So you would want to make a bunch of ions inside your computer, don't get me wrong but would'nt you have some electrical problems then.
When I recenty installed some new memory, it came with a nice static electricity warning. So now you would want to make a gas-cloud of ions inside your computer, if static electricity can kill your components doesn't that mean that ions can too?
Ok, as long as the system is running the ions are trapped between all those electrodes, but where to these ions go when you switch off the power?
When you read the original article at Science, you will see this is no elevator in fact.
Stoddart et al have made a system which can move stepwise in solution by adding or releasing protons (acid). Since this whole experiment is done is solution nothing is going in any particular direction, everything is randomly organized in solution.
So until this system is fixed on a surface and can actually preform some work, e.g. moving a weight from one station to another, I think the term elevator is premature.
And if you want to be able use this system for some real work, you should move it out of solution and into the solid phase. This is one of the biggest challenges of all these kin of Rotaxane based systems
Too bad that this is no real quantum crypthography here.
They just use quantum cryptography to generate the keys. In my opinion there are better ways to get a key since the real encryption is still based on standard techniques like DES. Everybody knows that these can be bruteforced....
So the real Quantum Encryption still lies in the future
On the other hand he served his time and paid the prize for his previous mistake. The justice sytem should work in such a way that he's now rehabilitated and has learned from his mistakes. and ready to enter society.
Should one mistake be a burden for the rest of your life?
I agree that it sets a bad example for the youth in this way, but even a marihuana smoking hippie became president.....:-)
Anyone know where this thing is going to be realized. I remember reading (maybe newscientist ?) that they want to built this test plant in Spain or France near the Atlantic, so they could easy get supplies and cooling from the ocean.
I'm glad that the US finally decided to go along since the project was not funded completely yet.
As for the prospects of energy supply, I read that they also think a postive effiency could be realized somewere around 2008, but would then just go out the drain...... withput an obious reason I can remember seems like a waste
actually it is not so strange that they subsituted the glass rods by pasta, once you know that every year a pasta construction match is held. At different universities around the world architecture students have to make the strongest building (or bridge) design out of pasta. Since pasta is easy to break, several fundamental principles of architecture (and physics of course) can be illustrated this way.
- still waiting for the fullsized skyscraper from pasta
I'm a bit surprised to read this here, since this is defenitely not a recent development.
In the Netherlands they also use the river water to get electricity from. This the same kind of system: large masses of water move a turbine. I think that at the coast of Denmark they also have a plant like this norwegian one. In france the use the difference between high-tide and low-tide to generate quite a lot of energy. The difference between tides is in the range of 10 meter s or something. This plant has also been there for years already.
Nevertheless it is still a nice and clean way of getting energy. One doesn't mess up the country sides with fields of solar-cells or wind-turbines.
Because although the idea is nice, the energy content of 1 liter alcohol are far less than that of a liter kerosine ie. you would need probably a 50 or more liters of alcohol to get the same energy release.
The mention that is better for the environment I'm not too sure about either: alcohol is a carbohydrate so is kerosine. Which means that when its burned it will 'leave' carbondioxide and water. The effiency of the engine will determine how much intermediate junk you get.
It is btw quite difficult to use a more volatile fuel in an engine designed for a heavier one.
Not to discredit the scientific work of the people here, but about a year ago another group for Eindhoven (Netherlands) also made a single electron transistor (SET). They used a pair of tweezers from an atomic force microscope to make dent in a carbon nanotube. Details can be found here at Science 2001 July 6; 293: 76-79; also online but requires a subsicription.
I think that the switching of a transistor by one electron, is more important that a transistor made with a single molecule. In the article it is never stated how many electrons are needed to swict the on and off state of the transistor. The size in neither mentioned, they speak about clusters and a single molecule but a single molecule could be qiute large....
So the carbon nanotube used by Postma et al could even be smaller and uses only one electron.
-How is this stronger defined ? When e.g. bending concourns most plastic are stronger than steel. What do we speak about here push/pull, impact, breaking or what ?
-So its also less heavier than steel big deal a lot of things are leighter than steel (so is kevlar, ever seen a kevlar bridge?), it really depens on what this material can be used for and what heats in can withstand, manufactoring cost etc. Its 10% the weight if the other factors are contrary to those of steel it maybe nice but will never be impleted in products.
The whole website is just a bit too slick, without any real details.
And last week we read that there might be more life then one would suspect. So the messages keep alternating eachother about how much life there can be found in the universe.
But I was just wondering what is it that we expect ?
