No, they're describing fusion, period. Traditional hot fusion is a particular subset of that, in which the method to combine the nuclei (not atoms) involves heating them up to great temperatures in a maxwellian plasma, so that the nuclei with the highest energies (far higher than the average energy of the plasma) can fuse. There are also some less pursued hot fusion methods involving non-maxwellian plasmas.
Cold fusion is fusion in which there is no bulk plasma at all (although in some approaches it is theorized to exist at extremely small scales). More often, the idea is that you use an alternative method to overcome or reduce the coulomb barrier. For example, one hypothesized method of cold fusion is that under certain conditions, electrons are "dressed" with extra mass by quasiparticles (such as phonons), leading them to act like muons and catalyze fusion events by dramatically reducing the covalent bond length.
Just because there is no definitive explanation for a phenomenon doesn't mean that it does not exist. We still don't have a complete, definitive explanation for high temperature superconductivity, but there's no doubt that it exists -- and there are a number of competing theories. There are lots of competing theories for how cold fusion would work which cannot be ruled out at this time -- many of them no more exotic than our theories of high temperature superconductivity (or even the accepted mechanism behind low-temperature superconductivity). At the same time, the evidence is subject to many different interpretations. The DOE's viewpoint on the subject is that research should continue to explain the anomalies, but no major projects should be launched.
Copper would be one of the easiest contaminants to get in such a system, since copper wiring, heat exchangers, and so forth are so common. Copper is also a common contaminant in impure metals, and even tap water (due to copper pipes).
And has any third party actually evaluated their copper-generation claims? We know that they haven't passed peer review.
How do you arrive at that conclusion? The extra proton comes from the hydrogen. One less water proton -> one proton heavier isotope. Although that does raise the question as to what source nickel isotope(s) they're using, since the most abundant nickel isotope is Ni-58, and Cu-59 only has a half-life of 81.5 seconds. The only persistent copper would come from Ni-62 (3.5%) and Ni-64 (0.9%). Most of the nickel would form transient copper isotopes which would then spawn decay chains (I seem to have lost my nucleonica account at the moment, or I'd check to see the net result).
In general: I'm not about to declare "Cold Fusion Is Impossible!", but I think these people are a long way from passing the burden of proof.
I think they're just jealous that he's a 39-year-old computer geek who gets to live like a rock star and alter the course of world history while they're stuck working on accounting software for Initech.;)
I've known many people who've been raped. *Actual* rape, not "Now that we're done, let me take you out for breakfast and not decide anything's wrong until I learn that you've been sleeping around" rape. We're talking a knife in one case, drugs in another, force in several, the implicit threat of force in others.
If any of them had even mentioned the possibility of INTERPOL getting involved, they would have been laughed at.
So, please describe to me how her showing up to specifically hit on him all day until he finally starts responding, then inviting him over and, condom or not, being so comfortable with him afterwards that she took him out for breakfast the next day and bought him is ticket -- sounds like rape to you. Was it the part where she only went to the police after learning that he had been sleeping around? Or the part where the only reason she went to the police was to force him to get an STD test?
And this is from *her* affidavit; we haven't even heard his side yet.
He's already in custody; he turned himself in in the UK.
I guess that's what happens when you get INTERPOL set upon you for the crime of having consensual sex with groupies without a condom. Groupies who remained supportive after their sexual trysts until they found out that he was sleeping around. Because that's the sort of stuff INTERPOL is there for, right? Certainly politics didn't play a role in THAT warrant...
Actually, the real story of Denver's baggage handling system was that poor design and insufficient technology can kill a good idea. Here's a good retrospective analysis of the situation. The actual design of the system was done as an afterthought, in restricted geometry, unrealistic timeframe, and unrealistic budget, without any kind of meaningful backup system. Just learning how to manage the queues right is something that should have had a pilot study before design was even begun. Also, due to the then-high cost of RFID tags, individual bags were tagged with bar codes, and only the carts were RFID tagged. While RFID-reading of the bags would have been easy, bar-code reading of them was a disaster. And lastly, they simply scaled up way too fast from existing systems. All of the Denver components previously existed and were used elsewhere, but Denver greatly increased the speed and throughput, directly interlinked everything, and without a backup, every snag held everything else up. And without a study on how to deal with these contingencies, the whole system was a disaster.
