According to the article, most gallium that is sold is high purity, which may be part of the reason for the high price, and for this application, low grade gallium would work. Even if it is that expensive, it's a one-time investment. The gallium doesn't get used up in the reaction.
According to the article, the energy that can be extracted from the hydrogen is about the same as the energy that is released as heat, so it's still 50% efficient. And some of that heat can probably be recovered, though that would take a lot of extra hardware in the engine to do so. Also according to the article, this has an energy density about 2.5 times less per pound than gasoline, and about the same density per volume. I don't think batteries can match that yet.
The hydrogen is burned and released into the atmosphere as water. Since you get water from the environment for this in the first place, that's not the problem. The problem is getting the aluminum back, which, if you RTFA, you would have seen can be done with "fused salt electrolysis".
Yeah, because no one has ever said anything like "Back in MY day it was much colder and windier and we walked uphill to school both ways!" before the last 25 years.
This sounds like it's based on string theory. String theory has absolutely no evidence that it is correct--it just sometimes appears to describe some phenomena better than quantum mechanics or general relativity. I think of it more as a interesting mathematical construct rather than anything like a physical theory.
Not exactly. You can use it to transfer a quantum bit perfectly. This is quite useful in quantum computing (which is certainly a long way off), and useful in quantum cryptography as well (which is already here).
If the observer can be anything (a concept that is after the fact), then the inside of the box can be the observer and the cat was never in an unknown state -- only our knowledge of its state was.
Yeah that's what Einstein said, saying there was some hidden variable. Then Bell came along and gave us a way to test for it. And that test has been disproved many times over--most recently in the novel form here.
In short, you don't know what you're talking about.
What? That's nonsense. The light waves and atom waves cannot interfere since they are describing distinct particles. The process is much more like another poster described it, pushing on the atom completely out-of-phase with it. And scientists have already gotten pretty much as close as possible to absolute zero with a Bose-Einstein condensate. In a BEC, a significant portion of the particles are in their ground state, i.e. lowest energy possible.
I'd suggest that you look at the make up of any engineering or physics grad school in this country. At most, it's 50% American students. The assumption that these students with foreign-sounding names are foreign is a very safe one. Now I do think the GP is being alarmist, and that the potential military uses of this technology is so far off that restricting work on this based on citizenship is absurd.
Yes, and those sources are excellent. I probably spent 15+ hours or so researching plasma, lcd tvs, different brands, warranties, screen sizes, picture quality, best deals, etc, etc before finally settling on one. I'm sure there are many people that would love to research the topic in such depth but don't have the time--but do have the money to get advice from someone knowledgeable. If there were such a place to walk in, get all the details on all the TVs as listed above with no incentive to suggest certain items, that would be an option.
GP: [If the workload and responsibility of filling out a few forms to get free money is] too much for you to bear, then graduate school is probably not for you.
P: Have you considered the very real possibility that you're wrong?
Have you considered the very real possibility that you're lazy?
I don't know a single one of my several friends who have studied for masters or PhD's who received stipends. They all worked for a living while studying. Where do these magical american stipends come from, I wonder?
Then I doubt any of the friends you knew were in science or engineering. I can personally say that in physics I have never heard of a University not offering stipends for every graduate student--yes, in return for teaching if the funding for your group cannot support the salary of all the grad students. But I'd estimate over 50% of the physics students here are on an RA (research assistantship) not a TA (teaching assistantship). AFAIK (which I have somewhat looked in to), it is the same across the country for other science and engineering disciplines.
(Unlike humanities students, we can actually go get high-paying jobs, so they have to have some incentive to keep us in school!)
Of course not everyone should be allowed to pilot/drive a flying car. But that doesn't mean there will never be a cheap (~$30,000) flying car/plane that will require a pilot's license to operate.
That's the nature of the Internet. When I get a packet from my router, my router tells me it came from www.slashdot.org's IP address. It could easily have changed it, or completely made it up. That's where a "signature" comes in.
How I believe this signing process would work (or one example of it, anyway), is paypal uses a private key to encrypt the e-mail. Anyone can then use paypal's public key to decrypt it. They cannot, however, change the content of the e-mail and re-encrypt it, since they don't have paypal's private key. So your ISP gets the e-mail, sends the encrypted version on to gmail, which then unencrypts it using paypal's public key.
It's sort of the opposite of regular public key encryption: anyone can decode the message using the public key, but to create (or modify) a message, you need the private key.
Slashdot Mirror
According to the article, most gallium that is sold is high purity, which may be part of the reason for the high price, and for this application, low grade gallium would work. Even if it is that expensive, it's a one-time investment. The gallium doesn't get used up in the reaction.
According to the article, the energy that can be extracted from the hydrogen is about the same as the energy that is released as heat, so it's still 50% efficient. And some of that heat can probably be recovered, though that would take a lot of extra hardware in the engine to do so. Also according to the article, this has an energy density about 2.5 times less per pound than gasoline, and about the same density per volume. I don't think batteries can match that yet.
Yes we do. Nuclear energy is cheap, clean, and plentiful.
