Slashdot Mirror
Thermonuclear Reactor To Use Coconut Shells
destinyland writes "A key component of a $10 billion nuclear fusion plant is vintage 2002 Indonesian coconut-shell charcoal. After a 20-year search, German researchers discovered that the coconut-shell charcoal is the best medium for 'adsorbing' waste byproducts sucked out of the thermonuclear reactor's vacuum chamber. In what will be the first fusion power facility that's commercially viable, magnetic fields will heat hydrogen isotopes to over 150 million degrees Centigrade. (Essentially, the super-hot plasma creates artificial stars.) As the article points out, 'It's not quite a Starship warp drive, but it does harness the power of the sun.'"
That's not a horse, you're just bangin' two coconuts together!
Has the old saint in his forest not yet heard of it? That God is dead?
The head of the project, a former professor, was heard mumbling "Gilligan won't mess it up this time."
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.
...is the bamboo bicycle used to remove the atmosphere of the vacuum chamber.
I remember this one. The professor made the Thermonuclear reactor with a bunch of coconuts, financed, of course, by the Howell's... but then Gilligan saw Ginger...got all flustered and tripped over the whole thing causing a meltdown and the Skipper's hair to glow... yeah, that's a classic episode indeed
Karma: Excellent. 15 moderator points expire sometime.
It's a fusion reaction. Just say that. No stars here, no power from the sun. Nuclear fusion.
Floating face-down in a river of regret...and thoughts of you...
Coconut shell charcoal is one of the best available for making filters. Charcoal filters are nothing new folks most fish tanks use them as do most water purifiers and even gas masks. And this "May" be a practical fusion reactor but they have been saying that since the 1950s but I am staying hopeful.
Yet another light and fluffy pop science story with a funny little twist because it has coconuts in it... Yawn.....
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Laden or unladen?
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
My vintage Casio calculator harnessed the power of the sun. This, not so much.
The camera they used to take a picture of the inside of the Tokamak "during operation" at 150 million C
Any editor discussing technology who still feels the need to put the word adsorb into quotes, as though it's not a legitimate English term, should be fired. If you're afraid your audience won't understand, then insert a sidebar on the mechanics of adsorption; don't act as though it's a term out of sci-fi.
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We have commercially viable fusion reactors now, yet the "news" is that it involves coconuts?
In what will be the first fusion power facility that's commercially viable...
Oh. I see. 3-5 years out then, just like LHC, battery breakthroughs, etc.
Wait 'til you hear "roll and rock"!
Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
If this trend keeps up, we'll finally get our MacGyver flying car.
Table-ized A.I.
Heavily laden hopefully.
I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it!
Over time, the containment vessel will eventually become radioactive. The ratio of energy to waste should be pretty excellent though.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
Most fusion paths generate neutrons. The neutrons will make the walls of the reactor slightly radioactive for some value of slightly. Until we can do neutron free fusion there will still be a minor issue of waste.
It says the fuel is deuterium and tritium, how hazardous are those?
Oh, EXTREMELY hazardous. Both substances have similar properties to a highly volatile chemical that has in past resulted in some spectacular explosions. OH THE HUMANITY! ;)
If fate makes you a motorcycle, you become a motorcycle.
In other words, because it was funded by outside sources from around the world, rather than the people of the region where it will provide power, it will be able to compete against alternatives in the region. Of course, that would also be true of anything else.
I've got some excellent windmills I'd like to sell you for 50 cents each - I just need to get global funding to the tune of $10B first.
If that were the case they'd be popping up all over. This place will never operate in the black. Not saying it isn't a starting point and shouldn't be done, but lets not sell it for something it isn't.
No, even black holes give off some radiation. :P
I read TFA and all I got was this lousy cookie
deuterium is common in sea water. Tritium is somewhat active and has a half-life of 10 years, through beta decay. It's used, sealed in phosphor coated glass vials, for "self powered" illumination in watch dials, exit signs, gun sights, and so on.
Big coconuts?
Tahiti sweetie nuts?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=chPeuuGn7o4
necessary spin is necessary
"fear"
"safe"
It's so freaking cool that there's going to be something man-made that will reach temperatures similar to the core of the sun. It's just... too cool. Hold on to your hat, god, 'cause here we come!
