"burn" is synonymous with "combustion" or a chemical reaction in which heat and gas is given off.
Nuclear fission is definitely not a chemical reaction, but a nuclear reaction. It is not in any way the same as "burning fuel." It uses a fuel, and creates some products, but it is not a chemical reaction.
Thus, the author actually used very exact language, you just need a better vocabulary.
Technically no source of energy is inexhaustible. When fuel consumption is no longer economically viable, we will move on to other modes of energy production (solar power seems reasonable enough). What's so bad about using fuel that is plentiful and available to us if it is cheaper and easier than building solar panels and geothermal plants everywhere? It's unnecessary and, frankly, idiotic to arbitrarily decide that we shouldn't use nuclear power simply because it has a finite fuel source. That's one of the very same fallacies that prevents people from embracing nuclear fusion.
NASA received 16.2 billion dollars in 2006. For those who are poor at math, that's 16,200 million dollars.
Let's say three parties were thrown that year, each at 1 million dollars. 3/16200 = 0.000185 = 0.0185%, or less than two hundredths of a percent of the budget was spent on parties.
Comparatively, the US govt spent $2.6 trillion, or 2,600,000 million dollars. If you evenly divided this amongst every American, then we all (300 million people in 2006), then we each spent an average of $8700 that year.
The percentage of this $2.6 trillion spent on NASA parties was 0.0000115%, a fraction too small to even see on a pie chart.
Better yet, if you distributed this 3 million dollars back to the public and NASA had none of those parties, every person in America would receive one penny. How many times have you walked past a penny on the street and not picked it up? Would you really not give one penny to throw a party for the fine folks at NASA, who have been responsible for inventing many of the consumer products that we now take for granted?
MS is clearly trying to use the Sega Genesis model; make a basic system and then continually create upgrades for it. HD-DVD attachment, bigger hard drives, HDMI port, etc. etc. And we all know how well that worked out for Sega.
The PS2 was one console, never needed to be upgraded to play new games, and it usually lasted forever. I still have my fat PS2 from early release, and it still works beautifully (had one disc read error a year ago that was fixed by cleaning the disc). Microsoft is clearly NOT going the PS2 route.
Every number has an equal chance of being pulled. That's a fact. Playing to these "weighted numbers" doesn't increase your odds at all; in fact, your odds are theoretically decreased by playing the numbers that have been pulled more often, because it is more likely that you'll see the less often pulled numbers pulled next time
In other words, if I flip a coin 10 times and see Heads 10 times, that's not a guarantee that the 11th time will be heads; in fact, the probability of getting 11 heads is so small that you'd be better off betting on tails. After all, if you flip the coin 10 million times you should have about 5 million tails (but you can't say anything about a coin only flipped 10 times because the sample size is too small).
The lottery has been done a finite number of times, therefore the article's interpretation of statistics is nonsense.
Then explain why equal quality plans (with data, video, etc.) are available in other countries for less money?
You point to carriers upgrading their equipment, yet carries in OTHER regions (ie Europe, Asia) have to do the same thing! Why are they able to charge less but American companies are not?
The REAL question we should be asking is why are none of the companies willing to step up and offer better, cheaper plans? In a free market, we would have the same plans (if not better) as the Europeans do. Businesses undercut each other in a free market in order to steal customers. So why are no cell phone companies doing this?
Don't we have laws that are supposed to prevent companies from banding together to screw the consumer? I was under the assumption that price-fixing was against the law (and is clearly what's going on; the cell phone companies have agreed to offer minimal features for similar prices, so everyone gets part of the pie without any real competition)
PS3 sales will probably remain steady for the next few years, just like any console. Whenever a few games come out for it, that'll probably increase the amount of computing power; more people will buy the PS3, and you can't be playing games 24 hours a day, right?
Yeah, I think cell phone companies in America suck. What am I supposed to do about it?
The author suggests not owning a phone at all. Well, I guess I would do that if I could get a land line. But wait, those are owned by the same companies. The only alternative is phone service through a cable/satellite company, but those companies are just as corrupt and dreadful as the cell phone companies (and in a lot of cases worse).
Hell, the state of broadband in America is 100x worse than the state of cell phones, and there is literally nothing we can do about that. Cutting yourself off from the phone companies (a lesser evil) just bolsters cable/satellite companies (a greater evil).
The only real solution is some sort of uprising. First senator that gets the ball rolling on fixing broadband (making it comparable to the rest of the world) gets my write-in vote for president.