The hydrogen is burned and released into the atmosphere as water. Since you get water from the environment for this in the first place, that's not the problem. The problem is getting the aluminum back, which, if you RTFA, you would have seen can be done with "fused salt electrolysis".
Um...you got any better ideas of how to explain the empirical data? If not, then STFU.
Um...I did? I'll rephrase my point is a less sarcastic way.
It is foolish to base your conclusion of global warming based on the anecdotal memory of two people.
Don't take that to mean that I'm calling your father & grandfather liars.
Yeah, because no one has ever said anything like "Back in MY day it was much colder and windier and we walked uphill to school both ways!" before the last 25 years.
From your link: "This quantity was far greater than the supply, and Bayer lacked the capacity to produce such a large quantity in a timely manner."
Sounds like the manufacturers couldn't produce the drugs, so the government stepped in to ramp up production. Not exactly what you made it sound like.
So some people feel so guilty about using power, they are willing to pay 4x as much?
This sounds like it's based on string theory. String theory has absolutely no evidence that it is correct--it just sometimes appears to describe some phenomena better than quantum mechanics or general relativity. I think of it more as a interesting mathematical construct rather than anything like a physical theory.
Not exactly. You can use it to transfer a quantum bit perfectly. This is quite useful in quantum computing (which is certainly a long way off), and useful in quantum cryptography as well (which is already here).
If the observer can be anything (a concept that is after the fact), then the inside of the box can be the observer and the cat was never in an unknown state -- only our knowledge of its state was.
Yeah that's what Einstein said, saying there was some hidden variable. Then Bell came along and gave us a way to test for it. And that test has been disproved many times over--most recently in the novel form here.
In short, you don't know what you're talking about.
What? That's nonsense. The light waves and atom waves cannot interfere since they are describing distinct particles. The process is much more like another poster described it, pushing on the atom completely out-of-phase with it. And scientists have already gotten pretty much as close as possible to absolute zero with a Bose-Einstein condensate. In a BEC, a significant portion of the particles are in their ground state, i.e. lowest energy possible.
I'd suggest that you look at the make up of any engineering or physics grad school in this country. At most, it's 50% American students. The assumption that these students with foreign-sounding names are foreign is a very safe one. Now I do think the GP is being alarmist, and that the potential military uses of this technology is so far off that restricting work on this based on citizenship is absurd.
There is nothing wrong with being proud of your country, just as there is nothing wrong with being proud of your ethnic and racial heritage.
Yes, and those sources are excellent. I probably spent 15+ hours or so researching plasma, lcd tvs, different brands, warranties, screen sizes, picture quality, best deals, etc, etc before finally settling on one. I'm sure there are many people that would love to research the topic in such depth but don't have the time--but do have the money to get advice from someone knowledgeable. If there were such a place to walk in, get all the details on all the TVs as listed above with no incentive to suggest certain items, that would be an option.
Maglev! Discover a room temperature superconductor, spray it on all the roads, and have a giant electromagnet in your plane.
Hm...I think I fell for a troll...
GP: [If the workload and responsibility of filling out a few forms to get free money is] too much for you to bear, then graduate school is probably not for you.
P: Have you considered the very real possibility that you're wrong?
Have you considered the very real possibility that you're lazy?
I've been looking for a "Hey! You sound like you might be the right man for the job!" type of opportunity for eight years.
Um...wow? You don't think you should have to put any effort into looking for a job (or applying to graduate school)?
Welcome to life. You're losing.
I don't know a single one of my several friends who have studied for masters or PhD's who received stipends. They all worked for a living while studying. Where do these magical american stipends come from, I wonder?
Then I doubt any of the friends you knew were in science or engineering. I can personally say that in physics I have never heard of a University not offering stipends for every graduate student--yes, in return for teaching if the funding for your group cannot support the salary of all the grad students. But I'd estimate over 50% of the physics students here are on an RA (research assistantship) not a TA (teaching assistantship). AFAIK (which I have somewhat looked in to), it is the same across the country for other science and engineering disciplines.
(Unlike humanities students, we can actually go get high-paying jobs, so they have to have some incentive to keep us in school!)
Of course not everyone should be allowed to pilot/drive a flying car. But that doesn't mean there will never be a cheap (~$30,000) flying car/plane that will require a pilot's license to operate.
Hook up a diesel-powered UPS to a computer!
I want my flying car by 2015.
That's the nature of the Internet. When I get a packet from my router, my router tells me it came from www.slashdot.org's IP address. It could easily have changed it, or completely made it up. That's where a "signature" comes in.
How I believe this signing process would work (or one example of it, anyway), is paypal uses a private key to encrypt the e-mail. Anyone can then use paypal's public key to decrypt it. They cannot, however, change the content of the e-mail and re-encrypt it, since they don't have paypal's private key. So your ISP gets the e-mail, sends the encrypted version on to gmail, which then unencrypts it using paypal's public key.
It's sort of the opposite of regular public key encryption: anyone can decode the message using the public key, but to create (or modify) a message, you need the private key.