I think the big conclusion is that we dont know much on either side of the subject (pro or con). We dealing with quantities this big (size of galaxies) only a very small change in on of the factors changes the outcome a lot.
[Seems like if they could make the probe kinda warm it would eventually sink through any amount of ice.]
uptake heat = given heat.
dont want to start about that second Law again but, hasnt any done some of these experiments on highschool ? You have many tons of very very cold ice and you want to melt trough it with a hot space probe???
How hot do you want to have it? Water has also one of the highest heat capacities known unless to can keep on generating a lot of heat and the probe has a substancial mass and heat capacity forget about it.
Besides that the water melted before would freeze again and that leaves one with the problem of getting the prove out of the ice again.
So food contains high levels of acrylamide. It's very nice that the authors are so worried about the general publics safety. But ususal procedures are there for a reason: to make sure no stupid mistakes occur.
I find this story really hard to believe, especially that how the acrylamide is produced is never stated in a chemical way. Then there is the fact that acrylamide has the tendensy to produce polymers quite easily and if the values found in food are so high. I'm quite surprised that no acrylic polymers are found (which are a lot less harmfull).
who said only macintosh did design computers? This leaves all the mac's way behind crawling in the dust. This guy can make a lot of money with designs like this.
Not to start whining again about the second law of theromodynamics, but the laser and the maser also have to be powered. Since one uses the laser to depopulate the second excited level, the laser emission has to come from the 1-> 0 transistion. The emitted laser emission is probably of less energy than the first one.
Also laser and maser have to be powered and somehow I think this takes a whole lot of energy more than a normal car enigine can supply.
Then also the fact remains as already noticed by other replies what does one want to do with the laser-light obtained? (this also follows the 2nd Law)
Its indeed true that it will be very hard for HP to prove wether their chips all fit to same standard and capabilities, since all the cips are custom made not one will be compeletely identical to another. Theferefor one chnages more than one element in a complex scientific problem.
wasn't it one of the first rules: when comparing two things with eachother not more then one they must not differ more than one property.
Otherwise one is not able to tell anything from the results obtained.
And a product in this bussiness should be compareable to one of its own kind, i.e. how is HP going to be able guarantee that my processor is going to be just as good as yours?
Furthermore this should like a nice press realease and nice scientific work done but a practical applications lie far in the future.
Its a bit sore that the reuters article depicts and even compares the 'so-called' inventors of cold-fusion with this Mr X. The inventors of cold-fusion where really carefull in publicising their work. They showed the complete scientific community their work and at first no one seemed to find a flaw in their setup. They media got the smell of it and then it became complete exarated. When finally the mistake was found they were one of the first to admit it. And now everyone talks 'bout those scammers from the cold-fusion. The scientific career of these people is complete ruined.
And now some weird guy in Ireland makes a machine which produces a whole lot of power. But refuses to give his name and let alone gives permission to check his apparatus!!
I'm quite sure that when one strips this machine their will be a load of car-batteries or other energy supplying stuff.
Energy just doesnt come for free!
-still struggles against the gravitational energy everyday
This really puts a nice perspective into Eckhart phreaking. All the stories of radiation comming from your can be 'caught' and the info of your screen then been dubbed onto another screen.
Isn't it possible to come to a middle way?
like not every idiot can get the data they want but that they have to prove where for they need it.
And thus preserving the knowledge instead of destroying it.
I mean generally speaking not everybody needs to get this information so that when students some how need to know something about how an airport is constructed to can get that info. And by making it restricted will raise the barrier for obtaining the information.
I work at a chemistry department at the subject of photo-active molecule. Hence I have some background in converting solar energy to electricity. It is very difficult to get a higher effiency for the power-conversion (think max is like 30% at this moment) at a reasonable price. The currently used solar-cells are already mighty expensive
So in increasing overall effiency should be focussed on lighter and more aerodynamic materials rather than on higher photo-conversion yield systems.
There are some promessing molecule which can do a better job in light harvesting but these are still in experimental stages.
The main focuss point in these systems is to transfer to energy for the cell to the 'motor'.
for more info check to website of the chemistry department at the university lausanne-swiss.
Slashdot Mirror
Is this the old one or the new one?
To put it in different words do I have to feed it plutonium or bananas?
If it's plutonium then it has too be overpriced, really difficult to get at your local gas station.
But seriously, nice job man!
maybe I'm just plain stupid here but why not triangulate your position with gsm-transmitters to get your postion?
So you would want to make a bunch of ions inside your computer, don't get me wrong but would'nt you have some electrical problems then.
