yes that would be a pretty good Denial of Service too
SPLAT.
CRUNCH.
Imagine the G forces
Its like what I do to password lock out protection, turn the failsafe and protection into a weapon.
Failsafes can be dangerous too
Its just there waiting for you to abuse. I prefer to call it Built in Assistance for hackers
Or maybe im just a morbid, bored office worker :->
28 days, 6 hours, 42 minutes and 12 seconds... that is when the world will end.
> We haven't seen nothing yet. It seems the more
> juice, the higher the speed. I for one hope to see
> mass production of Maglev trains. They will be
> vastly superior to planes at less cost.
That's true technically, but there is the track construction and upkeep to factor in.
Also it's highly vulnerable to acts of unsophisticated vandalism/terrorism. Think of the damage a well placed brick or dead gopher could achieve at those speeds.
(rambling time)
Americans like their freedom, and we are a society geared on personal freedom. This is part of the individualism that dominates American society and what helped it become the largest economy. Its a mode of thought that does not lend itself to trains except in areas of major population concentrations (iow cities).
Another important comparison, look at how much open land exist in the United States. Outside of the Northeast most cities are not close together. Next, as my workplace is very representative of, most of us don't live within a few miles of each other, let alone near any mass transit.
Finally, time is money. It is common to make value comparisons with trip time. Time also relates to convienence. Which is more valuable? Convienence, time, or money? I would say the first to many people. Compare going to the relatives, they are 2 hours by plane or 8 by car? I know many people who will drive! Why? Simple, they have their car, its convienent, they also have their freedom because of that car. The other end of convienence is our unwillingness to impose on others in certain ways. Using the previous example many won't ask for their relatives to pick them up at the airport. Some who do fly would use a rental before doing otherwise. That thought pattern works against mass transit a lot.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
For those of us who had sadistic science/physics teachers in HS who denied the use of calculators.
A high speed west coast train has been announced that is suppose to run from L.A. to Seattle. Article on it
Another one from LA to Los Vegas may also be built.
I once met a lady while on the Amtrak who got on the train in Georgia and had already been on the train for 5 days when I met her in Bakersfield. After 17 hours, As I was getting of at my destination, I asked her how long until she reached hers. She figured she had 2 more days ahead of her. She was going to Seattle. 8 DAYS TOTAL! Talk about torture. IMHO, Current passenger train service in the US isn't just SLOW... it's Glacial.
I want something more workable than kph, can I get a conversion to ferraris or porches?
Learn something new.
carry on luggage should be MUCH easier.
Sure it's fast in trials, but once they use pushers to fill it to the gills with people, the train tops out at about 74 kph.
... to install that train between Toronto and Montreal. I for one dont believe Quebec's french heritage will be hurt by letting the English in every weekend.
They've been debating installing a train that will make travel between Toronto and Montreal 1 hour in duration.
I've been fascinated by Quebec and have been trying to learn french, but I can only visit on weekends and have to spend a night in the expensive motels there. Canada could become smaller that way, and trade can increase... if they can put their differences aside.
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
For those that don't get the reference, Stephen King has a sentient, maniacal train with a bizarre fascination with riddles named "Blaine the Mono" in his Dark Tower series. Blaine is supersonic and makes an 8000 mile trip in about 8 hours.
I will be able to manage to get to work on time ... : - )
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
I've never gotten this Japan train thing. Don't get me wrong. Happy to see how the Japanese recovered from WWII and became the powerhouse that they are in many ways. A nice stable government, an economy similar to ours, great scientific advances.
:)
(America haters will reply something like "how is being like America a good thing? Bush sucks" -- or something. Disregard those morons).
Anyway, as much respect as I have for Japan, trains are our thing. Why is America not the one always building the fastest train in the world? Why isn't the rest of the world chasing us? And why don't we care about having the world's tallest building anymore? Especially now that we have some rebuilding to do in NY, I can't think of a single decent reason to not make it the tallest building in the world.
And while I'm on a Superman theme, I might as well complete it. We should also have the fastest speeding bullet. Come on ammo manufacturers. Get your act together
RP
Yep. That is a sad thing. I pity you americans living in constant fear of your lives. I've never worried once about being a victim of terrorism, and we've had to put up with it in the UK far longer than you have.
