Anyone seen pictures of pieces on the ground ? (The hole in Lake Chebarkul doesn't count.) There should be a nice strewn field from this event, and it shouldn't be hard to find pieces, which would tell us what it was made of.
...the harm it does to the women who appear in it and as a violation of their civil rights.
This is not progressive at all. What it really is, to be blunt, is incredibly sexist. Professor Dines clearly views these women as too stupid and ignorant to make such decisions on their own, or even know that their civil rights are being violated. If that is not sexist, I don't know what is.
You can do a bunch of stuff in space (the real space we find out there, not the idealized vacuum). For example, in regions where there is a magnetic field you can run an electric current through a tether and convert electrical energy to kinetic energy, thereby providing propulsion to the tether system. This may appear to be reactionless, but it really isn't, and the physics is not controversial and very well understood.
No, given their nature, if it worked they would be producing glossy brochures showing spacecraft flying to Mars or where-ever. There is no reason why they would keep this a secret; the spy satellite world is not suffering from a lack of reaction mass. If they even thought it possibly could work, they would hire Shawyer.
A surprisingly non-sceptical article; I'd expect a bit more critical thinking from Wired. Terms like "group velocity" and quantum theory", used vaguely, don't help you avoid the fact that conservation of momentum is fundamental to modern physics. It's just as inviolable as conservation of energy.
To put it another way, this article makes Wired look just as gullible as they would if they wrote "Scientists in China have built and tested a perpetual motion machine."
It's really the same thing as the conservation of energy. What we really have is the conservation of four-momentum, which is standard special relativity. You can Lorentz transform one (energy) into another (momentum) (within limits).
The inevitable objection raised, is that the apparently closed system produced by this arrangement cannot result in an output force, but will merely produce strain within the waveguide walls. However, this ignores Einstein's Special Law of Relativity in which separate frames of reference have to be applied at velocities approaching the speed of light. Thus the system of EM wave and waveguide can be regarded as an open system, with the EM wave and the waveguide having separate frames of reference.
A similar approach is necessary to explain the principle of the laser gyroscope, where open system attitude information is obtained from an apparently closed system device.
That last paragraph intrigues me. Could someone who understands ring laser physics comment on this?
Sure. This is BS designed to confuse and bamboozle people who don't understand special relativity or ring laser gyros.
Show it works (note : that is not the same as saying that you have shown it works), and I'll be interested. Until then, this goes in the cold fusion circular file.
Normal soap bubbles are about 500 to 1000 nanometers thick - that's why you can see colors (iridescence) on the surface - it's from interference (diffraction) of light reflecting on the inside and outside of the bubble wall. These bubbles are, according to TOA, nanometers thick, which is very thin, at least compared to the soap bubbles we see.
I've done it in Hawaii - it's quite routine on the volcano overflights. I think that the pilot generally has a good idea of where the bad stuff might be. Of course, if he doesn't, you would probably be in deep trouble even with the doors closed.
Yes, the Venera landers and our Pioneer probes found that the upper Venusian atmosphere was not in chemical equilibria.
If there is life in the upper atmosphere here, it is reasonable to assume it is present there. For one thing, meteorites carrying biological material from the Earth (or Mars!) could break up in the middle atmosphere, spreading spores. Unlike the case for Mars, there doesn't seem to be a comparable Venus to Earth mechanism.
Breaking my rule responding but how many in the military do you think will carry out orders to attack and kill American citizens? I know the oath they and I took says to defend the constitution not trample all over it.
If it came down to that I think a lot would develop a backbone and "just say no" as it is their families and friends in the kill zones also.
Depends on history and circumstances. It could literally be anywhere from 0% to 100%. That's why sensible military leaders try very hard not to be placed in such situations.
If you want to argue nomenclature, go head but count me out - if you have portable radio and put in 3 AAA batteries, would you say that you installed 3 batteries or 1 battery with 3 cells ? I would say 3 batteries. If you want to call them 1 kumquat with 3 aardvarks, or whatever, feel free.Note that the Tesla aardvarks occasionally explode, and one of their technological innovations was stacking them so that the entire kumquat doesn't go up when they do. I don't see this as that relevant to Boeing's issues, as they have a monolithic battery.
It would be interesting to know why Boeing didn't choose Tesla in the first place, and selected a Japanese company instead. Maybe because of a "you take our batteries, we buy your planes" deal?
Maybe because Tesla does not make the batteries that they use? Why not buy from, you know, the actual vendor?
