I'd call it "reckless endangerment", not quite as severe as attempted murder but still a serious felony. Its doing something that a reasonable person would realize places others at risk of harm or death, even if that wasn't the intent.
Glass fibers darken too - enough that we can't use very long (multi-kilometer) lengths in the SLAC accelerators where the expected doses are much lower. . The problem is that even a very small amount of darkening adds up over the length of the fiber.
Fiber optics goes black very quickly in high radiation.
Getting the extremely radioactive and hot fuel onto a train would be rather tricky.
Burying in cement is not a bad idea, but they probably need to make sure that the radioactivity isn't generating so much heat that it would melt its way out of an enclosure.
Difficult because the hot side temperature needs to be very hot, but not crazy. The ability to use standard silicon would vastly reduce the circuit size, and maybe power consumption.
If pumps and motors can work at Venusian temperatures, then a cooler would not be all that difficult. Motors are probably needed for the lander to do useful stuff anyway.
A TEC cooler would be better, but I'm not aware of any thermometric materials that can work at that temperature. There might be a trick using a ferromagnetic material with the right Curie temperature.
The high temperature semiconductors are also a reasonable approach and a nice technology for other applications as well.
Agreed. Hovering requires thrust > weight. Power goes as mass/time * velocity^2, while thrust goes as mass/times * velocity. So to have efficient thrust for lift you need to move a lot of air slowly, not a little air quickly. This is why helicopters have enormous swept disk areas. Any design that uses less area will be less efficient than a helicopter - already a very inefficient device.
Less efficiency means less range (already a problem with an electric), heavier motors and batteries, AND more noise and down-wash damage.
Tilt rotor sounds great, but adds a lot of additional weight and complexity on an already very marginal system. It allows high cruise speeds, but it takes time to climb and accelerate / decelerate, while navigating crowded airspace. Cruise speed tends to be an issue mostly on much longer trips than 50 miles.
So, how is this better than a single person helicopter?
Then, even if it works, where can it be used? No way noise ordinances will let someone use it from their back yard or city street At least in the US aircraft need to carry a half hour of spare fuel for safety. There are air traffic control issues if there are more than a few of these.
I just don't see a use case that wouldn't be better served with a conventional (but autopilot controlled) helicopter.
Looks like marketing silliness to me. I'll believe it when I see a working prototype
Airbus knows how to make things fly, but that doesn't mean that there are not groups at Airbus that are clueless. NASA knows about conservation of momentum but has a group working on what is essentially an inertialess drive.
The 3d image shows a vehicle with small ducted fans for lift, and minimal aerodynamic lifting surfaces.
Helicopters use very large blades because (for very basic physics: momentum goes as MV, power goes as MV^2) it is more efficient to move a lot of air slowly than a little air quickly. So it will need more power than a helicopter which will make it less efficient, noisier, and the down-wash will be more damaging.
There may be a few applications where the lack of exposed blades will help, but not many. Even if the blades are enclosed, the very high power downwash will prevent landings near anything even slightly fragile.
Helicopters look the way that they do because that is the best design.
Small quad-copters make sense in applications where efficiency and noise are not critical.
Self flying is great, but that technology is mostly available now anyway
I've been involved in a number of government funded projects where the process was:
Government: we need a *thing*, as cheap as you can. Vendor1: OK, we can build your *think* for X dollars. Government: X is too much, we can only fund it if its X/2.
Now there are two choices. IF Vendor 1 responds with "OK X/2 it is", Vendor 1 gets X/2 dollars, then later get an additional X/2 to finish the project OR IF Vendor 1 responds with "Sorry, X is the cheapest we can do", then Vendor 2 will respond with "We can do it for X/2". Vendor 2 gets X/2 dollars, then later get an additional X/2 to finish the project
Many of these projects take so long that the people who budgeted and approved them, both in the government and at the vendor have moved to other jobs before the inevitable overruns become apparent.
The specific suggestions in the previous email are valid.
There are also possibilities of blackmail if they learn something about the soldiers. Then there is just the tactical value of having more information about the enemy - having the cells suddenly turn off might be in indication of an impending operation.
Netflix seems surprised people are not dropping the DVD service, but a lot of content is NOT AVAILABLE on streaming. I total number of titles it may seem OK, but recent blockbusters generally appear on streaming long after they are on netflix DVD.
I'd love to drop DVDs, but netflix doesn't provide the right content on streaming.
Usually the FAA is very conservative on aircraft design. I'm surprised and dismayed that they would not disallow any connection between entertainment systems and avionics systems. I'm sure that they have carefully designed the firmware in any switches to prevent data from the entertainment system getting into the flight controls, but it seems difficult to prove that the firmware is free of any bugs that could allow such a connection.