Ok, now back to mind-numbingly boring and disappointing reality...
weinersmith
Fusion reactor? You've got two empty halves of a coconut and you're bangin' em together!
The solution of the Sun and other stars - spray the crap all over the Universe - is perhaps not the most environmentally friendly, but it's why we're here at all. We're basically standing (or sitting) on nuclear waste from a star that went bang.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Deuterium is a stable isotope of hydrogen, and often used in small doses as a tracer in human medical applications.
Tritium is a beta-emitter, with a half-life of over 12 years. The beta particles can cause cellular & DNA damage in living tissue, but it can be stopped by a few millimetres of aluminum.
It may look like I'm doing nothing, but I'm actively waiting for my problems to go away.
--Scott Adams
No. It produces neutrons, so the material of the reactor will gradually become radioactive.
In addition, things will become more brittle, and thus more prone to crack under stress.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
without knowing anything else, highly sceptical - thought commercially viable fusion years away
PS: all you guys jerking off over how "safe" fusion is - what do you know about the neutron flux, and radioactive embrittlement of the containment shell ?
And I was impressed when that Australian split the beer atom.
Who?
I do not support "The Man". I also do not support your irrational stupidity
After many years of use, the lining of a Tokamak core is supposed to get mildly radioactive. And there is no risk of a meltdown because it's hard enough just to keep the thing going in the first place.
But right now, there isn't much nuclear waste being produced by fusion.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
Boooooooring!
So they found the best activated carbon for their particular use comes from coconut shells. Why is this news?
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
Also, deuterium and tritium can be found in Dihydrogen Monoxide.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
Dihydrogen Monoxide...the most hazardous substance known to man. It kills hundreds of thousands of people every year. We need to ban it quick!
Om, nomnomnom...
I believe the term for harvesting the power of the sun is solar energy. And yes the Sun's energy is original from Fusion but under wildly different circumstances (crushing gravitational forces vs magnetic confinement).
Or he will hunt you down and frickin kill you for using his friends as Nuclear Waste absorbers....
Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...
For those of you who dont want to read the article..this is what I got out of it....
[wind]
[clop clop]
ARTHUR: Whoa there!
[clop clop]
GUARD #1: Halt! Who goes there?
ARTHUR: It is I, Christian Day, Scientist, from theKarlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany. King of the physicist, defeator of the Saxons, sovereign
of all Germany!
GUARD #1: Pull the other one!
ARTHUR: I am. And this my trusty servant Lovelock.
We have ridden the length and breadth of the land in search of knights
who will join me in my court of Camelot. I must speak with your lord
and master.
GUARD #1: What, ridden on a horse?
ARTHUR: Yes!
GUARD #1: You're using coconuts!
ARTHUR: What?
GUARD #1: You've got two empty halves of coconut and you're bangin'
'em together.
ARTHUR: So? We have ridden since the snows of winter covered this
land, through the kingdom of Mercea, through--
GUARD #1: Where'd you get the coconut?
ARTHUR: We found them.
GUARD #1: Found them? In Mercea? The coconut's tropical!
ARTHUR: What do you mean?
GUARD #1: Well, this is a temperate zone.
ARTHUR: The swallow may fly south with the sun or the house martin
or the plumber may seek warmer climes in winter yet these are not
strangers to our land.
GUARD #1: Are you suggesting coconuts migrate?
ARTHUR: Not at all, they could be carried.
GUARD #1: What -- a swallow carrying a coconut?
ARTHUR: It could grip it by the husk!
GUARD #1: It's not a question of where he grips it! It's a simple
question of weight ratios! A five ounce bird could not carry a 1 pound
coconut.
ARTHUR: Well, it doesn't matter. Will you go and tell your master
that Christian Day of Germany is here!
GUARD #1: Listen, in order to maintain air-speed velocity, a swallow
needs to beat its wings 43 times every second, right?
ARTHUR: Please!
GUARD #1: Am I right?
ARTHUR: I'm not interested!
GUARD #2: It could be carried by an African swallow!