"first-year undergrad's (sic) know that for pity (sic) sake"
Anyone who has taught first-year undergrads knows that first-year undergrads know nothing.
Oops, didn't hit preview that last time and then slashdot hit me with the 'ole "Wait a few minutes before replying" speech. Here it is again.
First of all, the B11 + p reaction is no more free of nuclear waste than a D+T reaction (Deuterium+Tritium conventional fusion). However, it is a fact that B11 is much more plentiful than Tritium (or Deuterium for that matter, whereas single protons are everywhere; that's everyday hydrogen).
Anyone who has taken an introductory Nuclear Physics course should be able to explain why B11 + p -> 3H4 is probably not a fusion reaction that is viable for energy production. In fact, anyone can make the theoretical calculation.
H2 + H3 -> He4 + n Using the masses of the reactants and subtracting the masses of the products gives us a mass difference of about u=0.01888299 (yes, the masses have been measured to that accuracy, better than that accuracy in fact) Converting to electron-volts, Q = 17.590 MeV is the energy released by this reaction. This is carried off as kinetic energy for the He4 and the neutron (wikipedia source says 17.6MeV released). The neutron carries away the largest chunk of this energy.
B11 + p -> 3He4 Do the math again and you get a mass difference of about u=0.00877247 Converting to electron-volts, Q = 8.1716 MeV is the energy released by this reaction (with the wikipedia source saying Q = 8.7MeV, source unknown). Again, this energy is kinetic energy carried by each helium nucleus, although it's split evenly between the three nuclei.
At 100% efficiency, a focus fusion reactor would generate less than half of the energy provided by conventional fusion. The efforts being made for conventional fusion are there because it's probably the best chance we have for long-term fusion energy.
Tritium production is currently low, allowing the author to make the claim that we would quickly run out of fuel. He obviously hasn't done his homework (or is intentionally misleading). Once fusion becomes a reliable and economically viable source of power, harvesting tritium from the surface of the moon (where it is relatively abundant) will be a streamlined process. Other advances in technology will allow unprecedented production of tritium. It's the same case that we've seen for oil a hundred times before; people continue claiming that we'll run out of supplies in the immediate future, and then a few technological breakthroughs bring greater access to oil reserves than ever before. Obviously this trend can't last forever, but by the time our local resources of tritium are depleted (the moon and whatever we produce on the earth) we'll be able to harvest it from other celestial bodies.
Other users have pointed out the author's dubious background. It would be wise to ask why he never completed a PhD, and perhaps the wisest are asking whether he even passed his qualification exams (exams covering undergraduate Thermodynamics, Classical Mechanics, Quantum Mechanics, and Electromagnetism to determine eligibility for a PhD program, taken sometime during the first or second year of graduate school).
His lack of a PhD certainly does not mean he's stupid or untrustworthy, but I still can't take his research seriously. The best way to obtain research funding is by participating in a PhD program and then picking up a research position at any university. Everyone knows that, so why doesn't he? Asking for public donations is highly suspect. I don't trust him for this reason alone. The DoE is usually very willing to fund alternative energy research, even stuff that looks like it has little chance for success. He must have asked them for funding, and either received it and is trying to scam people into donations or they shot him down, implying that his research has even less credibility than I thought.
First of all, the B11 + p reaction is no more free of nuclear waste than a D+T reaction (Deuterium+Tritium conventional fusion). However, it is a fact that B11 is much more plentiful than Tritium (or Deuterium for that matter, whereas single protons are everywhere; that's everyday hydrogen).
Anyone who has taken an introductory Nuclear Physics course should be able to explain why B11 + p -> 3H4 is probably not a fusion reaction that is viable for energy production. In fact, anyone can make the theoretical calculation.
H2 + H3 -> He4 + n
Using the masses of the reactants and subtracting the masses of the products gives us a mass difference of about u=0.01888299 (yes, the masses have been measured to that accuracy, better than that accuracy in fact)
Converting to electron-volts, Q = 17.590 MeV is the energy released by this reaction. This is carried off as kinetic energy for the He4 and the neutron (wikipedia source says 17.6MeV released). The neutron carries away the largest chunk of this energy.
B11 + p -> 3He4
Do the math again and you get a mass difference of about u=0.00877247
Converting to electron-volts, Q = 8.1716 MeV is the energy released by this reaction (with the wikipedia source saying Q = 8.7MeV, source unknown). Again, this energy is kinetic energy carried by each helium nucleus, although it's split evenly between the three nuclei.