Cell hand-off is also a problem, as it can take a relatively long time to negotiate a transfer between cells.
From the article:
You see, they haven't tested it with real people, only with technicians.
Prescriptive grammar:linguistics
I think the DC metro is pretty (almost as nice as NYC's L train, far nicer than anything else!), and fairly well run (better than NYC's L train, which mysteriously gets CANCELLED. and thats the best line of NY!).
But many people who work in the DC metro area now live in FREDERICK- that's right, 270 south bound starts getting clogged at 7-8am... And many are just trying to get to Shady Grove metro. Plenty have moved inbetween Germantown and Frederick.
DC metro is also pretty limited in terms of stops. (though not as limited as Pyongyang's subway (scroll down!) If you live in either Glover Park, or Georgetown (or somewhere in between) you have to take a bus. I don't know the state of cyclists in DC... it seems like a good idea to fill in the gaps.
Thankfully, the Metro is expanding its hours later and later into the night.
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
Am I the only one who finds it ironic that the leading nation in high-speed rail development is so small? Don't get me wrong, I think it's cool, just a bit odd.
What's next? Rocket cars in Luxembourg? Vatican City International Airport?
You are attempting to read sigs. Cancel or Allow?
Monorail!
-- Having a Creationist Museum is like having an Atheist place of worship
Realizing we have gone way OT... Some asshole who agrees with me, modded you down, that just isn't right... Your comment is certainly not overrated...
*Most* of our properly educated go to private schools
I think you got it a little backwards... I think *Most* privately educated students get a proper education, but I do not think that most of our properly educated students went private, in fact, I think most of them were publicly educated, but this does not mean that most publicly educated students are properly educated.
I am from an extremely typical midwestern city, so typical that it is viewed as one of the nations best test markets and phrases about how representative of the heartland we are have been coined. That town is Peoria, Ill...
We had 4 public high schools, 1 large private HS (about the same size as 1 of our public HSs), and a few small private high schools. In my class, and my little brother's (don't know much about other years...) there were 4 times as many national merit scholars from my school alone as there were in all of the private schools, and about as many again spread out over the other 3 high schools.
All of my roommates (10 over my 4 years) at college (I went to a top 10 engineering school) were publicly educated...
I would also like to encourage you to think about this: Public or private, small classes or large, these all matter very little. By far the most important variable is the parents, and how much they get involved and care. Parents of children in private school are more likely to care, evidence of this is the fact that they pay for something they perceive to be better than what they could get for free, this is the central reason that most privately educated students do well, and it has very little to do with the school itself. Further evidence for this claim can be found by looking at public schools in college towns and wealthy suburbs, where the parents of the children in the schools are more likely to be highly educated and value education.
"I'll have a Guinness, no wait, make that a Coors Light" -Grad student I work with, who shall remain anonymous...
I live in Boston and I take the train (amtrak acela) all the time to NYC. I do not own a car. The eastern corridor (DC-NYC-Boston) is the only profitable route that Amtrak runs. In roughly 450 miles (shorter than the length of California by about 250 miles) the 5 major metropolitan areas (Boston, New York, Philly, Baltimore and DC. There's also minor mets such as New Haven, Providence and Trenton) represents about 60 million people. The density is roughly comparable to that of England. The current system, even though profitable, has SERIOUS limitation in its currently incarnation - it has to abide to Metro North's speed limit of 60MPH when it's in Metro North territory, for example. This is done on a train that's designed to cruise at 150MPH. Bottom line - you CAN run a profitable maglev operation in US.
I understand the fact that the US as a whole will find it difficult to have a real high speed train system. However, in metropolitan areas, I fail to see what the problem is. I commute to NYC, and they are constantly building HOV (high occupancy vehicle) lanes, and expanding existing roads. The LIRR runs through long island, and its tracks for the most part are straight as an arrow- IE the infrastructure itself is not a limitation. To me it is mind boggling that communities in suffolk county (farther away from the city, most of which is outside most people's commuting tolerances from Manhattan) are not aggressively pushing this. This would drive up everyone's property values, as the commute to the city is a major discount factor for most Long Island Communities, and a map of property values on LI is pretty much a gradient with the highest being in manhattan and then just gradually decreasing the farther you get away.
