Two University of Wisconsin-Madison scientists believe moon rocks contain all the energy the United States needs for the next millennium.
I love it. We don't even have economic fusion yet, and these guys are talking about mining the fuel from the moon.
It would seem that with standard deuterium and tritium fusion, involving only plentiful isotopes of hydrogen found on Earth, there's utterly no need to get helium from the moon.
The main problem is the mastering the fusion process itself, not where we're gonna get the fuel from!
Re:Spirit not that impressive...?
on
News from Mars
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· Score: 1
Where was the news media?
The media covered it, but I believe the Soviets hampered the coverage a bit, with their secretive ways.
A one-way trip to Mars need not mean a quick demise.
I love this quote. It's probably true. It might only mean a slow demise. Or "not quick" in the sense that smashing into the planet at 11 miles/sec would be "quick".
Of course, this is the same fantasy author that gives us quotes like
Every two years the orbit of Mars creates a window of opportunity to send fresh supplies at a reasonable cost.
This is utterly false. The fact is that every two years the orbit of Mars creates a window of opportunity to send fresh supplies at a lesser cost than at other points in the orbit. But the cost is still extremely high and extremely risky.
Here's another gem:
Though a freeze-dried desert today, it was once warm and wet, with lakes, rivers, active volcanoes and a thick atmosphere
This has not been proved at all. This is pure fantasy and speculation, and I don't think it's likely. I doubt it was ever warm, or that it ever had a thick atmosphere. It appears that liquid water in fairly large amounts did exist at some point in its history, but the evidence suggests it was not for a long time.
I think sending someone to Mars planning to die would be a lot worse than sending them to Mars where death is not part of the plan.
Yeah, I think so. I have actually used this term when making telescopic observations of Mars, and describing directions.
"Areographic" or geographic directions are mirror-reversed from celestial directions used to describe directional relationships in the sky, which is why the distinction needs to be made.
I always thought that if there were two conditions which are both both necessary and sufficient, then they must be equal.
Yeah, I overstated it.
In logic when you're trying to prove a theorem (ie., P == Q), it can always take the form of two sides:
if P then Q
and
if Q then P
The first condition states the necessity of Q for P.
The second condition states the sufficency of Q for P.
I overstated the case in saying that the presence of a bunch of tangled, ugly unmaintainable code is a necessary condition for re-writing it. I think it actually only needs to be re-written if it has to be maintained!
"The internals of the version 5 interpreter are so tangled that they hinder maintenance, thwart some new feature efforts, and scare off potential internals hackers. The language as of version 5 has some misfeatures that are a hassle to ongoing maintenance of the interpreter and of programs written in Perl."
For me, this is a necessary and sufficient condition for rewriting something.
Another one is: When changing the original will take longer than rewriting from scratch.
Don't forget that its weight on Mars is about 1/3 its weight on earth, so something that looks like it would be flimsy on earth might well not be flimsy at all on Mars.
Yeah, I think it's the one straight back in the photo of the lander. (The rover turned about 120 degrees clockwise to get off the lander) There's another bag on the left.
They were afraid one of the solar panels would brush it, and they weren't sure of the consequences, so they took the conservative route.
Here's a photo of the landing platform it just rolled off of.
From the cited article: 'Data from the Spirit rover shows it completed this morning's drive off the lander at 3:41 a.m. EST. Confirmation was received on Earth just before 5 a.m. EST, verifying that Spirit had performed the 10-foot voyage on its own.
The move took approximately 78 seconds, ending with the back of the rover about 2.6 feet away from the lander egress ramp, officials report.
"It's as if we get to drive a nice sports car, but in the end we're just the valets who bring it around to the front and give the keys to the science team," says flight director Chris Lewicki.'
InfoWorld has a report that has some interesting info in it:
1) 'SCO hopes to make the license available in countries such as Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and China by February 1, but is not yet certain which countries will be added, the spokesman said. "We're still doing a review of the legal rules of being able to offer this license in other countries," he said.'
2) 'Germany, however, will not be on the list because of a court order that prohibits SCO from "even talking about" its license, the spokesman said.'
3) 'One industry analyst firm is advising companies against purchasing SCO's license until the company settles lawsuits with IBM Corp. and Red Hat Inc. that related to its IP claims. "We don't feel that companies would be advised to pay any license fees until the actual decision of whether there is an infringement is settled in a court," said George Weiss, a vice president and research director in Gartner Inc.'s server group.'