At 100% efficiency, a focus fusion reactor would generate less than half of the energy provided by conventional fusion. The efforts being made for conventional fusion are there because it's probably the best chance we have for long-term fusion energy.
Tritium production is currently low, allowing the author to make the claim that we would quickly run out of fuel. He obviously hasn't done his homework (or is intentionally misleading). Once fusion becomes a reliable and economically viable source of power, harvesting tritium from the surface of the moon (where it is relatively abundant) will be a streamlined process. Other advances in technology will allow unprecedented production of tritium. It's the same case that we've seen for oil a hundred times before; people continue claiming that we'll run out of supplies in the immediate future, and then a few technological breakthroughs bring greater access to oil reserves than ever before. Obviously this trend can't last forever, but by the time our local resources of tritium are depleted (the moon and whatever we produce on the earth) we'll be able to harvest it from other celestial bodies.
And other users have pointed out the author's dubious background. It would be wise to ask why he never completed a PhD, and perhaps the wisest are asking whether he even passed his qualification exams (exams covering undergraduate Thermodynamics, Classical Mechanics, Quantum Mechanics, and Electromagnetism to determine eligibility for a PhD program, taken sometime during the first or second year of graduate school).
His lack of a PhD certainly does not mean he's stupid or untrustworthy, but I still can't take his research seriously. The best way to obtain research funding is by participating in a PhD program and then picking up a research position at any university. Everyone knows that, so why doesn't he?
Asking for public donations is highly suspect. I don't trust him for this reason alone. The DoE is usually very willing to fund alternative energy research, even stuff that looks like it has little chance for success. He must have asked them for funding, and either received it and is trying to scam people into donations or they shot him down, implying that his research has even less credibility than I thought.
I don't understand the author's point in writing that article. He states that colonization is an *impossibility* yet clearly he is describing technology that is only possible today. 100 years ago we were developing flying machines. 50 years ago we began to explore space. Who is to say what might be possible 100 years from now?
I don't think anyone really believes that we'll have fully functioning space colonies in the next 50 years.
Space colonization is an inevitability but is impractical with today's technology.
The author also makes a fallacious argument comparing Mars to a desert. Mars has considerably quantities of ice and other useful materials that wouldn't be found in a desert. There are good reasons for going there even if it's not a hospitable environment.
Slashdot Mirror
"burn" is synonymous with "combustion" or a chemical reaction in which heat and gas is given off. Nuclear fission is definitely not a chemical reaction, but a nuclear reaction. It is not in any way the same as "burning fuel." It uses a fuel, and creates some products, but it is not a chemical reaction. Thus, the author actually used very exact language, you just need a better vocabulary. Technically no source of energy is inexhaustible. When fuel consumption is no longer economically viable, we will move on to other modes of energy production (solar power seems reasonable enough). What's so bad about using fuel that is plentiful and available to us if it is cheaper and easier than building solar panels and geothermal plants everywhere? It's unnecessary and, frankly, idiotic to arbitrarily decide that we shouldn't use nuclear power simply because it has a finite fuel source. That's one of the very same fallacies that prevents people from embracing nuclear fusion.
NASA received 16.2 billion dollars in 2006. For those who are poor at math, that's 16,200 million dollars. Let's say three parties were thrown that year, each at 1 million dollars. 3/16200 = 0.000185 = 0.0185%, or less than two hundredths of a percent of the budget was spent on parties. Comparatively, the US govt spent $2.6 trillion, or 2,600,000 million dollars. If you evenly divided this amongst every American, then we all (300 million people in 2006), then we each spent an average of $8700 that year. The percentage of this $2.6 trillion spent on NASA parties was 0.0000115%, a fraction too small to even see on a pie chart. Better yet, if you distributed this 3 million dollars back to the public and NASA had none of those parties, every person in America would receive one penny. How many times have you walked past a penny on the street and not picked it up? Would you really not give one penny to throw a party for the fine folks at NASA, who have been responsible for inventing many of the consumer products that we now take for granted?
"Graphics wise the PS3 is the intermediate step between the Wii and the 360."
Ah, to be so blissfully ignorant must be nice
MS is clearly trying to use the Sega Genesis model; make a basic system and then continually create upgrades for it. HD-DVD attachment, bigger hard drives, HDMI port, etc. etc. And we all know how well that worked out for Sega.
The PS2 was one console, never needed to be upgraded to play new games, and it usually lasted forever. I still have my fat PS2 from early release, and it still works beautifully (had one disc read error a year ago that was fixed by cleaning the disc). Microsoft is clearly NOT going the PS2 route.