Secondly, why the government isnt jumping on this also amazes me. Traffic costs alot of money. Additional wear and tear on roads, lost productivity, additional road construction, pollution, etc. My well being is much greater even though I traded in a 20 minute stressful car commute for an hour and 45 minute train trek into manhattan. GM wont be hurt too bad if we all hop on the train, you will still need a car to get to the station.
The fact that the railroad has a monopoly I feel is one of the roots of the problem. They have little incentive to speed up the lines. As it is, they just barely profit. How this is so, when their base infrastructure is quite old- and should already be paid for- also astounds me. I pay $226 a month for an hour ride into the city. They have 10 full cars of people on this single train paying the same thing... how do they not make money?! Even though the ticket takers make 40-50k a year or so just to collect tickets, they should still be able to have a nice take at the end of the year. The railroad misses so many opportunities for increased revenue or at least improving its customer's ride its ridiculous. Power hookups for laptops, and on train internet access stand out in my mind as the most glaringly obvious.
The problem may not be only the railroad's. I recall reading that Amtrack's relatively new 'high speed' trains were capable of going 120mph, but due to federal regulations of some sort, were limited to 80mph.
I too, just dont get it. The technology is there to triple or even double the speed of existing trains, which would redefine many communities. I would personally be willing to name dictator for life someone that could cut my commute in half. Somehow though, I think in 20 or even 30 years, Ill still be chugging along at 60mph, and maybe the cars will be a little newer, but im pretty sure I wont be sitting there telling my grandkids "you know, back in my day we didnt have trains that..."
Km is the proper metric abbreviation for Kilometre (or Kilometer)
Surface Maglev has no future; the speed increase over conventionnal rail IS NOT WORTH IT for the added expense in relation to the time gained.
Maglev could have some chances in an evacuated tunnel, but the horrenduous infrastructure costs will see that it will not see the light of day...
However, most high speed trains are moving to having a cell on the train itself, which then links to the landline system via a dedicated link from train to land.
:)
And... what form does that dedicated link take? A big long cable strewn beneath the train running between Osaka and Tokyo?
If not, doesn't it come back to the same issues raised by the original poster?
-ben
myselfmusic
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
who call themselves 'fiscal conservatives' yet are spending at a record clip, determined to kill off even the limited funding that Amtrak is getting, despite the huge subsidies to air and highway industries, will ensure this never reaches american soil.
... a train recently set a British speed record of 56.1 km/h
While it's impressive that the Japanese have reached an incredible 581 km/h on their maglev trains, it's not a practical design for one reason: their maglev requires cryogenic cooling for the magnets to run in superconducting mode so the train can move. Installing cryrogenic cooling systems drastically increases the cost of the train, not to mention adding a good hunk of deadweight that could otherwise be used for carrying passengers and/or cargo.
A better solution is to use the permanent magnet system that was developed at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory a few years ago. Since the LLNL system doesn't need cryrogenically-cooled magnets, that allows for lower train weight, which means more passengers and/or cargo carried. Also, the construction cost per kilometer is quite a bit lower, too. Sure, the LLNL system limits the train to around 500 km/h (310 mph) but that's still way faster than any steel-wheel train in revenue service (that 320 mph test run on the French TGV system some years ago is totally impractical in everyday service).
If you're like me and have almost no intuitive notion about how big metric measurements are.
Eat at Joe's.
That's just silly. Why is it that a maglev cannot derail? You're saying that if a maglev system were run for 1,000 years the cars could never leave the track?
If there is a problem with the track (a physical disruption) that causes the distance between the two tracks to be different than it is supposed to be, you can be sure that the cars will fall off in short order.
If all things are equal (maglev tracks anchored in the same way as rails, etc.), there is no reason a maglev would be less likely to derail. However, we know maglev tracks are rarely anchored like steel rails are. Instead they are typically elevated and anchored in a much more elaborate fashion. If we are concerned about derailments, then there is no reason we couldn't just apply those techniques to steel rails.
Do that, and make sure you have good integrity monitoring (be sure maglev does too) and preventative maintenance on the wheels and you'll find that a regular train has a near zero chance of derailing too. Definitely low enough to not make the extra expense to reduce it further questionable.
Also, I am think the #1 cause of train incidents isn't derailments, but foreign objects on the tracks. Specifically vehicles at crossings.
There's a project being evaluated to put a high speed train in on the west coast.