When I recenty installed some new memory, it came with a nice static electricity warning. So now you would want to make a gas-cloud of ions inside your computer, if static electricity can kill your components doesn't that mean that ions can too?
Ok, as long as the system is running the ions are trapped between all those electrodes, but where to these ions go when you switch off the power?
Better have some capacitators ready......
When you read the original article at Science, you will see this is no elevator in fact.
Stoddart et al have made a system which can move stepwise in solution by adding or releasing protons (acid). Since this whole experiment is done is solution nothing is going in any particular direction, everything is randomly organized in solution.
So until this system is fixed on a surface and can actually preform some work, e.g. moving a weight from one station to another, I think the term elevator is premature.
And if you want to be able use this system for some real work, you should move it out of solution and into the solid phase. This is one of the biggest challenges of all these kin of Rotaxane based systems
Too bad that this is no real quantum crypthography here.
They just use quantum cryptography to generate the keys. In my opinion there are better ways to get a key since the real encryption is still based on standard techniques like DES. Everybody knows that these can be bruteforced....
So the real Quantum Encryption still lies in the future
On the other hand he served his time and paid the prize for his previous mistake. The justice sytem should work in such a way that he's now rehabilitated and has learned from his mistakes. and ready to enter society.
..... :-)
Should one mistake be a burden for the rest of your life?
I agree that it sets a bad example for the youth in this way, but even a marihuana smoking hippie became president
Anyone know where this thing is going to be realized. I remember reading (maybe newscientist ?) that they want to built this test plant in Spain or France near the Atlantic, so they could easy get supplies and cooling from the ocean.
I'm glad that the US finally decided to go along since the project was not funded completely yet.
As for the prospects of energy supply, I read that they also think a postive effiency could be realized somewere around 2008, but would then just go out the drain......
withput an obious reason I can remember
seems like a waste
actually it is not so strange that they subsituted the glass rods by pasta, once you know that every year a pasta construction match is held. At different universities around the world architecture students have to make the strongest building (or bridge) design out of pasta. Since pasta is easy to break, several fundamental principles of architecture (and physics of course) can be illustrated this way.
- still waiting for the fullsized skyscraper from pasta
I'm a bit surprised to read this here, since this is defenitely not a recent development.
In the Netherlands they also use the river water to get electricity from. This the same kind of system: large masses of water move a turbine. I think that at the coast of Denmark they also have a plant like this norwegian one.
In france the use the difference between high-tide and low-tide to generate quite a lot of energy. The difference between tides is in the range of 10 meter s or something. This plant has also been there for years already.
Nevertheless it is still a nice and clean way of getting energy. One doesn't mess up the country sides with fields of solar-cells or wind-turbines.
- maybe better not to put them i a harbor
Because although the idea is nice, the energy content of 1 liter alcohol are far less than that of a liter kerosine ie. you would need probably a 50 or more liters of alcohol to get the same energy release.
The mention that is better for the environment I'm not too sure about either: alcohol is a carbohydrate so is kerosine. Which means that when its burned it will 'leave' carbondioxide and water. The effiency of the engine will determine how much intermediate junk you get.
It is btw quite difficult to use a more volatile fuel in an engine designed for a heavier one.
The original story can be found here:i d=ns999 92461
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?
-If this can help me to stop hitting the guy next to me, HE will be very happy his signal is blocked too....
Not to discredit the scientific work of the people here, but about a year ago another group for Eindhoven (Netherlands) also made a single electron transistor (SET).
They used a pair of tweezers from an atomic force microscope to make dent in a carbon nanotube.
Details can be found here at Science 2001 July 6; 293: 76-79; also online but requires a subsicription.
I think that the switching of a transistor by one electron, is more important that a transistor made with a single molecule. In the article it is never stated how many electrons are needed to swict the on and off state of the transistor. The size in neither mentioned, they speak about clusters and a single molecule but a single molecule could be qiute large....
So the carbon nanotube used by Postma et al could even be smaller and uses only one electron.
This thing lacks a few details:
-How is this stronger defined ?
When e.g. bending concourns most plastic are stronger than steel. What do we speak about here push/pull, impact, breaking or what ?
-So its also less heavier than steel
big deal a lot of things are leighter than steel (so is kevlar, ever seen a kevlar bridge?), it really depens on what this material can be used for and what heats in can withstand, manufactoring cost etc. Its 10% the weight if the other factors are contrary to those of steel it maybe nice but will never be impleted in products.
The whole website is just a bit too slick, without any real details.
And last week we read that there might be more life then one would suspect. So the messages keep alternating eachother about how much life there can be found in the universe.
But I was just wondering what is it that we expect ?
