Exactly. Burning oil is one of the most expensive ways to make electricity.
Also, I don't know if anyone else was irked by this, but nuclear batteries do not have "power densities a million times as high as standard batteries". They have *energy* densities a million times as high as standard batteries. It's shameful that someone posting articles on Slashdot doesn't know the difference.
* The ArcadeFire is an indie rock band based in Montreal, Quebec, Canada and fronted by the husband and wife duo of Win Butler and Régine Chassagne. * Fire is the rapid oxidation of a combustible material releasing heat, light, and various reaction products such as carbon dioxide and water. * "Fire" is a song written and originally recorded by Jimi Hendrix and released on the 1967 Are You Experienced album by The Jimi Hendrix Experience.
I think it speaks volumes that so many people saw joining a revolution led by hardcore fundamentalists as being a better approach than living under the Shah.;) And many if not most of that older generation are the big backers of the fundamentalist regime; it's the younger generation that's more reform-minded, the ones who never lived under the Shah.
The reality is that Iran's government was somewhat similar to the British system, wherein the monarch technically has the power to dismiss a head of state, but could never realistically use it. The Shah, like the British Queen, had denigrated to little more than a figurehead. What the US did was basically the equivalent of backing the Queen of England in seizing power via extensive supplies of weapons and training to royalists. You think the British would hate us for doing something like that? You better as hell believe they would. And the Iranians are no different.
Prior to the Iranian revolution the two countries had friendly relations.
You mean during their US-sponsored leadership, practically a puppet government, that overthrew their democratically-elected prime minster, Mohammed Mosaddeq? Led by Shah Reza Pahlevi, whose brutal secret police (SAVAK) were trained by the Mossad? And, again, who overthrew Mossadeq who, despite being secular, was distinctly no fan of Israel?
I don't know how you can possibly treat the Pahlevi regime as a *good* thing. They were despised by their own people so much that the people risked death to revolt en masse in conditions almost never seen in a revolution (none of the typical causes, rapid speed, immense popularity of the revolution, and the defeat of a lavishly financed and well trained domestic military apparatus). Our support of that government is a massive black eye for us in that region, and especially in Iran.
We in the West are morally justified in destroying the nuclear-weapons facilities.
To quote Arundhati Roy, "Why then, any nuclear power is justified in launching a preemptive strike against another."
Let me go ahead and write what I expect at least one person will respond: "But.. Iran is different. They're *evil*!" Well, that's what a lot people think about us, too, so that's a reversible argument.
As for Vietnam, they don't have an arch-enemy with 100-400 nuclear weapon-tipped missiles aimed at them.
That was years ago. Both are under different management now. GM is now resurrecting the electric car (at least, plug-in hybrids) and is making a huge push for EVs and EV infrastructure. Honda is taking every opportunity they can to dis EVs in every way imagineable in the press. They're big hydrogen backers. Due to a lack of progress on hydrogen, they finally (after years of refusing to) introduced plans to make an electric vehicle -- but not until 2015 (way behind pretty much everyone else but Audi). The California emissions requirements pretty much forced their hand.
Back in the early '00s, GM led the charge against EVs, and was probably the most anti-EV of the major automakers. They've completely reversed course since then. As of a year or so ago, the order of most anti-EV among the big automakers was probably Honda->Audi->Toyota. Now it's more like Audi->Honda->Toyota.
What I find funny about all this is that Honda, the biggest, most anti-electric-vehicle automaker out there, may just have given electric vehicles the best gift they could have asked for. Not in terms of batteries, but in terms of nanotube-composite charging cables. Optimal metallic nanotubes have a resistivity a tiny fraction that of copper; they're practically room temperature superconductors, in terms of resistance. And it's directional, too -- the current flows readily down the length of the tubes, but poorly from side to side. I've seen varying numbers, and I think it depends on the types of tubes and their application, but this article says that CNTs on microchips can carry 1,000 times the current density of copper and silver. Now, you won't get that extreme level in a composite, but those are still amazing numbers to have as a starting point.
In short, they're perfect for the ideal super-high-power charging cable. Far thinner, lighter, and less cooling needed for a given power output. You could probably have a cable off that monster 800kW charger Aerovironment made for TARDEC be light enough for a six year old to handle.
Obviously, the ultra-high-power chargers still need the typical battery buffer so that they don't strain the grid, but if metallic CNT cables hit the market, there will be some serious current flowing with a much lower charger size and cost.:)
Since when do laser-carved filament incandescents make the same light as 15W CFLs? A 15W CFL has the same lumen output as a traditional 60W incandescent.