You are right for the abbreviation of kilometer but "per" must not be abbreviated as "p". Right: km/h or kmh-1 or "kilometers per hour" Wrong: kph or kmph
In other news, Amtrak was awarded the Guiness World Record(TM) for "Most unsanitary transportation system", edging out Bangladeshi ferry boats by a slim margin of three wads of gum and a sick rat.
1 h 1 k
----- X ----------- = 361.0334 mph = 361 mph
581 k 0.6214 mile
It is impressive only in that it is a maglev. Frankly, it is only ~66 km/h faster than the TGV's old record which uses conventional technology ... and with improvements garnered over the years it's quite possible the TGV could match that maglevs speed (problem is TGV no longer has clear track to give it a try since it is commercially operational). An outline is available here and here.
It would be interesting to see a cost comparison of high speed conventional to maglev track. Using Occam's razor, why bother with maglev if conventional can yield equivalent performance? Not only does maglev require a unique track, it may require dismantling of old track and infrastructure to provide replacement service. For what end? A few minutes faster between stations?
And then one could ask: if you need speeds of +500 km/h to get somewhere in a reasonable time, why not just take a plane?
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
it doesn't matter how doggone fast it goes...until they can work out how to get people on board on time, by departure time then they will always run late...
of Japan's train system.
According to friends that have been to Japan the trains are NEVER late and most lines have an accumlated schedule discrepancy of less than one minute over an entire year.
Very impressive.
So if the power goes out and it hits the track at that speed,
with what force is it hitting and how are you so sure that
this won't cause signficant damage to the track, perhaps
ripping up a section? It would only take one or two for the train to start to look like an accordian.
Don't know if this is applicable but don't cell phones work on airplanes (see 9/11) at a higher speed than described? Is the problem you've described mitigated by the slower change of angle due to the larger airplane/tower altitude difference?
The more important aspect is the timing skew - GSM and CDMA require the mobile and the base station to have a VERY accurate idea of the time of flight delay between them, so as to keep the transmissions in their allocated time slots (IIRC GSM requires something like a 5 microsecond accuracy, but not being at work yet I can't get the specs right now.)
IIRC that is only relevant to GSM which is TDMA. CDMA phones share the entire spectrum at the same time and there is no time division multiplexing.
Mmmm.. Donuts
>why not just take a plane? ....to avoid long waits and anal probes!
"Innerstates"? You mean, like, Kansas?
A metre is exactly the decimal fraction 10^-7 of the distance along the meridian from the Equator to the North Pole.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
Taste like crab.
Talk like people.
Craaaab People.
6. The auto industry lobbyists make sure that their congressmen insist that Amtrak pay for rolling stock, pay for the maintenance of the track and still make a profit whilst the Interstates that carry their products remain subsidised by Uncle Sam.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The rails are can be used as a digital communication channel. Also you can tackle any speed related issues using a wireless technology that is not affected by it.
So you have a local on board cell / wifi to keep common devices happy and a rail based or wireless link out of the train to the outside world.
Not really that difficult of solution to solve given the tech we have to day.
Nozomi 500
If you don't want to repeat the past, stop living in it.
It always has to be repeated all over again: there is no special advantage in using magnetic sustentation over classical rail/wheel contact. You get no better comfort since the magnetic fiels are very heavy; you get no lower resisting force since it is almost exclusively due to aerodynamics forces. It just "looks" sci-fi. Seing the incredibly high cost of the "railway", I firmly believe that magnetic trains will (or at least should) remain a sci-fi dream. Please recall that the french TGV (a classical train) was capable of 515,3km/h with 200 people onboard in ... 1989 !
The cost per kilometer just dooes not do it. Magnetic trains are hardly faster, have fewer seats, are extremly complicated, and cost so much more. So what ?
It depends upon whether the signal in question is DSSS or FHSS.
Direct sequence spread spectrum involves multiplying the signal by a pseudorandom noise signal, and won't have the sync problems (though it will have other problems).
Frequency hopping Spread Spectrum involves changing frequencies really fast - so the time sync is important.
www.eFax.com are spammers
I don't think the french are going to take this very easy. In a month they are going to have the record again !
OverLord
The big thing about the metric system is that you have only one unit to measure a property in.