The NSA was unable to prevent a very destructive hack, I have little faith that organizations are able to do so.
Proton rest mass: 938.28 MeV Electron rest mass.511 MeV Neutron rest mass 939.57 MeV
So, when the electron and proton combine, where does the extra energy 780KeV come from to make a neutron. This is ignoring how slow the reaction would be even if it were energetically allowed.
People talk about "heavy" electrons in metals but interactions with atomic fields are likely to be at most in the 100eV range, not 100s of KeV.
If you have physical access to a machine, you can do pretty much whatever you want to it.
If someone is planning to leave theses around to destroy computers then they could do a lot more damage with an infected USB drive - to anyone idiotic enough to plug in an unknown usb device.
If you want to maximize damage, an ounce of C4 in a drive will to a lot more damage. Thermite would be more spectacular.
I don't get it. You spend $150 for a device that will make a computer fail in a boring way.
A SC cavity it the equivalent of a huge power boost - roughly a million X. It also has the advantage of very little power dissipation that could cause thermal effects They would need a very different test chamber.
Cheaper and easier to test on earth. If you replace the copper with a superconducting cavity, the circulation power will go up by about a factor of a million. No problem at all seeing the thrust then.
I could do it for a couple million $ - we have the RF and superconducting cavity equipment. We are well set up to do the experiment.
The problem is that science money is limited. If someone wants to fund me, I'd be very happy, but there are a lot of other groups competing for those same funding dollars.
If someone can get the funding, or convince the funding agencies to switch their money to this, I'll do it. I wouldn't recommend it though - I think the odds of finding something are exceptionally small, and the money is better spent on other projects.
Agreed. It is possible to do a better experiment. With a superconducting cavity, you can get probably 10^6X the circulating power, and (based on their surprising linear slow slope of thurst vs power) a very large thrust.
This is a moderately expensive experiment (few million $), but would be very definitive. Lots of labs, including mine could do this.
If relativity is correct, then producing more thrust per power than a photon drive without any exhaust can be used (in principal) to to build a perpetual motion machine. Basically this device claims to violate conservation of 4-momentum, so in the correct frame that is violation of conservation of energy.
If it is possible to create thrust against some sort of background (zero point energy, aether etc), that also violates special relativity by providing a unique reference frame (or violates conservation of energy if it doesn't).
Of course special relativity could be wrong - but it has been tested on scales from quarks to galaxies to black holes. This experiment is not unusual - they are at modest electric fields, length scales and frequencies. There is no reason to expect that after all the tests done on relativity it would be violated by using a special shaped box. Its like the idea that you can build a perpetual motion machine from a special shaped linkage and gears.
I may not be a "top" scientist, whatever that is, but I'm a professional physicist, and have discussed this with colleagues and we all agree that this can't be true without a complete re-write of physics as we know it, We also agree that its a very difficult experiment and that there are a lot of ways that they could have gotten the wrong answer from the experiment.
We have 100MW RF sources at SLAC. Should give about a million times the force they see, or several newtons - easy to see. No mucking about with careful torsion balances - this is enough to see with a bathroom scale. I'm happy to do the test if someone wants to fund it.
It is exceptionally unlikely to work. The frequencies / field levels are not at all unusual. The existing experiments very difficult to get correct. Its difficult to believe that a violation of conservation of momentum wouldn't have been seen in the wide rage of experiments done in E&M.
I can see it adding something to the show if the drones are carrying and able to fire conventional fireworks. Maybe re-enact the death star battle from star wars.
Yes, there is the possibility of collateral damage and death - but I'd go watch .
The issue isn't the scientist's salary, its funding for experiments. I work in a national lab which is a somewhat different environment, but there are some similarities. I can only work on and buy hardware for approved funded projects. The approval process is very slow, and the entire system is not set up to let scientists pursue interesting things as they develop.
Its interesting. In principal we could detect the sun's wobble but looking at Doppler shifts to distant objects. The problem with planet 9 is that the orbital period is so long that it would take too long to get a data set.
I don't know if anyone has measured the solar system wobble on shorter timescales. The information is probably already in planetary searches.
I understand, but I think the risk is that it becomes too easy to use these non-lethal (but very painful) devices when the police are not in any real danger. They could become the quick solution to too many problems. Eventually they might also have lethal weapons.
I think that one of the keys to reducing police brutality is a better connection to the people that they are supposed to be serving, and I think drones weaken that connection.
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I'd call it "reckless endangerment", not quite as severe as attempted murder but still a serious felony. Its doing something that a reasonable person would realize places others at risk of harm or death, even if that wasn't the intent.