GUARD #1: Oh, yeah, an African swallow maybe, but not a European
swallow, that's my point.
GUARD #2: Oh, yeah, I agree with that...
ARTHUR: Will you ask your master if he wants to join my court
at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany?!
GUARD #1: But then of course African swallows are not migratory.
GUARD #2: Oh, yeah...
GUARD #1: So they couldn't bring a coconut back anyway...
[clop clop]
GUARD #2: Wait a minute -- supposing two swallows carried it together?
GUARD #1: No, they'd have to have it on a line.
GUARD #2: Well, simple! They'd just use a standard creeper!
GUARD #1: What, held under the dorsal guiding feathers?
GUARD #2: Well, why not?
Tell that to someone who has skin cancer from sun exposure! Sol is anything but safe, even if it is rather convenient.
everyone knows warp drives are powered by matter/antimatter reactions.... not fusion...
duh....
the impulse engines are powered by fusion reactors, and those are limited to a speed of 1/4 c
Isn't that the whole point of this site? It links to news stories from elsewhere.
You know the guy that actually split the atom (Ernest Rutherford) was from New Zealand, not australia.
Deuterium isn't much of a hazard at all. In the form of heavy water it starts to be a problem only if 25% of your total water is replaced by it and isn't lethal until around 50%. Essentially you'd have to drink only heavy water for about a week. The toxicity is due to deuterium inhibiting cell division. In it's gaseous form, it will simply dissipate harmlessly.
It might or might not make a good diluent for breathing gas for deep diving except that it's way too expensive for that so has never been tried.
Even with all of that, fusion reactors will have a net negative impact on deuterium since it is concentrated from large amounts of natural water but will be fused into helium.
Tritium is a beta emitter, so is a bit more hazardous, but will also dissipate quickly. Modern radio-luminescent markers use a small vial of tritium instead of the old radium and are quite safe.
The reactor hardware itself would become radioactive in use due to neutrons, but it's activity would be fairly short lived once the reactor shuts down.
No meltdown risks at all, no dangerous radiation leaks. Whatever happens, the worst possible case is that a very expensive reactor is ruined.
Since the by-product is helium, a reactor leak would only mean that any nearby residents would talk like Mickey Mouse for a little while. Which is better than radiation sickness.
Until you get sued by Disney for trademark infringement...
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
It's 150M degrees Electron Temperature.
Slashdot's name? When my compiler sees
Kinda like Microsoft software.
There is no right to feel safe thru security vaudeville at the expense of everyone's freedom, privacy and tax money.
Why is adsorbing within quotation marks, samzenpus? Didn't know that adsorbing is a word? Go steal a dictionary (your preferred way of obtaining things anyway) and start reading.
A lot of people have responded to you and they have it mostly right. Deuterium isn't harmful, tritium is. The neutron flux is a serious problem, especially from a structural standpoint. The reactor will become slowly neutron activated, or radioactive, and will need to be treated as low grade waste. Also, once tritium is introduced into the system, people won't be able to go in the reactor for maintenance because of the tritium absorbed into everything, so remote handling will be required. This is a separate issue from the neutron activation of the reactor though.
And no, no meltdown.
How do you think stars are formed? Do giant space storks bring them?
Here's the executive summary -- Without fusion stars are just really big clouds of hydrogen gas. Gravitational collapse of gas clouds leads to internal heating and eventually drives the temperature at the core of the new star up high enough to start hydrogen fusion. Even before stellar ignition occurs these gravitationally powered stars can glow as brightly as their older, hydrogen burning main sequence cousins.
So unless your god damn heart is glowing like a blackbody at two thousand kelvin, with strong absorption in the Lyman Alpha line, then stars without fusion are certainly not any blacker than it.
To learn more about stellar evolution, T-Tauri stars, the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram, nuclear fusion and spectroscopy, why not go to your local library or take an astrophysicist out to a karaoke bar? Either way you'll hear a lot that you may not be able to understand.
Yeh, you really do need to spin it. After all if they said "Bringing the power of a ball of nuclear fire the size of a million Earths to you!" they might never have gotten the project off the ground.
Moderation : -1 Conservative Viewpoint
BTW I love coconut.