Length goes in meters. From Petameters to picometers. And it's naturally in sync with the decimal notation, 0.2 will always mean 2 decisomethings. 3000 will mean 3 kilosomething.
Then the US/imperial/CSG systems use a lot of units to measure one property, just look at lenght. You have to know how much inch go in a feet, how much feet in a yard, how much yards on a rod, how much rods in a mile. And then there are things like furlong, hand, fathom, league.
And when taking the same properties in 2 or 3 dimensions, it goes into only to square foot/inch/mile/yard and cubic foor/inch/mile/yard, but also acres, US and imperial gallons, cords, pints, bushels, quarts, pecks and barrels.
From my point of view I prefer 1 unit to the 18+ I have to remember in the US/imperial/CSG system.
Because of using a decimal number system all this is very prone to getting long fractional decimal numbers and rounding errors. I know there are some non-decimal notations, like 3'7", to get around this in some cases.
As for temperature, I do not have a problem with Fahrenheit over Celsius or Kelvin, because there is only one unit, and it's notation is decimal. Or there should be some odd unit for 1/540 or 93 Fahrenheit that I am not aware of. In some areas the SI notation would come in handy, like for example astronomical temperatures, or super-conductivity physics, but for everyday use I have no real preference. All you have to remember is that 32 Fahrenheit = 0 Celsius and 9 fahrenheit in 5 celsius. It's almost 1 Fahrenheit = 0.5 Celsius, maybe that's why my central heating system works in steps of 0.5 celsius, hmmmm....
The odd one out is indeed time, maybe it survives to this day because there is a widely accepted non-decimal notation, like 4-12-2003 19:03:12, and day/month/year do not have a decimal, but fixed relationship anyway. Units like lenght, time and weight are much more arbitrairy.
RogerWilco the Adventurous Janitor
That was so funny.
BTW, which is the archaic system of measurment? SI?
I'm an american and I have no fears about terrorism.. Of course, i'm in Kansas.. not in New York
Beware the rear admiral !!
Want to alleviate traffic and save money without sacrificing the freedom and fun of your own vehicle?
Get a motorcycle!
Cheap liability insurance, great gas mileage, and in California you can legally split the lanes in gridlock traffic.
Sure, it's no good when there's white stuff on the ground, but no one said you have to sell your car/truck/suv.
Do you really want to be going 300+ mph on RAILS! I sure wouldn't.
that a train moving that fast would make as it goes by. Now imagine being too close to the track and getting sucked into it's wake. Excitement all around
Sorry. And I have mod points, too. It seems I've got a back-log of 'irresponsible' to get out this week.
-FL
Why don't you drive? It's a 2-1/2 hour trip at most: I-90 west of I-84/Sturbridge is basically empty all the time, and as long as you're not trying to get into either end around 8 am, you shouldn't hit a lot of traffic.
[ home ]
GM, firestone & Philip's Petroleum created a front company that purchased over 400 suburban railway & tram systems in the US, then ran them down & replaced them with buses. They even got a $10,000 fine when the govt prosecuted them under the anti-trust statutes. Yep they destroyed infrastructure that today would cost millions or billions to replace for a then $10,000 penalty.
If it wasn't for that fact, many US cities today could [b]potentially[/m] have suburban railway systems as extensive as Sydney's suburban & inter-urban Cityrail system
Really AFAIC railways systems should be publically run & financed through consilidated revenue, just as roads are. Public transport will never reach it's full potential while it's expected to make a profit (or break even), while there's no equilivent expectation in regards roads
Let's see: 581 kph, thats like what, 35 miles-per-hour?
Good security is based upon reality and common sense. Common sense is a function of having common knowledge.
Humans are so great! blah blah blah blah.
Not only are we driving on fast trains, we are also driving on to extinction.
Enjoy!
Idiots.
"Vegas baby, Vegas!!!" You could be there and be down $500 by 10 PM. I'm not sure this is progress....
like roads
Problem solved
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
What you wrote is meaningless. K is Kelvin, P is not a unit, H is Henry. KPH would be "kilo-Henry times whatever P would be".
This is science, not feel-good-improvisation and fluff, for crying out loud. Look at a unit tutorial for details.