"The molecules simply decouple and turn into individual hydrogen and oxigen atoms (albeit it's possible there's some intermediate compound, I don't remember)."
You were referring to (low-temperature) boiling.
The process you are actually talking about is ionization, not boiling.
Water exposed to space in sunlight in the immediately vicinity of the earth would rapidly boil, then ionize.
The ionized and glowing gas can actually be seen from the night-side of the earth, for example, when a space shuttle does a waste-water dump. It looks like a cirrus cloud.
400 years ago, it was not known that they were ice.
In fact, it is only within that last 40 or so years that one of them was known to be primarily water ice, and the other was known to be primarily dry ice (ie., frozen CO2).
The significance of today's discovery is that there is more evidence that there was liquid water (not just ice) present when some of the rocks around the Rover were formed.
I saw a Cops rerun over the weekend. They were dealing with an alligator on the loose. They called in a couple of alligator trappers, and guess what they used to clamp the alligator's jaw?
Duct tape.
When my wife saw that, she laughed and remarked that duct tape can fix anything.
Pressure goes to 0. Volume becomes essentially infinite. Temperature probably remains about constant.
So the gas doesn't freeze, or liquify, but just disperses.
For a slow expansion of a fixed quantity of air in a confined volume (which is not at all like what is happening on the ISS), the gas would probably liquify on the walls of the container, but I doubt it would freeze: It's not cold enough, even in space. I think it would have to be within a few micro-Kelvins of absolute zero, and even then might not freeze, due to quantum uncertainty.
Space (far from the sun) is about 3 degrees Kelvin, due to the cosmic background radiation.
Slashdot Mirror
I love it. We don't even have economic fusion yet, and these guys are talking about mining the fuel from the moon.
It would seem that with standard deuterium and tritium fusion, involving only plentiful isotopes of hydrogen found on Earth, there's utterly no need to get helium from the moon.
The main problem is the mastering the fusion process itself, not where we're gonna get the fuel from!
The media covered it, but I believe the Soviets hampered the coverage a bit, with their secretive ways.
This guy plays by EA's rules, and when he doesn't, he gets kicked out. Seems like EA is exercising their freedom to associate (or dissociate)!
Maybe.
It seems like the key element is that it detects REM -- ie., when you are dreaming.
Suggesting subject matter for the dream does not seem unrealistic.
I have had dreams where I became aware I was dreaming, and so I decided to steer the dream, like starting to fly or something like that.
Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't work, and sometimes it caused me to wake up!
Probably the same is true with this device.
Yes, it seems misused in this context. Perhaps a better choice in a similar vein would have been "Herculean", meaning "strong", or "immense".
I love this quote. It's probably true. It might only mean a slow demise. Or "not quick" in the sense that smashing into the planet at 11 miles/sec would be "quick".
Of course, this is the same fantasy author that gives us quotes like
This is utterly false. The fact is that every two years the orbit of Mars creates a window of opportunity to send fresh supplies at a lesser cost than at other points in the orbit. But the cost is still extremely high and extremely risky.
Here's another gem:
This has not been proved at all. This is pure fantasy and speculation, and I don't think it's likely. I doubt it was ever warm, or that it ever had a thick atmosphere. It appears that liquid water in fairly large amounts did exist at some point in its history, but the evidence suggests it was not for a long time.
I think sending someone to Mars planning to die would be a lot worse than sending them to Mars where death is not part of the plan.
Ooops!
Yeah, I think so. I have actually used this term when making telescopic observations of Mars, and describing directions.
"Areographic" or geographic directions are mirror-reversed from celestial directions used to describe directional relationships in the sky, which is why the distinction needs to be made.
This article has the same subject and some of the same references as this one from yesterday.
Yeah, I overstated it.
In logic when you're trying to prove a theorem (ie., P == Q), it can always take the form of two sides:
if P then Q
and
if Q then P
The first condition states the necessity of Q for P.
The second condition states the sufficency of Q for P.
I overstated the case in saying that the presence of a bunch of tangled, ugly unmaintainable code is a necessary condition for re-writing it. I think it actually only needs to be re-written if it has to be maintained!
From the Perl 6 development webpage:
"The internals of the version 5 interpreter are so tangled that they hinder maintenance, thwart some new feature efforts, and scare off potential internals hackers. The language as of version 5 has some misfeatures that are a hassle to ongoing maintenance of the interpreter and of programs written in Perl."