SpaceX may have battery technology that Boeing could use, but this sounds like a sales job to me, and that's being polite. It did get Elon Musk in the news, which I suspect was the real purpose here.
Note that altitude has nothing to do with the battery problems.
The Tesla batteries are individually small units - basically, repurposed laptop batteries stacked together. Tesla does not make them. And, they have been known to have problems, which Tesla has had to engineer around. Putting them in a 787 almost certainly would require serious airframe reengineering, not to mention serious testing. The SpaceX Dragon batteries have to work over a short period, for about 45 minutes at a stretch. That is a rather different part of parameter space from the batteries in the 787, which have to work for repeated flights, I am sure for at least months at a time. And, of course, it's not just that the batteries have to work, it's that they have to provide sufficient power and fit in the allotted space. Not to mention that I doubt Tesla actually makes them either.
Tesla / SpaceX may well have relevant technology and expertise, and I could see them putting in a tender to get Boeing's business. I can't see them swooping in as saviors.
Yes, I was intending to be provocative, but I also think this is true. (By the way, I am a strong supporter of asteroid mining, and may even work in the area at some point.) After some 4 decades of study of Mars and the asteroids, I am continually impressed by the differences between these bodies and the Earth. Mars is not a red Sahara, it is a rather different body from the Earth. Time and again, scientists have made assumptions about Mars, based on their terrestrial experience, that have turned out to be wrong. We know, of course, a lot more about Mars than about any asteroid, and I think that there will be really some surprises with these smaller bodies.
Yeah, we can get there, the engineering part is fairly straightforward, and I strongly agree that the only way to find out what we don't know is to go out there and explore. But, I have a feeling that in 500 years people will look back at our understanding of the Solar System and think about it much as we might judge Christopher Columbus's understanding of, say, Venezuela in 1503.
We tend to have a naive feeling that we understand the solar system, that it is really just like Earth, but with craters or whatever. It isn't, and we don't.
Slashdot Mirror
Anyone seen pictures of pieces on the ground ? (The hole in Lake Chebarkul doesn't count.) There should be a nice strewn field from this event, and it shouldn't be hard to find pieces, which would tell us what it was made of.
...the harm it does to the women who appear in it and as a violation of their civil rights.
This is not progressive at all. What it really is, to be blunt, is incredibly sexist. Professor Dines clearly views these women as too stupid and ignorant to make such decisions on their own, or even know that their civil rights are being violated. If that is not sexist, I don't know what is.
You can do a bunch of stuff in space (the real space we find out there, not the idealized vacuum). For example, in regions where there is a magnetic field you can run an electric current through a tether and convert electrical energy to kinetic energy, thereby providing propulsion to the tether system. This may appear to be reactionless, but it really isn't, and the physics is not controversial and very well understood.
No, given their nature, if it worked they would be producing glossy brochures showing spacecraft flying to Mars or where-ever. There is no reason why they would keep this a secret; the spy satellite world is not suffering from a lack of reaction mass. If they even thought it possibly could work, they would hire Shawyer.
And unicorns fart rainbows.
It's a magic drive. It doesn't produce any thrust.
Yes, but think of the advantages. It can have any weight or power consumption you want ! (For a small additional fee, natch.)
A surprisingly non-sceptical article; I'd expect a bit more critical thinking from Wired. Terms like "group velocity" and quantum theory", used vaguely, don't help you avoid the fact that conservation of momentum is fundamental to modern physics. It's just as inviolable as conservation of energy.
To put it another way, this article makes Wired look just as gullible as they would if they wrote "Scientists in China have built and tested a perpetual motion machine."
It's really the same thing as the conservation of energy. What we really have is the conservation of four-momentum, which is standard special relativity. You can Lorentz transform one (energy) into another (momentum) (within limits).
http://emdrive.com/principle.html
That last paragraph intrigues me. Could someone who understands ring laser physics comment on this?
Sure. This is BS designed to confuse and bamboozle people who don't understand special relativity or ring laser gyros.
All the usual signs of pseudoscience.
Show it works (note : that is not the same as saying that you have shown it works), and I'll be interested. Until then, this goes in the cold fusion circular file.
Normal soap bubbles are about 500 to 1000 nanometers thick - that's why you can see colors (iridescence) on the surface - it's from interference (diffraction) of light reflecting on the inside and outside of the bubble wall. These bubbles are, according to TOA, nanometers thick, which is very thin, at least compared to the soap bubbles we see.