Or better, avoid these pesky meters, grams and seconds entirely. Just stick to furlongs, fortnights and stones like a good American. :-)
--
Mad science! Robots! Underwear! Cute girls! Full comic online! http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/
would be feasible... but not for, say, the whole country... at least no right away...
start simple, start within major cities... between nearby large cities (eg, LA to San bernardino, or San Diego LA San Francisco Seattle, WA)
stuff like that.
that would work nicely.
You seem to forget that the second worst terrorist attack on US soil was comitted by a blonde-haired, blue-eyed ex-marine.
Should we start presuming blondes are terrorists, or ex-marines?
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
Lucky you :-) In any case, please accept my sincere apologies if my previous comment came across as rather snide - it wasn't intended that way [it does now to me.]
Cheers,
CD
Use ISO 8601 dates [YYYY-MM-DD]
Why do they even report this? Why do they build the damn thing knowing that they can't afford it? [Well maybe in 20 YEARS] Dumb. In 20 years the whole world will be a lot different and trains may not even be part of it.
I'd imagine that the tracks would have to be fenced off to prevent anybody from tampering with the tracks. Hitting a bird or any other animal at that speed would definitely cause some serious damage. I'm sure the train would be damaged too.
Good point (although I never complained about the abbreviation for 'crystal'). That and given that the cell towers are probably far from the tracks, the radial velocity is even less... so this probably isn't a big deal... I'm sure it would still manifest itself in a statistically measurable increase in BER, however.... just not a very significant one.
I don't think so. There have been terrorist attacks on trains (e.g., Carlos the Jackal's bombing in 1983). They just haven't been very successful and haven't led to cumbersome security measures.
But it IS hard to drive a train into the side of a skyscraper, the Pentagon, the Whitehouse, or Capitol Hill. Potential targets are limited when compared to a fully-fueled jumbo jet.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
361MPH for those of us who don't use that artificial metric crap.
Or mach 0.487 (for those of us who don't like English units EITHER when something handier applies).
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Well, I was trying to head off the semi-trolls ("Uh-hu-hu U DON'T NO HOW 2 SPELL CRYSTAL!")
And in Japan, nothing is far from anything, especially cell towers - they have those things packed tighter than sardines.
But since the phones are talking to a cell on the train, it matters not.
www.eFax.com are spammers
Gives new meaning to the term 'rice rocket'. Of course at that speed if anything happens those Jap passengers would be nothing more than a smear of seaweed paper and wasabe paste.
Has anyone ever thrown a penny up in the air durring takeoff in a airplane? With the acceleration of that maglev it's gotta be.. fun...
According to Aerospaceweb, the speed of sound at sea level is 1225 km/h. This train is approaching half that.
Dude. It'd be awesome to be standing at the train station and have it arrive about the time you heard the whistle it gave on the horizon, assuming it didn't Doppler up to a frequency you couldn't hear.
Neato.
So? It's hardly uncommon that the first implementations of a new technology struggle to match the best of the existing tech. What matters is that the new tech has more potential in the long run, which is likely the case here.
Also note the difference in acceleration - the Transrapid maglev out-accelerates a typical rail-based train by a factor of 5-6. For medium hops, that's a significant factor.
use the right units people!
The next remark is false. The previous remark is true.
Well...although it doesn't go that fast, there was an item in Popular Science about a similar train by the Chinese called the Shanghai Transrapid.
Eric B
ebresie@gmail.com
That's fucking fat!
And just what is 581 Kph in a useful unit of measurement (like furlongs per fortnight)?
The Russians have won. They have made the world a cesspool of distrust, greed, fear and hate.
If you count by touching your thumb to the segments of your fingers (each finger has three segments), then you can count to twelve (four fingers times three segments each).
Even better, you only need to employ one hand!
If you use both hands, you can count up to 144 (one gross).
Reading Slashdot is ruining my spelling and grammar.
Shut the fuck up
Thanks for the very Informative(tm) comment, the leagues thing was gnawing at the back of my mind since forever!
You can't take the sky from me...
Maglev should be here in the USA check out these guys - High Speed Maglev - The Pennsylvania Project
I have had some recent involvement with these folks and have been extremely impressed, they are capable engineers and deadly serious about making Maglev happen. I believe this would be a Good Thing and truly hope they succeed. We should be building a National network of Maglev High Speed Transit Links.