There are many lessons to be learned from Denver, but "central control = bad" is not one of them. The main lessons are "don't rush or underfund leaps in technology" and "walk before you run."
The reason commercial ships don't use nuclear power is because nuclear powered ships cost an utter fortune to build, operate, and maintain. Even the military only uses nuclear power for a small subset of it's craft. When the US military thinks a propulsion system is too expensive, it's too freaking expensive.
As for pollution accumulating in sea life: we're talking about carbon particulate matter and sulfur dioxide. How exactly are these dangerous bioaccumulative toxins?
No, it's "as much as 25%" of the particulate matter in LA, only on certain days (when strong sea breezes keep LA's own pollution from accumulating), and only according to one study in the Journal of American Geophysical Research. The overwhelming majority of China's PM is lost at sea. The SOx doesn't make it much beyond Japan.
Shipping lanes do not follow ocean currents. Even old *sail* ships generally didn't do that. Surface currents are too weak to matter for the most part. Even the (narrow) gulf stream rarely exceeds 2 m/s at the surface.
Speed is irrelevant in a discussion of efficiency.
Trans must follow tracks, which are anything but straight lines across the country. There are no mountains in the ocean.
Trains *do* have to stop even when they don't need to pick up or drop off goods, or fuel. Examples include right of way issues. Anyone who's ridden a train cross-country can tell you that trains do not maintain a constant speed. There's lots of accel and decel.
"Shipping lanes" are just the direct path between ports that trade a lot with each other, and hence, which happen to have a lot of shipping traffic that follows the same path. No, ocean currents play little role; for the most part, ships follow Great Circle paths:
Now pay close attention to the scale at the bottom. Even the stuff in green has 1/20th the photosynthetic activity as the stuff in red. Note how tiny of an area is in red.
Most of the world's oceans are *extremely* poor in life. The limiting factor for photosynthesis in most of the world's oceans is not light or CO2, but iron. Iron sinks in aggregate and is poorly soluble.
Did you miss where I mentioned that cargo ships are the most efficient way to move mass per gallon? you're free to cross-reference that if you doubt me. The US rail average is 436 ton-miles per gallon.
This whole thing is so distorted. The REASON that we don't mandate these ships use strong pollution controls or clean fuels is specifically because pollution is part quantity, part location. If there's nobody to breathe a pollutant before it degrades, it's not hurting anyone. Car exhaust is released at ground level in populated areas.
In terms of fuel consumed and CO2 released, ship pollution from transporting a car (and all of its component parts) is a small fraction of the fuel consumed and CO2 released in the vehicle's lifespan. Cargo ships are the most efficient way, from a fuel and CO2 perspective, to move a given mass of freight (even more than trains), at nearly 500 miles per gallon per ton. You can haul your average car from Tokyo to LA using under 20 gallons of fuel. Now, there's going to be all sorts of soot and sulfur released from that fuel because the regulations are so lax -- but who's it going to hurt in the middle of the Pacific's vast nutrient-devoid dead zones? You're probably doing more to fertilize them than hurt them.
The actual pollution problems, BTW, are when the ships show up in port. The "last leg" of travel causes the vast majority of their health consequences, and there's a lot of work underway to clean it up.
And that it is *illegal* to throw NiMH batteries in with municipal waste (at least in the US).
2. I don't know where that quote on the second part of your post came from, but this is a discussion of *EVs*, not *Hybrids*. In particular, the article is about the new RAV4 EV (li-ion), and the GP mentioned the Volt (li-ion). EVs use li-ion; old-school hybrids use NiMH (next-gen hybrids are going to be on li-ion as well).
Slashdot Mirror
No, they're describing fusion, period. Traditional hot fusion is a particular subset of that, in which the method to combine the nuclei (not atoms) involves heating them up to great temperatures in a maxwellian plasma, so that the nuclei with the highest energies (far higher than the average energy of the plasma) can fuse. There are also some less pursued hot fusion methods involving non-maxwellian plasmas.
Cold fusion is fusion in which there is no bulk plasma at all (although in some approaches it is theorized to exist at extremely small scales). More often, the idea is that you use an alternative method to overcome or reduce the coulomb barrier. For example, one hypothesized method of cold fusion is that under certain conditions, electrons are "dressed" with extra mass by quasiparticles (such as phonons), leading them to act like muons and catalyze fusion events by dramatically reducing the covalent bond length.