This page says that the laser treatment boosted a 60W bulb to the output of a 100W bulb. Hardly the 3x increase you claim. And they say it's not ready for commercialization (for one, I have to wonder how long that nanostructured surface that gives the greater efficiency will last through hours of operation)
Every new house is required to be wired for smoke detectors.
Perhaps every new house, but mine certainly isn't. I have to change the 9-volts regularly.
Honestly, I can only think of one application where not needing a power cord for a 50cm distance is all that helpful:
Take a walk through your house some time, and look at every last little gadget in the house, and count how many batteries (replaceable or rechargeable, embedded or removable) you find. I bet you'll be surprised.
a "charging pad" to recharge your mobile devices by just setting it on the pad, without having to mess with wires and connectors. However, I don't think this is likely to happen for a long, long time
Huh? That'salreadyhere. And inductive charging has been used in electric toothbrushes for ages. The difference for this is that you actually have range.
To put it in programming terms, yes, the losses are O(N^2). But that says nothing about lower-order factors.
The whole point of resonant coupling are that you greatly extend the distance at which your losses occur. They still fall off by the same scale, but at a much greater distance. Think of it akin to broadcasting microwaves with a non-directional antenna versus a parabolic dish. Only in this case, you don't have to "aim".
75% efficiency is perfectly acceptable for low power devices. Making and shipping alkaline batteries repeatedly, or relying on rechargeable NiMH batteries that often leak more energy than gets used in the device, is certainly far more wasteful. So using this sort of tech to power those kinds of devices (clocks, smoke alarms, stick-on lights, etc) sounds quite reasonable. I'd certainly buy a $20 device that meant I never had to change a smoke alarm or clock battery again. In fact, 75% efficiency means it'd probably be a about breakeven powering a NiMH Roomba or Scooba versus charging their packs (in addition to leaking, NiMH isn't a very efficient charger). So you could have your home robotics never leak charge or have to waste energy charging, and never have battery packs need to be replaced, as well as the obvious "no limit on how long they can run for before needing to go back to dock".
They're going to have to significantly improve on the range, though. 1 1/2 feet isn't much at all.
Another interesting possibility would be to have a pocket-sized device powered by a li-ion battery pack. Carry it on your person and all of your portable gismos -- cameras, flashlights, cell phones, etc -- stay charged. When you get back home or to your hotel room, you plug it in to charge it. They wouldn't need as much range improvement, but they would need to make it a lot smaller than 40cm across (unless it'd be something you carry in a backpack).
Certainly you don't want 75% efficiency running TVs or charging electric cars (unless you can do it on the road, for long trip range extending -- but then you'd need some *serious* range!). But for battery-powered devices, that's fine.
Why are you talking about binding energies? They said the surface of the planet on the hot side is lava. There's minimal binding going on, apart from the occasional suspended crystal.
2600K is hot enough to (on its own) outright boil helium, hydrogen, neon, nitrogen, fluorine, argon, oxygen, krypton, xenon, radon, chlorine, bromine, iodine, phosphorus, astatine, mercury, sulfur, arsenic, cesium, francium, selenium, rubidium, potassium, cadmium, sodium, zinc, polonium, tellurium, magnesium, ytterbium, lithium, strontium, thallium, calcium, radium, bismuth, antimony, europium, lead, samarium, barium, thulium, manganese, indium, silver, and tin. Add an extra 500 degrees for the occasional hot spot (which there almost certainly will be) and you also boil silicon, gallium, aluminum, dysprosium, copper, americium, chromium, holmium, nickel, iron, gold, germanium, scandium, erbium, cobalt, palladium, beryllium, terbium, and neodymium . And even what you can't boil outright, you can still vaporize due to the unevenness of individual particle energies (similar to how ice can still sublime at far below freezing). And some things that you may not be able to vaporize directly, such as carbon, may burn with the liberated oxygen, and some of the oxides will have lower boiling points than their raw elements (such as CO2 vs. carbon).
Google "lithium counterpoint". You cannot realistically exhaust something that you can extract from seawater at a price point acceptable to the market.
With the rain of pebbles it might never form a hard crust but instead be a ball of semi-loose material with a liquid core.
On the surface it'd be loose, sure, but they'll compact under their own weight, the increasing temperature, and increasing pressure further down. Nature abhors a vacuum.
On the other hand... I wouldn't be surprised if this greatly aided getting trapped gasses into the magma from the subsiding crust. I'd expect the oxygen to just re-incorporate into the rock, but any other gasses present (say, nitrogen, argon, CO, CO2, etc) could make for pretty violent eruptions.
In the desert we get virga, when the condensate never hits the ground because it re-evaporates... I wonder if this might happen on COROT-7b.