Heresy Warning : There are three major modes of transport available, not two as is apparently the belief of many Slashdotters. Roads, Rapid transit, and Planes linked together make sense and thats what most countries use and plan on expanding. For political reasons the USA has always shunned mass transit, its way past time that outdated corrupt and fundamentally dumb attitude changed. Maglev is Green, little or no pollution, post-construction phase. Unlike Planes and Cars and Trucks.
Maglev is hard to use as a terrorist target. Nowadays our highways are shooting galleries for insane snipers. Our airports are permanent security zoos and impossible to use efficiently due to the paranoia level required. (Side note. I think TSA is doing it as well as could be expected, its just that its a fundamentally misguided and hopeless task)
High speed maglev rail avoids the terrorism problem. Imagine being able to travel cross country without risking a body cavity search, or driving for five days!
If some nut takes over a Maglev train, shut down the power and call SWAT. No flying into buildings etc.
300+ MPH or so cruise speed, gets you across the country in 8 hours, thats about the same amount of time it takes to get from your apartment to the "sorry for the delay, were first in line for takeoff" if your airport is having a bad day.
Trains can be extremely reliable, luxuriously comfortable, smooth and fun to ride, they are rarely affected by weather, most folks in America have never had an opportunity to take a good fast train, 'cos you don't have any here. Amtrak passenger transit is a broken joke.
Trains travel from the center of cities to the center of the next, not from some field in the boonies. Maglev high speed transit is also a national security asset, allowing movement of large quantities of goods across the country at high speed, without the need to fly it, its good to have alternatives.
Come on folks, get real, Maglev high speed mass transit is a practical, proven twenty year old technology and the USA is standing on the sidelines whining about environmental impact statements and bogged down in litigation and monopolistic politics. How long do you think the Chinese spent on the environmental analysis for their train (Shanghai to Pudong)? We waste years on futile nit picking debate. I am all for public review, but not as an excuse to de-rail legitimate progress. We run a risk of falling way behind in this technology, instead of leading, lets get over the Not Invented Here problem, and get in the game, call your congresscritter and help make this happen.
What say you Slashdot?
There is no god; get over it already! Never exchange a walk on part in the war, for a lead role in a cage.
Please look up "significant digits" in the dictionary. God, I feel sorry for your children.
Isn't life under Republicans just the greatest?
Since trains are ruled out I think we are just left with building superfast cars in the US.
"When do regular trains ever go slow ?
;)
1. When going through neighborhoods to prevent too much noise from being generated.
- Maglevs are MUCH more silent, not an issue"
When they start reaching supersonic velocities they'll have to slow down! Just like concorde had to!
Imagine a sonic boom generated at ground-level...
My guess is it'd be pretty disruptive.
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
Minneapolis just got a new light rail and it goes form the airport to downtown and it's kinda just for tourists. F that, I want a full system for us!
I just mentioned this article to a bunch of French colleagues who promptly said... check out the TGV. A few minutes turned up a record of 515km/h set back in 1990 with older versions of todays TGV. I guess the Japanese one is maglev....
I guess this is Eric Laithwaite's linear motor again. Wonderful, isn't it? Japan gets trains going at 361MPH, whilst the UK - the birthplace of the inventor of the technology - gets trains going at 125MPH (barring snow, leaves, sun, clockwork running down, etc.)
what is it kph? maybe km/h?
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. (Arthur C. Clarke)
There is a similar pass offered by Amtrak and VIA Rail Canada that allows (nearly) unlimited rail travel in both countries for a month.
God measured in cubits.
No, the Bible measured in cubits. God measured in Planck Units. Using this set of units virtually all conversion constants disappear from the equations; Planck's constant, Gravity constant, Boltzmann constant, speed of light, etc are all equal to 1.
Stop worrying about the risks of nuclear power and start worrying about the risks of not using nuclear power.
This is the funniest joke _ever_!
I've seen at least two conflicting reports, can anyone clarify if there were actually people on board the train?
09F91102 no, 455FE104 nope, F190A1E8 uh-uh, 7A5F8A09 that's not it, C87294CE no. Ah! 452F6E403CDF10714E41DFAA257D313F.
Kinda funny. I initially read the last line that said, "Here is a detailed article from The Japan Times." as "Here is a derailed articale from the Japan Times"
"Artificial Intelligence usually beats real stupidity."