:-(
Incidentally, coconut fibre (which I suspect might be what TFA might be referring to, rather than the shell) is a truly excellent material for producing an incredibly fine and pure charcoal (i.e. carbon) powder. The particles are so fine that they readily form nearly indelible stains on anything with which they come into contact. Especially on clothing.
That is the best damn response I've read in a while. Too bad you're an AC.
Here's to hot beer, cold women, and Glaswegian kisses for all.
You put the superheated hydrogen particles in the coconut, and adsorb it all up.
So basically, they're using a giant Brita filter. (Brita filters are made from coconut shells) http://www.brita.net/uk/glossary_aquazine2.html?&no_cache=1&L=1&range=&lex=Activated+carbon
don't panic-- clowns can smell fear.
Big deal - so does my calculator.
Yahoo Serious split the beer atom back in 1988, in "Young Einstien".
Speaking of Yahoo Serious, I'm surprised he hasn't sued Yahoo because he clearly had the name before them.
Coconut based fusion has no time for the sciantific method
So there's hydrogen isotopes in there like tritium and there's absolutely nothing else because it's inside a vacuum with magnets around it. They fuze those together and um...what does the charcoal have to adsorb or otherwise capture? Doesn't it fuse into like helium or something? First of all, that's a harmless gas, not a harmful liquid or solid and secondly, it doesn't need to be captured and stored by a carbon filter material because it's not toxic. They sure aren't fusing hydrogen into lead of something that would actually need to be captured instead of shot out of a coolant smokestack, right?
Google's Super Secret Search Algorithm: SELECT @search_results FROM internet WHERE @search_results = 'good'
Just how many Pina Coladas is that?
But, in the original Batman, when the thugs were rehydrated with heavy water, they vanished when struck! It's the end of us all! AAAAAAHHHHHaaaaaa.a.aaa.aa. mmm thorazine......
Why, without your clothes, you're naked, Miss Dudley!
The video on that site gives me a horrible feeling. The same feeling I had when I was sent to look for a scientist down in the bowels of a base just as all Hell broke loose. I'm stocking up on D cells and gas for the chain saw.
~~ Behold the flying cow with a rail gun! ~~
Hmm...
Mutations, cancer, and eventually, death.
On the other hand. Being sued by Disney for eighteen billion dollars in damages, ruining your entire family, city and, possibly, state.
Quite a bit lower. 150 million K (I'll use Kelvin here since it's basically equal to Celsius relative to temperatures of millions of either) is routine for thermonuclear bombs, which we've managed to test while avoiding complete destruction of the earth. The highest temperature of bulk matter ever recorded on earth was about 2 billion Kelvin, and took place in the Z Machine at Sandia Nat'l Labs. Elsewhere in the universe, supernova core temperatures are estimated to reach over 100 billion K; of course, sometimes this process does in fact produce a black hole, but observations suggest that whether this occurs is pretty strongly associated with the mass of the star- neutron star remants can exist at 100 billion K without further collapse. And while the statistical definition of temperature is arguably a bad fit when talking about subatomic particles, the average kinetic energies achieved by colliding particles (in terrestrial particle accelerators and moreso in cosmic rays) equate to temperatures in excess of 10^15 Kelvin or more, at least 7 orders of magnitude greater than ITER.
Now, at some temperature, we could perhaps expect the kinetic energy of particles to be so high that the particles collapse into subatomic black holes. Whether this is physically realizable, and the temperature it would occur at, depend on which physics theory you subscribe to. A key element of the "holographic universe" idea is that many of the maximum and minimum possible values for quantities like distance, entropy, and temperature have constraints imposed by the observable universe being a projection from a lower dimension event horizon. By some interpretations, this might mean that the maximum possible temperature is about 10^17K, which is about 15 orders of magnitude lower than more conventional cosmology theories would predict.
This suggests that the collisions of the highest energy cosmic rays in the universe regularly produce subatomic black holes. The Large Hadron Collider, whenever it is up and running, is also expected to produce temperatures in that range, so it might in fact make a black hole. You may have heard some news about this recently. So, a science experiment in central Europe in the near future may produce black holes, but it won't be ITER.
