Modern American submarine nuclear reactors can operate without the use of cooling pumps. Even with everything else shut down, the core stays cool using the natural flow of the coolant.
Yes. Alas, the steam noises from your electrical turbines and your main drive turbines more than make up for lack of pump noise.
Note that the best of the modern nuclear submarines are basically holes in the water as far as noise is concerned. That is, they're easier to identify by looking for places that normal background sea noises are not coming from.
Note also that the best of the modern diesel subs are at least that quiet, since they have all the modern advantages of the best nuke boats, without the nuisance of steam plants to make electricity and propulsion.
Note finally that nuke boats were developed to deal with strategic/operational objectives/limits of America, not because they were intrinsically better than diesels. Specifically, we wanted great range and an ability to operate continuously submerged that isn't necessarily applicable to all nation's interests. For instance, if you operate exclusively in your own national waters, then great range isn't required (unless, like the USA, your national waters are spread over thousands of miles of coastline on two oceans). And the ability to operate continuously submerged is primarily useful for missile boats. Nice for attack boats, but not strictly necessary.
The big three monotheistic religions all believe in an invisible man in the sky.
Well, technically, Yahweh was a mountaintop God, not a sky God.
And "man" can only be used loosely in describing any of the variants of God you mentioned. Not sure if there's anyone outside some of the Fundie sects that believe God is a man in the sense that you use.
But I'll concede that God is invisible, at least some of the time.
The Christian (or any other mainstream) God wasn't invented by a crappy science fiction writer who himself said that starting a religion is the way to get filthy rich. That kind of helps.
And here I always thought Scientology was invented to win a bet with Bob Heinlein as to who could invent the best fictional religion. Bob wrote Stranger in a Strange Land, and L. Ron invented Scientology.
Science says that we are merely super-intelligent animals who arose by chance
Science doesn't actually make the assertion that we're "super-intelligent".
"Rather bright", perhaps. Or maybe "not as dumb as a platypus".
In other words, don't be so convinced of your own superiority over other lifeforms. The evidence isn't in yet that even our level of intelligence is an especially pro-survival trait - when homo sapiens sapiens has been around as long as T-Rex was (about four million years), much less as long as the common cockroach (hundreds of millions of years), then we can talk about how useful intelligence is....
Don't be so naive to think that just because there isn't an "upfront fee" that you are not being charged, or that the church doesn't want to take your money. Ever hear of a tithe?
Ever hear of a Church making a tithe mandatory within the last century or two? Other than State Religions, where the religion effectively has the force of government behind it, or in front of it, depending on your perspective.
You want to learn about Christianity, go to the library, borrow a good study bible (the kind that has the sidebars explaining historical context and suchlike), and read the New Testament.
Read the Old Testament if you want to understand the roots of the church, of course, as long as you remember that the Old Testament is binding on Jews, but not on Gentiles. Unless the Gentile in question chooses to be bound by it, of course.
And read the Koran, if you want to see one of the more popular responses to the early Church's responses to heresies popular in the Middle East (not all, or even most, heresies were geographically uniform - most of them originated in a specific place, and spread, or didn't, from there).
The classical example is that the belief that the world is flat was not delusional during the dark ages. To believe such a thing now - if that belief were really fixed - would be delusional, presuming that person was of apparently normal intelligence, had a reasonable education etc.. It is arguably possible that someone could just happen to believe such a thing and it have no other effect on their life, but in practice someone who truly held that belief would most likely exhibit other signs of mental illness.
Two things:
One, during the Dark Ages, belief in a "flat earth" was far from common, whatever you may have read to the contrary.
Two, while people who believe in a "flat earth" might exhibit other signs of mental illness, belief in a "flat earth" alone would have little, if any, impact on day to day living. Unless you were an astronaut.
Does anybody know if could be bad for the servers, chips etc...
I'm sure they wont die immediately, but I wouldn't be surprised if radiation is bad for todays frail processors...
They made nuclear fuel rods here. Uranium and Plutonium. Both alpha emitters. Alpha particles can be stopped by a sheet of notebook paper. Or the paint on the walls of your datacenter. Or the tiles on the floor of your datacenter. Or even the cases that your servers are in.