Every number has an equal chance of being pulled. That's a fact. Playing to these "weighted numbers" doesn't increase your odds at all; in fact, your odds are theoretically decreased by playing the numbers that have been pulled more often, because it is more likely that you'll see the less often pulled numbers pulled next time In other words, if I flip a coin 10 times and see Heads 10 times, that's not a guarantee that the 11th time will be heads; in fact, the probability of getting 11 heads is so small that you'd be better off betting on tails. After all, if you flip the coin 10 million times you should have about 5 million tails (but you can't say anything about a coin only flipped 10 times because the sample size is too small). The lottery has been done a finite number of times, therefore the article's interpretation of statistics is nonsense.
Then explain why equal quality plans (with data, video, etc.) are available in other countries for less money?
You point to carriers upgrading their equipment, yet carries in OTHER regions (ie Europe, Asia) have to do the same thing! Why are they able to charge less but American companies are not?
Your answer just stinks of bullshit
The REAL question we should be asking is why are none of the companies willing to step up and offer better, cheaper plans? In a free market, we would have the same plans (if not better) as the Europeans do. Businesses undercut each other in a free market in order to steal customers. So why are no cell phone companies doing this? Don't we have laws that are supposed to prevent companies from banding together to screw the consumer? I was under the assumption that price-fixing was against the law (and is clearly what's going on; the cell phone companies have agreed to offer minimal features for similar prices, so everyone gets part of the pie without any real competition)
PS3 sales will probably remain steady for the next few years, just like any console. Whenever a few games come out for it, that'll probably increase the amount of computing power; more people will buy the PS3, and you can't be playing games 24 hours a day, right?
Yeah, I think cell phone companies in America suck. What am I supposed to do about it? The author suggests not owning a phone at all. Well, I guess I would do that if I could get a land line. But wait, those are owned by the same companies. The only alternative is phone service through a cable/satellite company, but those companies are just as corrupt and dreadful as the cell phone companies (and in a lot of cases worse). Hell, the state of broadband in America is 100x worse than the state of cell phones, and there is literally nothing we can do about that. Cutting yourself off from the phone companies (a lesser evil) just bolsters cable/satellite companies (a greater evil). The only real solution is some sort of uprising. First senator that gets the ball rolling on fixing broadband (making it comparable to the rest of the world) gets my write-in vote for president.
"first-year undergrad's (sic) know that for pity (sic) sake" Anyone who has taught first-year undergrads knows that first-year undergrads know nothing.
Oops, didn't hit preview that last time and then slashdot hit me with the 'ole "Wait a few minutes before replying" speech. Here it is again.
First of all, the B11 + p reaction is no more free of nuclear waste than a D+T reaction (Deuterium+Tritium conventional fusion). However, it is a fact that B11 is much more plentiful than Tritium (or Deuterium for that matter, whereas single protons are everywhere; that's everyday hydrogen).
Anyone who has taken an introductory Nuclear Physics course should be able to explain why B11 + p -> 3H4 is probably not a fusion reaction that is viable for energy production. In fact, anyone can make the theoretical calculation.
H2 + H3 -> He4 + n
Using the masses of the reactants and subtracting the masses of the products gives us a mass difference of about u=0.01888299 (yes, the masses have been measured to that accuracy, better than that accuracy in fact) Converting to electron-volts, Q = 17.590 MeV is the energy released by this reaction. This is carried off as kinetic energy for the He4 and the neutron (wikipedia source says 17.6MeV released). The neutron carries away the largest chunk of this energy.
B11 + p -> 3He4
Do the math again and you get a mass difference of about u=0.00877247 Converting to electron-volts, Q = 8.1716 MeV is the energy released by this reaction (with the wikipedia source saying Q = 8.7MeV, source unknown). Again, this energy is kinetic energy carried by each helium nucleus, although it's split evenly between the three nuclei.
At 100% efficiency, a focus fusion reactor would generate less than half of the energy provided by conventional fusion. The efforts being made for conventional fusion are there because it's probably the best chance we have for long-term fusion energy.
Tritium production is currently low, allowing the author to make the claim that we would quickly run out of fuel. He obviously hasn't done his homework (or is intentionally misleading). Once fusion becomes a reliable and economically viable source of power, harvesting tritium from the surface of the moon (where it is relatively abundant) will be a streamlined process. Other advances in technology will allow unprecedented production of tritium. It's the same case that we've seen for oil a hundred times before; people continue claiming that we'll run out of supplies in the immediate future, and then a few technological breakthroughs bring greater access to oil reserves than ever before. Obviously this trend can't last forever, but by the time our local resources of tritium are depleted (the moon and whatever we produce on the earth) we'll be able to harvest it from other celestial bodies.