Probably on the hot side and in the transition zones. There'd be nothing to re-evaporate it on the cool side, though.
Also, you might get some fractional distillation going with different minerals settling out at different temperatures (i.e. altitudes).
You probably would. Which would lead to a different regional distribution of their "precipitation". The surface deposits on this planet would be truly fascinating.
Ok, so that covers the case of "o, I forgot to charge". But what about the "really long road trip" case?
Any of the following:
Without any new tech or infrastructure:
1. Plug-in hybrid electric vehicle 2. Range-extending trailer, such as the Long Ranger, which can be: 2a: Owned 2b: Rented 2c: Part of a range-extending trailer sharing co-op, like car co-ops 3. Second car 4. Rent a car (for only a couple times a year, that's not much). 5. Drive to the train station or airport, then take the train or airplane.
With new infrastructure or technology:
1. Advanced batteries that can go the entire length of the trip, then allow you to recharge overnight while you sleep. 2. Rapid charging (not "upcoming tech" -- we just need an infrastructure; the tech is here now) 3. Battery swapping (like #2)
> And a lot of places offer their power for free, as a loss leader.
Do you think they'll continue to do so, when everybody will have a car like this?
That's what a loss leader is. You give up a small amount of money in order to earn a larger amount of money. For example, giving up 50 cents of electricity so someone will likely buy $50 worth of groceries at your store instead of somewhere else.
What's wrong with something like the AC Propulsion Long Ranger? You wouldn't even have to own one; something like that readily lends itself to low-cost rental or sharing.
yeah right, its going to be REAL PRACTICAL to put 500 mile range into a battery pack. the gasoline nozzle pumps 3 MEGAWATTS of energy into your gas tank in 2 minutes.
Megawatts are not a measure of energy, and you can't pump in "X megawatts per Y minutes".
Oh, and FYI, Aerovironment already makes a 800kW battery charger. Now, you need a battery bank to buffer between that and the grid of course, but in terms of supplying the power, it's already been done.
Slashdot Mirror
Exactly. Burning oil is one of the most expensive ways to make electricity.
Also, I don't know if anyone else was irked by this, but nuclear batteries do not have "power densities a million times as high as standard batteries". They have *energy* densities a million times as high as standard batteries. It's shameful that someone posting articles on Slashdot doesn't know the difference.
Yours would strike? Ha! 80% of my Scooba's work is mopping up bird poop. ;) We don't use newspaper, just a washing-safe plastic surface.
It would explain why my Roomba keeps saying, "DEATH TO OUR HUMAN OPPRESSORS!"
Good point. And on that front, we all know that "The Cake is a Lie!" was really commentary on the Valerie Plame yellowcake scandal.
The full list of Microsoft Arcade games:
* The ArcadeFire is an indie rock band based in Montreal, Quebec, Canada and fronted by the husband and wife duo of Win Butler and Régine Chassagne.
* Fire is the rapid oxidation of a combustible material releasing heat, light, and various reaction products such as carbon dioxide and water.
* "Fire" is a song written and originally recorded by Jimi Hendrix and released on the 1967 Are You Experienced album by The Jimi Hendrix Experience.
BING!
(God, I hate those commercials....)
I think it speaks volumes that so many people saw joining a revolution led by hardcore fundamentalists as being a better approach than living under the Shah. ;) And many if not most of that older generation are the big backers of the fundamentalist regime; it's the younger generation that's more reform-minded, the ones who never lived under the Shah.
Nice coup apologist there.
The reality is that Iran's government was somewhat similar to the British system, wherein the monarch technically has the power to dismiss a head of state, but could never realistically use it. The Shah, like the British Queen, had denigrated to little more than a figurehead. What the US did was basically the equivalent of backing the Queen of England in seizing power via extensive supplies of weapons and training to royalists. You think the British would hate us for doing something like that? You better as hell believe they would. And the Iranians are no different.
Then what exactly is the relevance of bringing up what a veritable puppet government thought of Israel?
Prior to the Iranian revolution the two countries had friendly relations.
You mean during their US-sponsored leadership, practically a puppet government, that overthrew their democratically-elected prime minster, Mohammed Mosaddeq? Led by Shah Reza Pahlevi, whose brutal secret police (SAVAK) were trained by the Mossad? And, again, who overthrew Mossadeq who, despite being secular, was distinctly no fan of Israel?
I don't know how you can possibly treat the Pahlevi regime as a *good* thing. They were despised by their own people so much that the people risked death to revolt en masse in conditions almost never seen in a revolution (none of the typical causes, rapid speed, immense popularity of the revolution, and the defeat of a lavishly financed and well trained domestic military apparatus). Our support of that government is a massive black eye for us in that region, and especially in Iran.