The ever more potent weapons of Doc Smith's Lensmen
Actually, the planetary negamatter bomb was first. They used it on Jalte's world, on the way to the Second Galaxy. Then the nutcracker - two normal planets with intrinsic velocities in opposite directions to crunch Jarnevon. Then the Sunbeam. Then the nutcracker with FTL planets to use on Ploor and it's sun.
That said, the best weapon Smith ever invented wasn't in the Lensman series. It was the one used by Doctors Seaton and Duquesne to destroy the Chloron Galaxy. Now THAT was a doomsday weapon - it destroyed two entire galaxies.
through means not understood by humans in the book, are locked in orbit around one another.
That "means not understood by humans" (the humans who wrote the book, anyway) wouldn't happen to be "gravity", plus a measure of "orbital speed", would it?
Black holes aren't magic - they follow the same laws of orbital mechanics as the rest of us do.
what will be hard to do is the virus to get the job done
If you'll remember from "Rainbow Six", the bad guys solution to that was to drop their little "improved Ebola" off at the Olympics, then when people started dying from it all over the world, to announce that they'd been working on a vaccine for Ebola, and offer said vaccine to the world.
Alas, the "vaccine" was really just an Ebola virus culture intended to ensure that everyone got the disease....
Can you explain what the difference between power and energy is?
Simply put, Power is Energy per unit time. The SI unit of energy is the Joule. The SI unit of power is the Watt (one joule per second).
A megawatt-hour is an amount of energy (3.6 x 10^9 joules) used primarily by electrical providers (mostly because they sell energy, and they don't like to measure what they sell in units as small as a joule).
I don't see what is so bad about the term Megawatts of energy per hour. Afterall, I'm billed by the kilowatt-hour. It's not the most graceful term, but couldn't he be referring to that?
What's bad about "megawatts of energy per hour" is that the megawatt is a unit of power, not of energy. Megajoules of energy per hour might make sense, but since we're talking power here, why not use that ready-made SI unit of power, the "Watt" - which would let us simplify our "megajoules per hour" down to a simple "Megawatts".
Having said that, I feel for the people's plight since I am a Dutch citizen. Lord knows we won't be keeping our feet dry easily if the water levels rise that much. At present, my birth place is already 7 meters below sea level as it is.
Well, you only have about 90 years to prepare for the possibility that your birthplace will be 7.5 meters below sea level. Better get started right away.
Seriously, this problem is moving in slow motion - it's not like we're talking sea levels rising a meter a year or anything. Or even a meter a decade.
Yeah, third-world countries tend to have quiet submarines that our sailors would need to be ready for.
Third World countries don't often have submarines. When they do, they're diesel submarines. Which tend to be quieter than nuclear submarines. And smaller. And harder to detect.
and then used the tried and true "print money day and night till inflation is under control".
Isn't that as likely to be successful as a heroin addict who keeps shooting up until his addiction is under control?
Well, when Zimbabwe started down that road, they had 2000% annual inflation. Now it's 200+ BILLION percent. Note how well their inflation policy has worked....
protecting freedom and following the Constitution should always be done no matter what.
Much as I am an admirer of the Constitution, I feel I must point out that if ALL politicians throughout US history had followed that principle, there would be a USA and a CSA (and possibly other nations) where now there is only a USA. And that slavery would probably still be legal in the CSA, and possibly in the USA as well (the impetus to ban slavery would probably not have existed post-secession, since the USA had few slaves to free).
Given the USA's position in WW2 (the Soviet Union might have defeated the Germans by themselves, but it's by no means certain, but the UK certainly would have been forced to surrender absent aid from the USA), a significantly weakened USA (no South means no signifcant national oil production, if nothing else), hampered by a Constitution which would have prevented almost the entirety of the New Deal, would have been disastrous for what passes for civilization in the world today.
Yes, I can already hear people saying "the world would be better off if the USA weren't the 800 pound gorilla in the world today. Perhaps. But most, if not all, of Europe would be worse off for a Soviet conquest of same in 1945-46. A Australia and NZ would prolly be worse off for a Japanese conquest in the early 40's - remember that the US's interest in the Pacific was a side effect of the Spanish-American War, which might not have worked out the same way if the USA were permanently split into two countries in 1861.
These countries are printing million dollar notes because of absurd inflation and you are not allowing them to increase emssions?!