Other users have pointed out the author's dubious background. It would be wise to ask why he never completed a PhD, and perhaps the wisest are asking whether he even passed his qualification exams (exams covering undergraduate Thermodynamics, Classical Mechanics, Quantum Mechanics, and Electromagnetism to determine eligibility for a PhD program, taken sometime during the first or second year of graduate school).
His lack of a PhD certainly does not mean he's stupid or untrustworthy, but I still can't take his research seriously. The best way to obtain research funding is by participating in a PhD program and then picking up a research position at any university. Everyone knows that, so why doesn't he? Asking for public donations is highly suspect. I don't trust him for this reason alone. The DoE is usually very willing to fund alternative energy research, even stuff that looks like it has little chance for success. He must have asked them for funding, and either received it and is trying to scam people into donations or they shot him down, implying that his research has even less credibility than I thought.
First of all, the B11 + p reaction is no more free of nuclear waste than a D+T reaction (Deuterium+Tritium conventional fusion). However, it is a fact that B11 is much more plentiful than Tritium (or Deuterium for that matter, whereas single protons are everywhere; that's everyday hydrogen). Anyone who has taken an introductory Nuclear Physics course should be able to explain why B11 + p -> 3H4 is probably not a fusion reaction that is viable for energy production. In fact, anyone can make the theoretical calculation. H2 + H3 -> He4 + n Using the masses of the reactants and subtracting the masses of the products gives us a mass difference of about u=0.01888299 (yes, the masses have been measured to that accuracy, better than that accuracy in fact) Converting to electron-volts, Q = 17.590 MeV is the energy released by this reaction. This is carried off as kinetic energy for the He4 and the neutron (wikipedia source says 17.6MeV released). The neutron carries away the largest chunk of this energy. B11 + p -> 3He4 Do the math again and you get a mass difference of about u=0.00877247 Converting to electron-volts, Q = 8.1716 MeV is the energy released by this reaction (with the wikipedia source saying Q = 8.7MeV, source unknown). Again, this energy is kinetic energy carried by each helium nucleus, although it's split evenly between the three nuclei. At 100% efficiency, a focus fusion reactor would generate less than half of the energy provided by conventional fusion. The efforts being made for conventional fusion are there because it's probably the best chance we have for long-term fusion energy. Tritium production is currently low, allowing the author to make the claim that we would quickly run out of fuel. He obviously hasn't done his homework (or is intentionally misleading). Once fusion becomes a reliable and economically viable source of power, harvesting tritium from the surface of the moon (where it is relatively abundant) will be a streamlined process. Other advances in technology will allow unprecedented production of tritium. It's the same case that we've seen for oil a hundred times before; people continue claiming that we'll run out of supplies in the immediate future, and then a few technological breakthroughs bring greater access to oil reserves than ever before. Obviously this trend can't last forever, but by the time our local resources of tritium are depleted (the moon and whatever we produce on the earth) we'll be able to harvest it from other celestial bodies. And other users have pointed out the author's dubious background. It would be wise to ask why he never completed a PhD, and perhaps the wisest are asking whether he even passed his qualification exams (exams covering undergraduate Thermodynamics, Classical Mechanics, Quantum Mechanics, and Electromagnetism to determine eligibility for a PhD program, taken sometime during the first or second year of graduate school). His lack of a PhD certainly does not mean he's stupid or untrustworthy, but I still can't take his research seriously. The best way to obtain research funding is by participating in a PhD program and then picking up a research position at any university. Everyone knows that, so why doesn't he? Asking for public donations is highly suspect. I don't trust him for this reason alone. The DoE is usually very willing to fund alternative energy research, even stuff that looks like it has little chance for success. He must have asked them for funding, and either received it and is trying to scam people into donations or they shot him down, implying that his research has even less credibility than I thought.
I don't understand the author's point in writing that article. He states that colonization is an *impossibility* yet clearly he is describing technology that is only possible today. 100 years ago we were developing flying machines. 50 years ago we began to explore space. Who is to say what might be possible 100 years from now? I don't think anyone really believes that we'll have fully functioning space colonies in the next 50 years. Space colonization is an inevitability but is impractical with today's technology. The author also makes a fallacious argument comparing Mars to a desert. Mars has considerably quantities of ice and other useful materials that wouldn't be found in a desert. There are good reasons for going there even if it's not a hospitable environment.