"FDA staff reviewers expressed concern about the number of patients who were left out of the study because they died."
Ahh yes, good ol' PAC (powdered activated carbon).
Good for pranks, though... actually, this gives me ideas. Bad ones...
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
If you have to use magnetic containment to keep the reaction going, it's not a star. "Star" is not a synonym for "nuclear fusion reaction" - except in breathless news reports written at a primary school reading level.
Floating face-down in a river of regret...and thoughts of you...
How do you think stars are formed? Do giant space storks bring them?
Yes. Yes they do.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
I don't know if fusion has radioactive waste since it deals with light elements, but, I found a business (watertorch.com) that says its product neutralizes radioactive waste. Why would we want to turn Hydrogen into Helium anyway, we can't remake it because it takes too high of temperatures. Therefore, we should stick with fission and neutralize the radioactive waste with the Water Torch.
The thing I love about Slashdot is that, apparently, no one actually reads the articles. TFA said that the carbon is being used as part of a PUMP to evacuate the waste helium (and some hydrogen, as well as dust created from the walls of the chamber gradually deteriorating from neutron bombardment) from the chamber and maintain vaccuum. They didn't say they were using this as shielding.
Slashdotters seem to be skeptical.
ITER is a Tokamak reactor. There are 20 now in operation. Thirteen were operated before and are now shut down. None of them have ever produced more power than they used.
Nice.
Off-topic: why do I only have mod points when I have no use for them, and why have they expired every single time I see a comment I really, really want to mod up?
MCSE? No, sir...I don't do Windows. Yes, I am an idealist. What's your point?
Great response. I hope this gives the anonymous toilet fodder something to think about.
You would have made professor Kirchhoff proud!
Well, at least TSA isn't letting you carry it through security anymore...
MCSE? No, sir...I don't do Windows. Yes, I am an idealist. What's your point?
Great, now I have "Isle Thing" stuck in my head. I know it's not nuclear, but still...coconuts.
I like the professor
He always saves their butts
He could build a nuclear reactor
From a couple of coconuts
You can only be young once, but you can be immature forever.
Yahoo Serious split the beer atom back in 1988, in "Young Einstien".
Oh I know - i was just trying to be funny - failed attempt on my part :)
I do not support "The Man". I also do not support your irrational stupidity
Here's a quote from the article, where they discuss this.
In a bit more detail:
They need to remove the Helium because it gets in the way of the reactants. They also need to be able to filter out whatever small amounts of waste that are generated by the plasma brushing the wall. Presumably reactions between the plasma and the walls would produce metallic hydrides, which are toxic, and in some cases potentially explosive. Not only that, but after a while, the entire inside of the reactor will be radioactive, from neutron activation. Again, this is small amounts of material, but they can't just spew it out into the air. Besides, they'll want to analyze it and see what's in it, since no one has ever run one of these for an extended period of time before.
Will the coconuts be provided by an African or European swallow?
You've got your spam reactor here, that's not got much spam in it.
For conscience is the wound, and there's naught to staunch it
1. Coconuts
2. ???
3. Nuclear Fusion!
No. It produces neutrons, so the material of the reactor will gradually become radioactive.
That isn't necessarily true. The neutrons can be captured by something else (fluid barrier), or the inner jacket of the reactor can be composed of something that won't absorb neutrons (obviously they have to go somewhere, but that somewhere doesn't have to be structural) or that becomes something non-radioactive if it does absorb neutrons. Or the reactor could be designed so that the generated radioactives are something useful. The output of the reactor isn't necessarily radioactive free, but it can be "waste" free.
I think, the power of a sun would be a better thing to say. And also more badass, creating an artificial controlled sun.