You're talking about Zimbabwe here. Which is printing million dollar banknotes to deal with their 231 billion percent annual inflation (as of the last article I read on Yahoo, yesterday or the day before).
It has nothing whatsoever to do with CO2 emissions, or even with poverty, but rather with government policies that very carefully destroyed their own economy and then used the tried and true "print money day and night till inflation is under control".
Note that any government can, by careful choice of policies, destroy its own economy. It's likely that we would do so, if we tried to implement Kyoto at this late date - a massive decrease in CO2 emissions achieved in less than four years would have disastrous effects on our (or any other) economy.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes. Alas, the steam noises from your electrical turbines and your main drive turbines more than make up for lack of pump noise.
Note that the best of the modern nuclear submarines are basically holes in the water as far as noise is concerned. That is, they're easier to identify by looking for places that normal background sea noises are not coming from.
Note also that the best of the modern diesel subs are at least that quiet, since they have all the modern advantages of the best nuke boats, without the nuisance of steam plants to make electricity and propulsion.
Note finally that nuke boats were developed to deal with strategic/operational objectives/limits of America, not because they were intrinsically better than diesels. Specifically, we wanted great range and an ability to operate continuously submerged that isn't necessarily applicable to all nation's interests. For instance, if you operate exclusively in your own national waters, then great range isn't required (unless, like the USA, your national waters are spread over thousands of miles of coastline on two oceans). And the ability to operate continuously submerged is primarily useful for missile boats. Nice for attack boats, but not strictly necessary.
Well, technically, Yahweh was a mountaintop God, not a sky God.
And "man" can only be used loosely in describing any of the variants of God you mentioned. Not sure if there's anyone outside some of the Fundie sects that believe God is a man in the sense that you use.
But I'll concede that God is invisible, at least some of the time.
Umm, no. The Gospels were supposed to have been written by the nominal authors. Whether those guys actually wrote them or not is debatable, of course.
Some parts of the Old Testament were supposed to have been dictated by God, and the Koran is supposed to have been dictated by an Angel.
And here I always thought Scientology was invented to win a bet with Bob Heinlein as to who could invent the best fictional religion. Bob wrote Stranger in a Strange Land, and L. Ron invented Scientology.
Then Bob paid off the wager.
Science doesn't actually make the assertion that we're "super-intelligent".
"Rather bright", perhaps. Or maybe "not as dumb as a platypus".
In other words, don't be so convinced of your own superiority over other lifeforms. The evidence isn't in yet that even our level of intelligence is an especially pro-survival trait - when homo sapiens sapiens has been around as long as T-Rex was (about four million years), much less as long as the common cockroach (hundreds of millions of years), then we can talk about how useful intelligence is....
Ever hear of a Church making a tithe mandatory within the last century or two? Other than State Religions, where the religion effectively has the force of government behind it, or in front of it, depending on your perspective.
You want to learn about Christianity, go to the library, borrow a good study bible (the kind that has the sidebars explaining historical context and suchlike), and read the New Testament.
Read the Old Testament if you want to understand the roots of the church, of course, as long as you remember that the Old Testament is binding on Jews, but not on Gentiles. Unless the Gentile in question chooses to be bound by it, of course.
And read the Koran, if you want to see one of the more popular responses to the early Church's responses to heresies popular in the Middle East (not all, or even most, heresies were geographically uniform - most of them originated in a specific place, and spread, or didn't, from there).
Two things:
One, during the Dark Ages, belief in a "flat earth" was far from common, whatever you may have read to the contrary.
Two, while people who believe in a "flat earth" might exhibit other signs of mental illness, belief in a "flat earth" alone would have little, if any, impact on day to day living. Unless you were an astronaut.
Which ones? I've left three branches in my life, my wife has left two. Neither of us were harassed in any way when we did so.
Alternately, I could assume that illiterate people were actually very clever. Which seems to be the stance of many semi-literate people.
But that would basically be stupid. So I won't.
Traditionally, the phrase is "once in a while".
Lucky you. I missed the reviews, read it, and wished I hadn't. It wasn't as bad as Dhalgren, but that's about all that can be said for it.
It was in the news recently - the ozone hole this past year was the fifth largest ever. Of the 30 years we've been sampling the silly thing.
They made nuclear fuel rods here. Uranium and Plutonium. Both alpha emitters. Alpha particles can be stopped by a sheet of notebook paper. Or the paint on the walls of your datacenter. Or the tiles on the floor of your datacenter. Or even the cases that your servers are in.
