the rules limit the weight of the battery pack and that is sorted by type. ie. you can have a heavier Pb-Acid pack than Li-poly.
pretty much every team runs with aprox. the same pack capacity. The pack capacity is more important for the morning/evening charging: the teams can't be on the road before/after certain times so teams charge during those times.
There is a slightly deeper issue at play here. As you scan through the opening section of Genesis there seems to be a bit of a hierarchy with men (Adam) at the end, the top, in God's image (followed by women (Eve) as feminist like to point out.
There is a comforting intentionality to the whole creation thing. We live in a world of sin and evil ruled by a good God. If everything was created all in one go maybe there is some plan playing out. With evolution everything is random. There is no greater plan to randomness. Even worse, only human pride puts us at the top. We are no more the pinnacle of evolution than the bacteria and viruses that kill us.
For many people acknowledging evolution requires a lot of reworking of their world view.
Starting with space: The cost would be absurd. A particle accelerator is a very heavy. Tons upon tons of magnets. Also you need a pretty hefty power supply though you might be able to keep the magnets superconducting if you just do experiments in the shadow. I think launch and assembly cost would be prohibitively expensive.
A2: The experiments planned for the LHC and any high energy collider are supposed to simulate the very early universe. The only comparable high energy events are a few cosmic rays. The problem with cosmic rays is they interact somewhere in the atmosphere not in the middle of a giant array of detectors like they ought. Cosmic rays also don't happen all that often. So while the reaction is similar the collider gives better rate and controlled location.
A1: This is research. Foreseeable applications are only used to part venture capitalists with their money. There are many ways that people justify research for the sake of research, just like art for the sake of art, but you are being lied to if they tell you there is an application.
For my money this probably has about the same chance of developing cost-efficient solar as the average bay area start-up; 0.
Usually a cult follows a still-living or recently deceased charismatic leader. A religion is a cult that survives for a couple generations. For instance early Christianity and more recently Mormonism started off as cults, each centered around a single historical figure. These both grew up so to speak and now carry the 'mature' religion baggage of doctrine and dogma and Tradition. Hence they are religions.
"I can buy a car that is run from the solar panels on my roof for day to day driving"
sorry to nitpick, but solar panels can never be feasible for transportation (ignoring spaceships). The energy the sun gives off is often quoted at 1000 W/m^2 which translates to 1.3Hp assuming somehow perfect conversion from solar to mechanical energy and ideal sun conditions. Smart has an extremely low horsepower engine with the lowest model ~38Hp and certainly not much more than 1m^2 of roof space for panels. To first order you'd be spending 30 secs charging to every 1 sec driving.
So sunlight doesn't really come in at 6000K. The sun is pretty much a blackbody (try wikipedia) with a temp around 6000K. The majority of light comes at the visible range (not really a surprise). This energy is 2-5 *10^-19 Joules which is about 10 times "hotter" or about 1.5-3 electron Volts.
So if a photon comes in blue and gives all of its energy to a single electron that electron will have 2.5 Volts of energy. This is how photovoltaic cells work. An electron is given this energy and moves to an excited state. The solar cell has some ~set voltage that it operates at and if connected to a circuit the excited electrons will move through the circuit as if the solar cell was just a battery with that voltage assuming enough electrons are being excited to supply the current wanted. (To first order).
The best chemical processes I've ever heard of for capturing sunlight would be the whole plant thing. Sorry I can't help much.
Slashdot Mirror
it would make for a very boring start.
the rules limit the weight of the battery pack and that is sorted by type. ie. you can have a heavier Pb-Acid pack than Li-poly.
pretty much every team runs with aprox. the same pack capacity. The pack capacity is more important for the morning/evening charging: the teams can't be on the road before/after certain times so teams charge during those times.
There is a comforting intentionality to the whole creation thing. We live in a world of sin and evil ruled by a good God. If everything was created all in one go maybe there is some plan playing out. With evolution everything is random. There is no greater plan to randomness. Even worse, only human pride puts us at the top. We are no more the pinnacle of evolution than the bacteria and viruses that kill us.
For many people acknowledging evolution requires a lot of reworking of their world view.
A2: The experiments planned for the LHC and any high energy collider are supposed to simulate the very early universe. The only comparable high energy events are a few cosmic rays. The problem with cosmic rays is they interact somewhere in the atmosphere not in the middle of a giant array of detectors like they ought. Cosmic rays also don't happen all that often. So while the reaction is similar the collider gives better rate and controlled location.
A1: This is research. Foreseeable applications are only used to part venture capitalists with their money. There are many ways that people justify research for the sake of research, just like art for the sake of art, but you are being lied to if they tell you there is an application.
For my money this probably has about the same chance of developing cost-efficient solar as the average bay area start-up; 0.
Also people you don't like are in cults.
Give alcohol to a hypothermic person and you will kill them.
"I can buy a car that is run from the solar panels on my roof for day to day driving"
sorry to nitpick, but solar panels can never be feasible for transportation (ignoring spaceships). The energy the sun gives off is often quoted at 1000 W/m^2 which translates to 1.3Hp assuming somehow perfect conversion from solar to mechanical energy and ideal sun conditions. Smart has an extremely low horsepower engine with the lowest model ~38Hp and certainly not much more than 1m^2 of roof space for panels. To first order you'd be spending 30 secs charging to every 1 sec driving.
So sunlight doesn't really come in at 6000K. The sun is pretty much a blackbody (try wikipedia) with a temp around 6000K. The majority of light comes at the visible range (not really a surprise). This energy is 2-5 *10^-19 Joules which is about 10 times "hotter" or about 1.5-3 electron Volts.
So if a photon comes in blue and gives all of its energy to a single electron that electron will have 2.5 Volts of energy. This is how photovoltaic cells work. An electron is given this energy and moves to an excited state. The solar cell has some ~set voltage that it operates at and if connected to a circuit the excited electrons will move through the circuit as if the solar cell was just a battery with that voltage assuming enough electrons are being excited to supply the current wanted. (To first order).
The best chemical processes I've ever heard of for capturing sunlight would be the whole plant thing. Sorry I can't help much.