For me, this is a necessary and sufficient condition for rewriting something.
Another one is: When changing the original will take longer than rewriting from scratch.
Don't forget that its weight on Mars is about 1/3 its weight on earth, so something that looks like it would be flimsy on earth might well not be flimsy at all on Mars.
Yeah, I think it's the one straight back in the photo of the lander. (The rover turned about 120 degrees clockwise to get off the lander) There's another bag on the left.
They were afraid one of the solar panels would brush it, and they weren't sure of the consequences, so they took the conservative route.
There is also information from SpaceFlightNow here and here.
Here's a photo of the landing platform it just rolled off of.
From the cited article: 'Data from the Spirit rover shows it completed this morning's drive off the lander at 3:41 a.m. EST. Confirmation was received on Earth just before 5 a.m. EST, verifying that Spirit had performed the 10-foot voyage on its own.
The move took approximately 78 seconds, ending with the back of the rover about 2.6 feet away from the lander egress ramp, officials report.
"It's as if we get to drive a nice sports car, but in the end we're just the valets who bring it around to the front and give the keys to the science team," says flight director Chris Lewicki.'
InfoWorld has a report that has some interesting info in it:
1) 'SCO hopes to make the license available in countries such as Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and China by February 1, but is not yet certain which countries will be added, the spokesman said. "We're still doing a review of the legal rules of being able to offer this license in other countries," he said.'
2) 'Germany, however, will not be on the list because of a court order that prohibits SCO from "even talking about" its license, the spokesman said.'
3) 'One industry analyst firm is advising companies against purchasing SCO's license until the company settles lawsuits with IBM Corp. and Red Hat Inc. that related to its IP claims. "We don't feel that companies would be advised to pay any license fees until the actual decision of whether there is an infringement is settled in a court," said George Weiss, a vice president and research director in Gartner Inc.'s server group.'
Well, String Theory ought to be able to handle this. If it can't, then String Theory is out.
From what I know of String Theory (very little), it is consistent.
The "quark-gluon plasma" is a description from the point of view of the Standard Model of quantum mechanics.
The article itself calls it "quark-gluon plasma".
It's like extremely hot fire. Extremely hot.
Check this out.
Water has three states:
solid (ice)
liquid (liquid water)
gas (water vapor)
Steam is actually an aerosol form of liquid water. In other words, it is microscopic liquid water droplets suspended in the air.
Steam quickly evaporates, i.e., converts to water vapor.
You were referring to (low-temperature) boiling.
The process you are actually talking about is ionization, not boiling.
Water exposed to space in sunlight in the immediately vicinity of the earth would rapidly boil, then ionize.
The ionized and glowing gas can actually be seen from the night-side of the earth, for example, when a space shuttle does a waste-water dump. It looks like a cirrus cloud.
I think I had my Hematite removed years ago, but it did form in the presence of water, and a LOT of gas.
Thanks.
400 years ago, it was not known that they were ice.
In fact, it is only within that last 40 or so years that one of them was known to be primarily water ice, and the other was known to be primarily dry ice (ie., frozen CO2).
The significance of today's discovery is that there is more evidence that there was liquid water (not just ice) present when some of the rocks around the Rover were formed.
I saw a Cops rerun over the weekend. They were dealing with an alligator on the loose. They called in a couple of alligator trappers, and guess what they used to clamp the alligator's jaw?
Duct tape.
When my wife saw that, she laughed and remarked that duct tape can fix anything.
PV = nRT
Pressure goes to 0.
Volume becomes essentially infinite.
Temperature probably remains about constant.
So the gas doesn't freeze, or liquify, but just disperses.
For a slow expansion of a fixed quantity of air in a confined volume (which is not at all like what is happening on the ISS), the gas would probably liquify on the walls of the container, but I doubt it would freeze: It's not cold enough, even in space. I think it would have to be within a few micro-Kelvins of absolute zero, and even then might not freeze, due to quantum uncertainty.
Space (far from the sun) is about 3 degrees Kelvin, due to the cosmic background radiation.
I think it would be exceedingly difficult to colonize worlds outside the developmental zone.
On the outside, you would either have to bring all your raw materials with you, or you would have to be able to manufacture them.
On the inside, you would have to bring sufficient shielding or construct it and reconstitute your environment when it got damaged.
Therefore, I think the habitable zone shrinks down to the developmental zone in practice.
There's not really a conundrum of where THEY are: THEY are few and far between.