So, no, there's not more radiation than normal.
Actually, the planetary negamatter bomb was first. They used it on Jalte's world, on the way to the Second Galaxy. Then the nutcracker - two normal planets with intrinsic velocities in opposite directions to crunch Jarnevon. Then the Sunbeam. Then the nutcracker with FTL planets to use on Ploor and it's sun.
That said, the best weapon Smith ever invented wasn't in the Lensman series. It was the one used by Doctors Seaton and Duquesne to destroy the Chloron Galaxy. Now THAT was a doomsday weapon - it destroyed two entire galaxies.
Manifold Space.
Manifold Time was the one with the space squids.
That "means not understood by humans" (the humans who wrote the book, anyway) wouldn't happen to be "gravity", plus a measure of "orbital speed", would it?
Black holes aren't magic - they follow the same laws of orbital mechanics as the rest of us do.
If you'll remember from "Rainbow Six", the bad guys solution to that was to drop their little "improved Ebola" off at the Olympics, then when people started dying from it all over the world, to announce that they'd been working on a vaccine for Ebola, and offer said vaccine to the world.
Alas, the "vaccine" was really just an Ebola virus culture intended to ensure that everyone got the disease....
Simply put, Power is Energy per unit time. The SI unit of energy is the Joule. The SI unit of power is the Watt (one joule per second).
A megawatt-hour is an amount of energy (3.6 x 10^9 joules) used primarily by electrical providers (mostly because they sell energy, and they don't like to measure what they sell in units as small as a joule).
What's bad about "megawatts of energy per hour" is that the megawatt is a unit of power, not of energy. Megajoules of energy per hour might make sense, but since we're talking power here, why not use that ready-made SI unit of power, the "Watt" - which would let us simplify our "megajoules per hour" down to a simple "Megawatts".
For what it's worth, the failed floodwalls were built by the Army Corps of Engineers, not the New Orleans Levee Board.
Well, you only have about 90 years to prepare for the possibility that your birthplace will be 7.5 meters below sea level. Better get started right away.
Seriously, this problem is moving in slow motion - it's not like we're talking sea levels rising a meter a year or anything. Or even a meter a decade.
Third World countries don't often have submarines. When they do, they're diesel submarines. Which tend to be quieter than nuclear submarines. And smaller. And harder to detect.
Well, when Zimbabwe started down that road, they had 2000% annual inflation. Now it's 200+ BILLION percent. Note how well their inflation policy has worked....
Much as I am an admirer of the Constitution, I feel I must point out that if ALL politicians throughout US history had followed that principle, there would be a USA and a CSA (and possibly other nations) where now there is only a USA. And that slavery would probably still be legal in the CSA, and possibly in the USA as well (the impetus to ban slavery would probably not have existed post-secession, since the USA had few slaves to free).
Given the USA's position in WW2 (the Soviet Union might have defeated the Germans by themselves, but it's by no means certain, but the UK certainly would have been forced to surrender absent aid from the USA), a significantly weakened USA (no South means no signifcant national oil production, if nothing else), hampered by a Constitution which would have prevented almost the entirety of the New Deal, would have been disastrous for what passes for civilization in the world today.
Yes, I can already hear people saying "the world would be better off if the USA weren't the 800 pound gorilla in the world today. Perhaps. But most, if not all, of Europe would be worse off for a Soviet conquest of same in 1945-46. A Australia and NZ would prolly be worse off for a Japanese conquest in the early 40's - remember that the US's interest in the Pacific was a side effect of the Spanish-American War, which might not have worked out the same way if the USA were permanently split into two countries in 1861.
You're talking about Zimbabwe here. Which is printing million dollar banknotes to deal with their 231 billion percent annual inflation (as of the last article I read on Yahoo, yesterday or the day before).
It has nothing whatsoever to do with CO2 emissions, or even with poverty, but rather with government policies that very carefully destroyed their own economy and then used the tried and true "print money day and night till inflation is under control".
Note that any government can, by careful choice of policies, destroy its own economy. It's likely that we would do so, if we tried to implement Kyoto at this late date - a massive decrease in CO2 emissions achieved in less than four years would have disastrous effects on our (or any other) economy.