I think the big conclusion is that we dont know much on either side of the subject (pro or con).
We dealing with quantities this big (size of galaxies) only a very small change in on of the factors changes the outcome a lot.
[Seems like if they could make the probe kinda warm it would eventually sink through any amount of ice.]
uptake heat = given heat.
dont want to start about that second Law again but, hasnt any done some of these experiments on highschool ?
You have many tons of very very cold ice and you want to melt trough it with a hot space probe???
How hot do you want to have it? Water has also one of the highest heat capacities known unless to can keep on generating a lot of heat and the probe has a substancial mass and heat capacity forget about it.
Besides that the water melted before would freeze again and that leaves one with the problem of getting the prove out of the ice again.
So food contains high levels of acrylamide. It's very nice that the authors are so worried about the general publics safety. But ususal procedures are there for a reason: to make sure no stupid mistakes occur.
I find this story really hard to believe, especially that how the acrylamide is produced is never stated in a chemical way. Then there is the fact that acrylamide has the tendensy to produce polymers quite easily and if the values found in food are so high. I'm quite surprised that no acrylic polymers are found (which are a lot less harmfull).
all discussions and scientific information can be found at:b ubble/index.shtml
http://www.sciencemag.org/feature/data/hottopics/
this contains theatricle itself, editorial comments and disagreeing views.
I would certainly hope that these people have learned from the cold-fusion debacle in 80's and double/double checked their setup and calculations.
Have to say after reading the whole lot I'm still not convinced.
who said only macintosh did design computers?
This leaves all the mac's way behind crawling in the dust. This guy can make a lot of money with designs like this.
-still drowling, and wannahave one myself
Not to start whining again about the second law of theromodynamics, but the laser and the maser also have to be powered. Since one uses the laser to depopulate the second excited level, the laser emission has to come from the 1-> 0 transistion. The emitted laser emission is probably of less energy than the first one.
Also laser and maser have to be powered and somehow I think this takes a whole lot of energy more than a normal car enigine can supply.
Then also the fact remains as already noticed by other replies what does one want to do with the laser-light obtained? (this also follows the 2nd Law)
Its indeed true that it will be very hard for HP to prove wether their chips all fit to same standard and capabilities, since all the cips are custom made not one will be compeletely identical to another. Theferefor one chnages more than one element in a complex scientific problem.
wasn't it one of the first rules: when comparing two things with eachother not more then one they must not differ more than one property.
Otherwise one is not able to tell anything from the results obtained.
And a product in this bussiness should be compareable to one of its own kind, i.e. how is HP going to be able guarantee that my processor is going to be just as good as yours?
Furthermore this should like a nice press realease and nice scientific work done but a practical applications lie far in the future.
Its a bit sore that the reuters article depicts and even compares the 'so-called' inventors of cold-fusion with this Mr X. The inventors of cold-fusion where really carefull in publicising their work. They showed the complete scientific community their work and at first no one seemed to find a flaw in their setup. They media got the smell of it and then it became complete exarated. When finally the mistake was found they were one of the first to admit it. And now everyone talks 'bout those scammers from the cold-fusion. The scientific career of these people is complete ruined.
And now some weird guy in Ireland makes a machine which produces a whole lot of power. But refuses to give his name and let alone gives permission to check his apparatus!!
I'm quite sure that when one strips this machine their will be a load of car-batteries or other energy supplying stuff.
Energy just doesnt come for free!
-still struggles against the gravitational energy everyday
oops sorry 'bout that
This really puts a nice perspective into Eckhart phreaking. All the stories of radiation comming from your can be 'caught' and the info of your screen then been dubbed onto another screen.
Just tune in the radio !
Isn't it possible to come to a middle way?
like not every idiot can get the data they want but that they have to prove where for they need it.
And thus preserving the knowledge instead of destroying it.
I mean generally speaking not everybody needs to get this information so that when students some how need to know something about how an airport is constructed to can get that info. And by making it restricted will raise the barrier for obtaining the information.
I work at a chemistry department at the subject of photo-active molecule. Hence I have some background in converting solar energy to electricity. It is very difficult to get a higher effiency for the power-conversion (think max is like 30% at this moment) at a reasonable price. The currently used solar-cells are already mighty expensive
So in increasing overall effiency should be focussed on lighter and more aerodynamic materials rather than on higher photo-conversion yield systems.
There are some promessing molecule which can do a better job in light harvesting but these are still in experimental stages.
The main focuss point in these systems is to transfer to energy for the cell to the 'motor'.
for more info check to website of the chemistry department at the university lausanne-swiss.