Media: (for both front/back access type and side-access type filters)
1. The absorbent medium shall be natural grain coconut shell activated carbon meeting the following requirements. The contractor shall furnish a manufacturer's certificate that the carbon quality meets these requirements.
a. Base material: Natural grain, coconut shell carbon
b. Activation method: High temperature steam
c. Absorption capacity: High efficiency and capacity for removal of typical odors in concentrations normally associated with the occupied spaces.
d. Absorption capacity: 60% carbon tetrachloride, ASTM D-3467.
e. Particle size distrib.: U.S. screen - particles will be of a 4 x 8 mesh, with a maximum of 5% remaining on the 4 mesh and a maximum of 5% passing thru the 8 mesh.
f. Bulk density: 0.48 to 0.54 grams per milliliter (29-34 lbs./cu. ft.) ASTM D-2854.
g. Total sulfur content: 0.1% maximum, by weight.
h. Ash content: 5% maximum, ASTM D-2866.
i. Moisture content: 5% maximum by weight, as packed, ASTM D-2867.
j. Reactivatability: Can be readily reactivated.
k. Packaging: The panel filling operation will utilize special equipment configured and fabricated to remove carbon fines and assure uniform packing density.
A slightly more precise, but still much simplified, view of the process is that vacuum fluctuations cause a particle-antiparticle pair to appear close to the event horizon of a black hole. One of the pair falls into the black hole whilst the other escapes. In order to preserve total energy, the particle that fell into the black hole must have had a negative energy (with respect to an observer far away from the black hole). By this process, the black hole loses mass, and, to an outside observer, it would appear that the black hole has just emitted a particle. In reality, the process is a quantum tunneling effect, whereby particle-antiparticle pairs will form from the vacuum, and one will tunnel outside the event horizon.
Though it's debatable whether black holes truly exist, SciAm just ran a great article on Black Stars
On the Oregon Cost born and raised, On the beach is where I spent most of my days
In August 2000, Yahoo Serious tried to sue the search engine Yahoo! for trademark infringement. The case was thrown out because Serious could not prove that he sells products or services under the name "Yahoo" and therefore could not prove that he suffered harm or confusion due to the search engine. The Daily Telegraph (Sydney, Australia) 22 September 2001
Or H. Beam Piper's Day of the Moran.
I drank what? -- Socrates
One factor is how much you read. If you read too much, you don't get mod points. I went four years between mod points, when I was reading Slashdot a lot. I don't read nearly as many pages as I used to, and I get mod points once or twice a week.
Floating face-down in a river of regret...and thoughts of you...
Oh and it can use common household garbage too.
Baked beans are off !
It links to old stories from elsewhere.
FTFY
So the aluminium foil helmets ARE a good idea after all ?
Ah. Well, I was the AC; that makes sense, 'cause I read quite a bit throughout the day. Thanks for the insight.
For conscience is the wound, and there's naught to staunch it
I assume that by "commercially viable" they mean that there is a net gain from the reactor. So what is the "coconut out" to "coconut in" ratio? Time to sell your stock in Dole!
Dewey, you fool! Your decimal system has played right into my hands!
"Blowups Happen" was about a fission reactor, not a fusion one. Heinlein, not having in 1939 the advantage of decades of human experience with nuclear fission, posited a reactor which required a huge amount of uranium and had to be run just below supercritical in order to produce a useful amount of power. Mess up the settings just a little bit, and you get a world-buster nuclear explosion sufficient to destroy life on earth.
To make things worse, the stress of running the thing tended to drive the operators and management crazy.
No, unfortunately. The reaction produces neutrons, creating copious amounts of secondary waste.
Bullwinkle J. Moose: "Hey Rock, watch me pull net energy out of my tokamak"
Rocket J. Squirrel: "Again? That trick never works!"
Bullwinkle J. Moose: "This time for sure!"
Ok.
So now we have a fusion reactor which must be run just-below supercritical in order to produce a useful amount of power. Mess up the settings just a little bit, and..... boom.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
... the next thing they'll be telling us is that these coconuts were carried here by swallows.
An African swallow maybe ... but not a European swallow.
Have gnu, will travel.
deuterium is common in sea water. Tritium is somewhat active and has a half-life of 10 years, through beta decay. It's used, sealed in phosphor coated glass vials, for "self powered" illumination in watch dials, exit signs, gun sights, and so on.
My physics teacher in school once told me about someone that used to paint glow-in-the-dark material onto the hands of watches. He had a habit of cleaning his brush by licking it. He ended up with little tumors on his tongue.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
I don't expect there to be any worth while reading from this source, unless one decides to treat it all as fiction and therefore entertainment. As far as I can tell, it's all either fiction or facts being used to support the fiction.