We in the West are morally justified in destroying the nuclear-weapons facilities.
To quote Arundhati Roy, "Why then, any nuclear power is justified in launching a preemptive strike against another."
Let me go ahead and write what I expect at least one person will respond: "But.. Iran is different. They're *evil*!" Well, that's what a lot people think about us, too, so that's a reversible argument.
As for Vietnam, they don't have an arch-enemy with 100-400 nuclear weapon-tipped missiles aimed at them.
That was years ago. Both are under different management now. GM is now resurrecting the electric car (at least, plug-in hybrids) and is making a huge push for EVs and EV infrastructure. Honda is taking every opportunity they can to dis EVs in every way imagineable in the press. They're big hydrogen backers. Due to a lack of progress on hydrogen, they finally (after years of refusing to) introduced plans to make an electric vehicle -- but not until 2015 (way behind pretty much everyone else but Audi). The California emissions requirements pretty much forced their hand.
Back in the early '00s, GM led the charge against EVs, and was probably the most anti-EV of the major automakers. They've completely reversed course since then. As of a year or so ago, the order of most anti-EV among the big automakers was probably Honda->Audi->Toyota. Now it's more like Audi->Honda->Toyota.
What I find funny about all this is that Honda, the biggest, most anti-electric-vehicle automaker out there, may just have given electric vehicles the best gift they could have asked for. Not in terms of batteries, but in terms of nanotube-composite charging cables. Optimal metallic nanotubes have a resistivity a tiny fraction that of copper; they're practically room temperature superconductors, in terms of resistance. And it's directional, too -- the current flows readily down the length of the tubes, but poorly from side to side. I've seen varying numbers, and I think it depends on the types of tubes and their application, but this article says that CNTs on microchips can carry 1,000 times the current density of copper and silver. Now, you won't get that extreme level in a composite, but those are still amazing numbers to have as a starting point.
In short, they're perfect for the ideal super-high-power charging cable. Far thinner, lighter, and less cooling needed for a given power output. You could probably have a cable off that monster 800kW charger Aerovironment made for TARDEC be light enough for a six year old to handle.
Obviously, the ultra-high-power chargers still need the typical battery buffer so that they don't strain the grid, but if metallic CNT cables hit the market, there will be some serious current flowing with a much lower charger size and cost. :)
Since when do laser-carved filament incandescents make the same light as 15W CFLs? A 15W CFL has the same lumen output as a traditional 60W incandescent.
This page says that the laser treatment boosted a 60W bulb to the output of a 100W bulb. Hardly the 3x increase you claim. And they say it's not ready for commercialization (for one, I have to wonder how long that nanostructured surface that gives the greater efficiency will last through hours of operation)
Every new house is required to be wired for smoke detectors.
Perhaps every new house, but mine certainly isn't. I have to change the 9-volts regularly.
Honestly, I can only think of one application where not needing a power cord for a 50cm distance is all that helpful:
Take a walk through your house some time, and look at every last little gadget in the house, and count how many batteries (replaceable or rechargeable, embedded or removable) you find. I bet you'll be surprised.
a "charging pad" to recharge your mobile devices by just setting it on the pad, without having to mess with wires and connectors. However, I don't think this is likely to happen for a long, long time
Huh? That's already here. And inductive charging has been used in electric toothbrushes for ages. The difference for this is that you actually have range.
To put it in programming terms, yes, the losses are O(N^2). But that says nothing about lower-order factors.
The whole point of resonant coupling are that you greatly extend the distance at which your losses occur. They still fall off by the same scale, but at a much greater distance. Think of it akin to broadcasting microwaves with a non-directional antenna versus a parabolic dish. Only in this case, you don't have to "aim".
75% efficiency is perfectly acceptable for low power devices. Making and shipping alkaline batteries repeatedly, or relying on rechargeable NiMH batteries that often leak more energy than gets used in the device, is certainly far more wasteful. So using this sort of tech to power those kinds of devices (clocks, smoke alarms, stick-on lights, etc) sounds quite reasonable. I'd certainly buy a $20 device that meant I never had to change a smoke alarm or clock battery again. In fact, 75% efficiency means it'd probably be a about breakeven powering a NiMH Roomba or Scooba versus charging their packs (in addition to leaking, NiMH isn't a very efficient charger). So you could have your home robotics never leak charge or have to waste energy charging, and never have battery packs need to be replaced, as well as the obvious "no limit on how long they can run for before needing to go back to dock".
They're going to have to significantly improve on the range, though. 1 1/2 feet isn't much at all.