I would agree with all of this, with one minor tweak :
If you no longer make enough to pay your taxes on it, it goes to the state.
No, it should return to the actual owners, the people - i.e., it should enter the public domain.
DMCA Denial of Service, that is.
Yeah, me too. I was wondering what was so cool about a close up of a MI-8.
I've done it in Hawaii - it's quite routine on the volcano overflights. I think that the pilot generally has a good idea of where the bad stuff might be. Of course, if he doesn't, you would probably be in deep trouble even with the doors closed.
Use the cursor arrows, Luke.
Depends on how much ash and Sulfur they put high up in the stratosphere.
Now, if this is the beginning of an eruption akin to the Siberian Traps, all bets are off. You may not see the Sun for a few years.
For headlines, at least, I would check my spelling.
It's not the Slashdot way.
Yes, they did and, yes, they (and we) did.
Yes, the Venera landers and our Pioneer probes found that the upper Venusian atmosphere was not in chemical equilibria.
If there is life in the upper atmosphere here, it is reasonable to assume it is present there. For one thing, meteorites carrying biological material from the Earth (or Mars!) could break up in the middle atmosphere, spreading spores. Unlike the case for Mars, there doesn't seem to be a comparable Venus to Earth mechanism.
Breaking my rule responding but how many in the military do you think will carry out orders to attack and kill American citizens?
I know the oath they and I took says to defend the constitution not trample all over it.
If it came down to that I think a lot would develop a backbone and "just say no" as it is their families and friends in the kill zones also.
Depends on history and circumstances. It could literally be anywhere from 0% to 100%. That's why sensible military leaders try very hard not to be placed in such situations.
If you want to argue nomenclature, go head but count me out - if you have portable radio and put in 3 AAA batteries, would you say that you installed 3 batteries or 1 battery with 3 cells ? I would say 3 batteries. If you want to call them 1 kumquat with 3 aardvarks, or whatever, feel free.Note that the Tesla aardvarks occasionally explode, and one of their technological innovations was stacking them so that the entire kumquat doesn't go up when they do. I don't see this as that relevant to Boeing's issues, as they have a monolithic battery.
It would be interesting to know why Boeing didn't choose Tesla in the first place, and selected a Japanese company instead. Maybe because of a "you take our batteries, we buy your planes" deal?
Maybe because Tesla does not make the batteries that they use? Why not buy from, you know, the actual vendor?
SpaceX may have battery technology that Boeing could use, but this sounds like a sales job to me, and that's being polite. It did get Elon Musk in the news, which I suspect was the real purpose here.
Note that altitude has nothing to do with the battery problems.
The Tesla batteries are individually small units - basically, repurposed laptop batteries stacked together. Tesla does not make them. And, they have been known to have problems, which Tesla has had to engineer around. Putting them in a 787 almost certainly would require serious airframe reengineering, not to mention serious testing. The SpaceX Dragon batteries have to work over a short period, for about 45 minutes at a stretch. That is a rather different part of parameter space from the batteries in the 787, which have to work for repeated flights, I am sure for at least months at a time. And, of course, it's not just that the batteries have to work, it's that they have to provide sufficient power and fit in the allotted space. Not to mention that I doubt Tesla actually makes them either.
Tesla / SpaceX may well have relevant technology and expertise, and I could see them putting in a tender to get Boeing's business. I can't see them swooping in as saviors.
Yes, I was intending to be provocative, but I also think this is true. (By the way, I am a strong supporter of asteroid mining, and may even work in the area at some point.) After some 4 decades of study of Mars and the asteroids, I am continually impressed by the differences between these bodies and the Earth. Mars is not a red Sahara, it is a rather different body from the Earth. Time and again, scientists have made assumptions about Mars, based on their terrestrial experience, that have turned out to be wrong. We know, of course, a lot more about Mars than about any asteroid, and I think that there will be really some surprises with these smaller bodies.
Yeah, we can get there, the engineering part is fairly straightforward, and I strongly agree that the only way to find out what we don't know is to go out there and explore. But, I have a feeling that in 500 years people will look back at our understanding of the Solar System and think about it much as we might judge Christopher Columbus's understanding of, say, Venezuela in 1503.
We tend to have a naive feeling that we understand the solar system, that it is really just like Earth, but with craters or whatever. It isn't, and we don't.
The man is an egomaniac, and I'm wondering how they managed to wrestle control away from him.
I guess he wanted the $ 4 billion more.