Last week clinical depression was a fun deficiency.
Now an experimental fusion reactor that might break even over an 8 minute run is 'commercially viable'.
The writers aren't just writing badly, they're making shit up badly. The editors can't tell or don't care.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
> One factor is how much you read. If you read too much, you don't get mod points.
Nah, that isn't the secret. I read almost every day (you have a higher achievement for days read in a row, but only by one) and I get mod points fairly regular. Almost never get an option to metamod though. Slashdot's system is truly inscrutable and capricious yet somehow it seems to work.
Democrat delenda est
And the Sun is powered by what? Burning tires?
...comes from cows. No, really. There are millions of cows in India, and observant Hindus consider it sacrilege to harm them. So they mostly die from old age, and there are no religious issues connected with recycling their remains. And it turns out that their bones, being extremely brittle, make excellent charcoal.
I found this out from a newspaper story a few years back. It was in the news because a British water company was using cow charcoal in its filters. Local vegetarians were not pleased.
It's a fusion reaction.
I'll never eat day-old sushi again.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
So that's where the Professor went to when he got off the Island. I'd always wondered.
For a second, I read that as:
How do you think stars are formed? Do giant space dorks bring them?
When you eat a cupcake without the cup you still call it a cupcake, don't you?
This level of discussion is of a primary school student.
Actually the only thing that keeps us safe from the sun is the atmosphere and the magnetic poles of the Earth.
Anything outside our cocoon in space would kill us immediately.
I usually cooked my satay (Indonesian/Malaysian kebab) using coconut charcoal. I am wondering what if I cook my satay on a Tokamak with that charcoal.. Yummy....
How neutricious would it be? *rimshot*
Well you might drown someone with it!
Om, nomnomnom...
Yup. It looks like Slashdot readers are skeptical.
The article says that ITER "may" become the first commercially viable fusion reactor, but in his /. submission the submitter has changed that to "will". Given the number of contenders who will show first plasma before ITER even powers up, even if ITER does work as expected, it may not be the first.
-deane
It's late, but reading that Wiki article 2 or 3 times has me saying "Bullshit." Basically what they are saying is that since normally you have infinite-density singularity, here is an alternative where some quantum phenomena pushes back and prevents that from happening.
Problem is, there's no such thing as the type of singularity they are describing. I know that now. So the black star "alternative" that is the opposite of a dumb idea (singularity) is probably meaningless.
Roger Penrose or whoever came up with the idea of a singularity inside of an event horizon was wrong. I'm not sure what you mean that black holes are "debatable," but if this is it, then we agree on that much.
Event horizons are not very debatable, they make intrinsic mathematical sense, even if they are extremely odd. Asymptotes tend to be odd. I'm not sure that anyone has ever had the balls to view event horizons as asymptotes or *cough* as singularities in an of themselves. It seems a great deal of mathematical gymnastics have been performed to avoid coming to such a simple conclusion.
There's more of course. I just want to be on record saying that Penrose is wrong and that Hawking is off his rocker. The best description I've ever gotten out of Hawking about the nature of the universe is that spacetime is like a closed system or loop, and that description is so vague as to be a dead giveaway that he's never come up with an actual, workable theory.
I still read every day, but my page count is down by probably a factor of ten. That's part of it, but not all. Commenting, and having your comments upmodded, seems to help. Doing M2 doesn't seem to make any difference. I never get the reminder, but you can always go to http://slashdot.org/metamod.pl. I hate the new form, though.
Floating face-down in a river of regret...and thoughts of you...
Radium dials. And the workers were referred to as Radium Girls. They often painted themselves with the radium paint for glow in the dark affects (lips, fingernails, etc.) That turned out to be a poor choice.
Newer ones use tritium gas in small phosphor lined glass capsules. The beta (electrons) emissions never get out of the glass. IF you managed to break the capsule, well tritium IS an isotope of hydrogen... It will float upward toward the ceiling, and would rapidly dissipate into the air in the room becoming too diffuse to be concerned about.