Just because there is no definitive explanation for a phenomenon doesn't mean that it does not exist. We still don't have a complete, definitive explanation for high temperature superconductivity, but there's no doubt that it exists -- and there are a number of competing theories. There are lots of competing theories for how cold fusion would work which cannot be ruled out at this time -- many of them no more exotic than our theories of high temperature superconductivity (or even the accepted mechanism behind low-temperature superconductivity). At the same time, the evidence is subject to many different interpretations. The DOE's viewpoint on the subject is that research should continue to explain the anomalies, but no major projects should be launched.
Plus, unlike Reeves, if Val Kilmer is trapped in a cardboard box, he can at least act his way out of it.
Copper would be one of the easiest contaminants to get in such a system, since copper wiring, heat exchangers, and so forth are so common. Copper is also a common contaminant in impure metals, and even tap water (due to copper pipes).
And has any third party actually evaluated their copper-generation claims? We know that they haven't passed peer review.
How do you arrive at that conclusion? The extra proton comes from the hydrogen. One less water proton -> one proton heavier isotope. Although that does raise the question as to what source nickel isotope(s) they're using, since the most abundant nickel isotope is Ni-58, and Cu-59 only has a half-life of 81.5 seconds. The only persistent copper would come from Ni-62 (3.5%) and Ni-64 (0.9%). Most of the nickel would form transient copper isotopes which would then spawn decay chains (I seem to have lost my nucleonica account at the moment, or I'd check to see the net result).
In general: I'm not about to declare "Cold Fusion Is Impossible!", but I think these people are a long way from passing the burden of proof.
I think they're just jealous that he's a 39-year-old computer geek who gets to live like a rock star and alter the course of world history while they're stuck working on accounting software for Initech. ;)
Since when have the qualities "intelligent", "mysterious", "famous", and "risk-taking" generally been things only "desperate" women are attracted to?
bragging about your "neuroscience background" as if that were a chick magnet is
What's wrong with wanting to date someone who's intelligent?
Except that it's Sephiroth-white. :)
Statutory literally means "pertaining to law". Aka, it's rape only in the eyes of the law, not in the conventional sense of the word.
I've known many people who've been raped. *Actual* rape, not "Now that we're done, let me take you out for breakfast and not decide anything's wrong until I learn that you've been sleeping around" rape. We're talking a knife in one case, drugs in another, force in several, the implicit threat of force in others.
If any of them had even mentioned the possibility of INTERPOL getting involved, they would have been laughed at.
There's no such thing as "consensual rape". That's a contradiction in terms. If it's consensual, it's not rape.
So, please describe to me how her showing up to specifically hit on him all day until he finally starts responding, then inviting him over and, condom or not, being so comfortable with him afterwards that she took him out for breakfast the next day and bought him is ticket -- sounds like rape to you. Was it the part where she only went to the police after learning that he had been sleeping around? Or the part where the only reason she went to the police was to force him to get an STD test?
And this is from *her* affidavit; we haven't even heard his side yet.
He's already in custody; he turned himself in in the UK.
I guess that's what happens when you get INTERPOL set upon you for the crime of having consensual sex with groupies without a condom. Groupies who remained supportive after their sexual trysts until they found out that he was sleeping around. Because that's the sort of stuff INTERPOL is there for, right? Certainly politics didn't play a role in THAT warrant...
Actually, the real story of Denver's baggage handling system was that poor design and insufficient technology can kill a good idea. Here's a good retrospective analysis of the situation. The actual design of the system was done as an afterthought, in restricted geometry, unrealistic timeframe, and unrealistic budget, without any kind of meaningful backup system. Just learning how to manage the queues right is something that should have had a pilot study before design was even begun. Also, due to the then-high cost of RFID tags, individual bags were tagged with bar codes, and only the carts were RFID tagged. While RFID-reading of the bags would have been easy, bar-code reading of them was a disaster. And lastly, they simply scaled up way too fast from existing systems. All of the Denver components previously existed and were used elsewhere, but Denver greatly increased the speed and throughput, directly interlinked everything, and without a backup, every snag held everything else up. And without a study on how to deal with these contingencies, the whole system was a disaster.