Another interesting possibility would be to have a pocket-sized device powered by a li-ion battery pack. Carry it on your person and all of your portable gismos -- cameras, flashlights, cell phones, etc -- stay charged. When you get back home or to your hotel room, you plug it in to charge it. They wouldn't need as much range improvement, but they would need to make it a lot smaller than 40cm across (unless it'd be something you carry in a backpack).
Certainly you don't want 75% efficiency running TVs or charging electric cars (unless you can do it on the road, for long trip range extending -- but then you'd need some *serious* range!). But for battery-powered devices, that's fine.
Why are you talking about binding energies? They said the surface of the planet on the hot side is lava. There's minimal binding going on, apart from the occasional suspended crystal.
2600K is hot enough to (on its own) outright boil helium, hydrogen, neon, nitrogen, fluorine, argon, oxygen, krypton, xenon, radon, chlorine, bromine, iodine, phosphorus, astatine, mercury, sulfur, arsenic, cesium, francium, selenium, rubidium, potassium, cadmium, sodium, zinc, polonium, tellurium, magnesium, ytterbium, lithium, strontium, thallium, calcium, radium, bismuth, antimony, europium, lead, samarium, barium, thulium, manganese, indium, silver, and tin. Add an extra 500 degrees for the occasional hot spot (which there almost certainly will be) and you also boil silicon, gallium, aluminum, dysprosium, copper, americium, chromium, holmium, nickel, iron, gold, germanium, scandium, erbium, cobalt, palladium, beryllium, terbium, and neodymium . And even what you can't boil outright, you can still vaporize due to the unevenness of individual particle energies (similar to how ice can still sublime at far below freezing). And some things that you may not be able to vaporize directly, such as carbon, may burn with the liberated oxygen, and some of the oxides will have lower boiling points than their raw elements (such as CO2 vs. carbon).
Google "lithium counterpoint". You cannot realistically exhaust something that you can extract from seawater at a price point acceptable to the market.
With the rain of pebbles it might never form a hard crust but instead be a ball of semi-loose material with a liquid core.
On the surface it'd be loose, sure, but they'll compact under their own weight, the increasing temperature, and increasing pressure further down. Nature abhors a vacuum.
On the other hand... I wouldn't be surprised if this greatly aided getting trapped gasses into the magma from the subsiding crust. I'd expect the oxygen to just re-incorporate into the rock, but any other gasses present (say, nitrogen, argon, CO, CO2, etc) could make for pretty violent eruptions.
In the desert we get virga, when the condensate never hits the ground because it re-evaporates... I wonder if this might happen on COROT-7b.
Probably on the hot side and in the transition zones. There'd be nothing to re-evaporate it on the cool side, though.
Also, you might get some fractional distillation going with different minerals settling out at different temperatures (i.e. altitudes).
You probably would. Which would lead to a different regional distribution of their "precipitation". The surface deposits on this planet would be truly fascinating.
Hey, breathing through a mask is better than not breathing. :)
Ok, so that covers the case of "o, I forgot to charge". But what about the "really long road trip" case?
Any of the following:
Without any new tech or infrastructure:
1. Plug-in hybrid electric vehicle
2. Range-extending trailer, such as the Long Ranger, which can be:
2a: Owned
2b: Rented
2c: Part of a range-extending trailer sharing co-op, like car co-ops
3. Second car
4. Rent a car (for only a couple times a year, that's not much).
5. Drive to the train station or airport, then take the train or airplane.
With new infrastructure or technology:
1. Advanced batteries that can go the entire length of the trip, then allow you to recharge overnight while you sleep.
2. Rapid charging (not "upcoming tech" -- we just need an infrastructure; the tech is here now)
3. Battery swapping (like #2)
> And a lot of places offer their power for free, as a loss leader.
Do you think they'll continue to do so, when everybody will have a car like this?
That's what a loss leader is. You give up a small amount of money in order to earn a larger amount of money. For example, giving up 50 cents of electricity so someone will likely buy $50 worth of groceries at your store instead of somewhere else.
Iron doesn't stay gasseous at 50K.
What's wrong with something like the AC Propulsion Long Ranger? You wouldn't even have to own one; something like that readily lends itself to low-cost rental or sharing.
yeah right, its going to be REAL PRACTICAL to put 500 mile range into a battery pack. the gasoline nozzle pumps 3 MEGAWATTS of energy into your gas tank in 2 minutes.
Megawatts are not a measure of energy, and you can't pump in "X megawatts per Y minutes".
Oh, and FYI, Aerovironment already makes a 800kW battery charger. Now, you need a battery bank to buffer between that and the grid of course, but in terms of supplying the power, it's already been done.