Glass fibers darken too - enough that we can't use very long (multi-kilometer) lengths in the SLAC accelerators where the expected doses are much lower. . The problem is that even a very small amount of darkening adds up over the length of the fiber.
Fiber optics goes black very quickly in high radiation.
Getting the extremely radioactive and hot fuel onto a train would be rather tricky.
Burying in cement is not a bad idea, but they probably need to make sure that the radioactivity isn't generating so much heat that it would melt its way out of an enclosure.
Difficult because the hot side temperature needs to be very hot, but not crazy. The ability to use standard silicon would vastly reduce the circuit size, and maybe power consumption.
If pumps and motors can work at Venusian temperatures, then a cooler would not be all that difficult. Motors are probably needed for the lander to do useful stuff anyway.
A TEC cooler would be better, but I'm not aware of any thermometric materials that can work at that temperature. There might be a trick using a ferromagnetic material with the right Curie temperature.
The high temperature semiconductors are also a reasonable approach and a nice technology for other applications as well.
Agreed. Hovering requires thrust > weight. Power goes as mass/time * velocity^2, while thrust goes as mass/times * velocity. So to have efficient thrust for lift you need to move a lot of air slowly, not a little air quickly. This is why helicopters have enormous swept disk areas. Any design that uses less area will be less efficient than a helicopter - already a very inefficient device.
Less efficiency means less range (already a problem with an electric), heavier motors and batteries, AND more noise and down-wash damage.
Tilt rotor sounds great, but adds a lot of additional weight and complexity on an already very marginal system. It allows high cruise speeds, but it takes time to climb and accelerate / decelerate, while navigating crowded airspace. Cruise speed tends to be an issue mostly on much longer trips than 50 miles.
So, how is this better than a single person helicopter?
Then, even if it works, where can it be used? No way noise ordinances will let someone use it from their back yard or city street At least in the US aircraft need to carry a half hour of spare fuel for safety. There are air traffic control issues if there are more than a few of these.
I just don't see a use case that wouldn't be better served with a conventional (but autopilot controlled) helicopter.
Looks like marketing silliness to me. I'll believe it when I see a working prototype
Airbus knows how to make things fly, but that doesn't mean that there are not groups at Airbus that are clueless. NASA knows about conservation of momentum but has a group working on what is essentially an inertialess drive.
The 3d image shows a vehicle with small ducted fans for lift, and minimal aerodynamic lifting surfaces.
Helicopters use very large blades because (for very basic physics: momentum goes as MV, power goes as MV^2) it is more efficient to move a lot of air slowly than a little air quickly. So it will need more power than a helicopter which will make it less efficient, noisier, and the down-wash will be more damaging.
There may be a few applications where the lack of exposed blades will help, but not many. Even if the blades are enclosed, the very high power downwash will prevent landings near anything even slightly fragile.
Helicopters look the way that they do because that is the best design.
Small quad-copters make sense in applications where efficiency and noise are not critical.
Self flying is great, but that technology is mostly available now anyway
Probably not really incompetent.
I've been involved in a number of government funded projects where the process was:
Government: we need a *thing*, as cheap as you can.
Vendor1: OK, we can build your *think* for X dollars.
Government: X is too much, we can only fund it if its X/2.
Now there are two choices.
IF Vendor 1 responds with "OK X/2 it is", Vendor 1 gets X/2 dollars, then later get an additional X/2 to finish the project
OR
IF Vendor 1 responds with "Sorry, X is the cheapest we can do", then Vendor 2 will respond with "We can do it for X/2". Vendor 2 gets X/2 dollars, then later get an additional X/2 to finish the project
Many of these projects take so long that the people who budgeted and approved them, both in the government and at the vendor have moved to other jobs before the inevitable overruns become apparent.
The specific suggestions in the previous email are valid.
There are also possibilities of blackmail if they learn something about the soldiers. Then there is just the tactical value of having more information about the enemy - having the cells suddenly turn off might be in indication of an impending operation.
Nope, I don't see any potential problem with AI controlled swarms of killer wasps.
Netflix seems surprised people are not dropping the DVD service, but a lot of content is NOT AVAILABLE on streaming. I total number of titles it may seem OK, but recent blockbusters generally appear on streaming long after they are on netflix DVD.
I'd love to drop DVDs, but netflix doesn't provide the right content on streaming.
Usually the FAA is very conservative on aircraft design. I'm surprised and dismayed that they would not disallow any connection between entertainment systems and avionics systems. I'm sure that they have carefully designed the firmware in any switches to prevent data from the entertainment system getting into the flight controls, but it seems difficult to prove that the firmware is free of any bugs that could allow such a connection.