There are many lessons to be learned from Denver, but "central control = bad" is not one of them. The main lessons are "don't rush or underfund leaps in technology" and "walk before you run."
The reason commercial ships don't use nuclear power is because nuclear powered ships cost an utter fortune to build, operate, and maintain. Even the military only uses nuclear power for a small subset of it's craft. When the US military thinks a propulsion system is too expensive, it's too freaking expensive.
As for pollution accumulating in sea life: we're talking about carbon particulate matter and sulfur dioxide. How exactly are these dangerous bioaccumulative toxins?
No, it's "as much as 25%" of the particulate matter in LA, only on certain days (when strong sea breezes keep LA's own pollution from accumulating), and only according to one study in the Journal of American Geophysical Research. The overwhelming majority of China's PM is lost at sea. The SOx doesn't make it much beyond Japan.
Shipping lanes do not follow ocean currents. Even old *sail* ships generally didn't do that. Surface currents are too weak to matter for the most part. Even the (narrow) gulf stream rarely exceeds 2 m/s at the surface.
Speed is irrelevant in a discussion of efficiency.
Trans must follow tracks, which are anything but straight lines across the country. There are no mountains in the ocean.
Trains *do* have to stop even when they don't need to pick up or drop off goods, or fuel. Examples include right of way issues. Anyone who's ridden a train cross-country can tell you that trains do not maintain a constant speed. There's lots of accel and decel.
"Shipping lanes" are just the direct path between ports that trade a lot with each other, and hence, which happen to have a lot of shipping traffic that follows the same path. No, ocean currents play little role; for the most part, ships follow Great Circle paths:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/06/images/070628-human-footprint_big.jpg
Chlorophyll map of the world's oceans.
Now pay close attention to the scale at the bottom. Even the stuff in green has 1/20th the photosynthetic activity as the stuff in red. Note how tiny of an area is in red.
Most of the world's oceans are *extremely* poor in life. The limiting factor for photosynthesis in most of the world's oceans is not light or CO2, but iron. Iron sinks in aggregate and is poorly soluble.
Did you miss where I mentioned that cargo ships are the most efficient way to move mass per gallon? you're free to cross-reference that if you doubt me. The US rail average is 436 ton-miles per gallon.
The US average for rail freight is 436 ton-miles per gallon.
http://www.factcheck.org/askfactcheck/can_a_freight_train_really_move_a.html
Plus, trains don't go in straight lines from the source to the destination, and have to make intermediary stops. Not true with ships.
Aargh, I hate this new Slashdot form. Didn't notice that this was a reply to a hidden comment, not mine. My sincere apologies.
Why did you invert what I wrote? Or do you not know the meaning of the word "devoid"?
This whole thing is so distorted. The REASON that we don't mandate these ships use strong pollution controls or clean fuels is specifically because pollution is part quantity, part location. If there's nobody to breathe a pollutant before it degrades, it's not hurting anyone. Car exhaust is released at ground level in populated areas.
In terms of fuel consumed and CO2 released, ship pollution from transporting a car (and all of its component parts) is a small fraction of the fuel consumed and CO2 released in the vehicle's lifespan. Cargo ships are the most efficient way, from a fuel and CO2 perspective, to move a given mass of freight (even more than trains), at nearly 500 miles per gallon per ton. You can haul your average car from Tokyo to LA using under 20 gallons of fuel. Now, there's going to be all sorts of soot and sulfur released from that fuel because the regulations are so lax -- but who's it going to hurt in the middle of the Pacific's vast nutrient-devoid dead zones? You're probably doing more to fertilize them than hurt them.
The actual pollution problems, BTW, are when the ships show up in port. The "last leg" of travel causes the vast majority of their health consequences, and there's a lot of work underway to clean it up.
1. Apparently you're not aware that nickel is toxic:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nickel#Toxicity
And that it is *illegal* to throw NiMH batteries in with municipal waste (at least in the US).
2. I don't know where that quote on the second part of your post came from, but this is a discussion of *EVs*, not *Hybrids*. In particular, the article is about the new RAV4 EV (li-ion), and the GP mentioned the Volt (li-ion). EVs use li-ion; old-school hybrids use NiMH (next-gen hybrids are going to be on li-ion as well).