The NSA was unable to prevent a very destructive hack, I have little faith that organizations are able to do so.
Proton rest mass: 938.28 MeV .511 MeV
Electron rest mass
Neutron rest mass 939.57 MeV
So, when the electron and proton combine, where does the extra energy 780KeV come from to make a neutron. This is ignoring how slow the reaction would be even if it were energetically allowed.
People talk about "heavy" electrons in metals but interactions with atomic fields are likely to be at most in the 100eV range, not 100s of KeV.
Its nonsense.
If you have physical access to a machine, you can do pretty much whatever you want to it.
If someone is planning to leave theses around to destroy computers then they could do a lot more damage with an infected USB drive - to anyone idiotic enough to plug in an unknown usb device.
If you want to maximize damage, an ounce of C4 in a drive will to a lot more damage. Thermite would be more spectacular.
I don't get it. You spend $150 for a device that will make a computer fail in a boring way.
A SC cavity it the equivalent of a huge power boost - roughly a million X. It also has the advantage of very little power dissipation that could cause thermal effects They would need a very different test chamber.
Cheaper and easier to test on earth. If you replace the copper with a superconducting cavity, the circulation power will go up by about a factor of a million. No problem at all seeing the thrust then.
I could do it for a couple million $ - we have the RF and superconducting cavity equipment. We are well set up to do the experiment.
The problem is that science money is limited. If someone wants to fund me, I'd be very happy, but there are a lot of other groups competing for those same funding dollars.
If someone can get the funding, or convince the funding agencies to switch their money to this, I'll do it. I wouldn't recommend it though - I think the odds of finding something are exceptionally small, and the money is better spent on other projects.
Not crazy, especially if there were an arc around a bad RF connection,but they have IR images and I think those would show hot spots.
Outgassing, thermal distortion of something with a short time constant etc are all possible explanations.
Agreed.
It is possible to do a better experiment. With a superconducting cavity, you can get probably 10^6X the circulating power, and (based on their surprising linear slow slope of thurst vs power) a very large thrust.
This is a moderately expensive experiment (few million $), but would be very definitive. Lots of labs, including mine could do this.
If relativity is correct, then producing more thrust per power than a photon drive without any exhaust can be used (in principal) to to build a perpetual motion machine. Basically this device claims to violate conservation of 4-momentum, so in the correct frame that is violation of conservation of energy.
If it is possible to create thrust against some sort of background (zero point energy, aether etc), that also violates special relativity by providing a unique reference frame (or violates conservation of energy if it doesn't).
Of course special relativity could be wrong - but it has been tested on scales from quarks to galaxies to black holes. This experiment is not unusual - they are at modest electric fields, length scales and frequencies. There is no reason to expect that after all the tests done on relativity it would be violated by using a special shaped box. Its like the idea that you can build a perpetual motion machine from a special shaped linkage and gears.
I may not be a "top" scientist, whatever that is, but I'm a professional physicist, and have discussed this with colleagues and we all agree that this can't be true without a complete re-write of physics as we know it, We also agree that its a very difficult experiment and that there are a lot of ways that they could have gotten the wrong answer from the experiment.
We have 100MW RF sources at SLAC. Should give about a million times the force they see, or several newtons - easy to see. No mucking about with careful torsion balances - this is enough to see with a bathroom scale. I'm happy to do the test if someone wants to fund it.
It is exceptionally unlikely to work. The frequencies / field levels are not at all unusual. The existing experiments very difficult to get correct. Its difficult to believe that a violation of conservation of momentum wouldn't have been seen in the wide rage of experiments done in E&M.
I can see it adding something to the show if the drones are carrying and able to fire conventional fireworks. Maybe re-enact the death star battle from star wars.
Yes, there is the possibility of collateral damage and death - but I'd go watch .
I work in accelerator physics. Experiments are much too expensive to fund out of my own pocket.
The issue isn't the scientist's salary, its funding for experiments. I work in a national lab which is a somewhat different environment, but there are some similarities. I can only work on and buy hardware for approved funded projects. The approval process is very slow, and the entire system is not set up to let scientists pursue interesting things as they develop.
Its interesting. In principal we could detect the sun's wobble but looking at Doppler shifts to distant objects. The problem with planet 9 is that the orbital period is so long that it would take too long to get a data set.
I don't know if anyone has measured the solar system wobble on shorter timescales. The information is probably already in planetary searches.
I understand, but I think the risk is that it becomes too easy to use these non-lethal (but very painful) devices when the police are not in any real danger. They could become the quick solution to too many problems. Eventually they might also have lethal weapons.
I think that one of the keys to reducing police brutality is a better connection to the people that they are supposed to be serving, and I think drones weaken that connection.