It also needs some commodity parts for full replication. This is also still in active development, and I'm glad to see multiple groups working on this concept.
Presumably this happened around the time the Earth formed, or at least before life developed here. The neutron star has presumably long since drifted away.
This sounds like it is another candidate solution to Fermi's paradox. If the genesis of life requires chiral chemicals (as suggested in the article), and if this only feasible through polarized neutron star radiation, and if such radiation events are rare then this could vastly reduce the number of planets in our galaxy expected to develop life. A lot of 'ifs' in this argument, so it's probably best not to take it too seriously at this point, but this type of condition (the young Earth being in a very unusual interstellar environment) may well be what kept life from overrunning the Universe.
And don't forget - by writing the things down you will actually engage your brain much more and therefore improve the learning of what's taught. I always found the reverse. I could either pay attention and try to understand the ideas presented in the lecture, or I could write what I saw and heard for reference later. Which was more effective depended on the class. There was rarely time for both.
Without an oxygen rich environment to free the molybdenum, there's no significant nitrogen fixation and thus those plants are going to be hurting pretty quickly. There is significant nitrogen fixation from lightning, currently thought to be over 5% of the natural total. This is well known, and I'm sure the authors of the paper are aware of it. The article states that a low level of nitrogen fixation favors prokaryotes, but it's unclear if this is just generally true in a low nitrogen environment, or if only nitrogen fixing bacteria are thought to have thrived when the level of molybdenum was low.
The new lithium/phosphate batteries don't seem to have any notably toxic components, and in the larger uses (like cars) they'll almost always be recycled anyway.
Hydrogen might work out in the future as a storage/distribution medium, but for now there are still a lot of problems to be overcome. I think it's a long shot.
...an unlimited source of energy in the Sun. I understand why you would say this, but you think too small for my tastes. The Sun doesn't contain enough energy in total for some of my more grandiose schemes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abundances_of_the_elements_(data_page) World reserves of elements are usually misleading since the interest is in ores that are profitable at current prices and with current technology. An increase in demand will often lead to changes in both.
...there's this problem of obtaining lithium which isn't nearly as abundant as nickel. Lithium is about half as abundant as nickel, which isn't that great a difference. For comparison, boron, only half as abundant as lithium, is thrown away with the wash by people who use Borax.
Considering that the lithium used will eventually be recycled, I don't expect lithium availability to be a major long term bottleneck.
Here it discusses the earlier concern about water vapor in the stratosphere reducing ozone concentrations, and that this is no longer thought to be a problem. It goes on to suggest NOx from large numbers of SSTs, which was a worry even before the CFC problem was identified, is still considered a potential danger.
I don't see how planting trees helps in the long run, either. What would help is harvesting trees, then storing the wood (carbon) somewhere where it won't decompose or burn for at least thousands of years. In essence, turn the trees into coal. Then the land will be available to grow more trees, continuing the process. You would need to fertilize the forests to replace the minerals taken out with the wood, of course.
It would probably be cheaper and less damaging to the environment to just stop mining coal in the first place.
It's 4.22 K at one atmosphere. At higher pressure it stays liquid at higher temperatures. At the easily achieved critical pressure of 2.24 atm, helium will stay liquid all the way up to 5.19 K, but that's as good as it gets.
(I was looking up the values to reply to the GP, but you beat me to it)
assuming the 25% capacity, and I don't know how reasonable that is It's on the high side, although you could do a bit better than that in parts of the Sahara. In much of the southwestern USA desert you can get at least 20%, however.
Hillary said a bunch of stuff but it was the kind of stuff that a politician would say. That's pretty much my reason for not supporting her. Ever since she went on a "listening tour" to learn what positions she needed to take to win her senate seat I've been distrustful of her. Add in her whilom support of our excursion in Iraq and I find her quite unappealing.
So they've demonstrated 10 charge/discharge cycles? Well, you have to start somewhere, but that shows how early this news is in the possible development of a commercial product. Something to keep an eye on, though.
But why would you choose a subduction zone? Does the mud there have some particular property making it suitable for long term storage? The subduction process is too slow to be useful. Why wouldn't the abyssal plain be better?
Seriously, we have little practical experience with burying dangerous chemicals for long term storage under the ocean, and I don't trust it. Another concern is that if a ship sinks carrying waste you could have a very difficult and dangerous clean up operation. Nuclear waste should be kept where we can monitor it.
Yes, of course, but there was no mention of fission reactions in your original post. Thinking about it now I realize you probably meant to say "fission fuel", but I didn't realize that earlier.
I don't like the idea of storing dangerous waste under corrosive sea water in a place that is hard to monitor, and even harder to do something about it if a problem is discovered. Even if you think that is not such a big problem, why put it in a seismically active zone? The speed of subduction is so slow that it is almost irrelevant, so there is no gain from the risk.
You ever grow potatoes? They produce fruit, something like a cherry tomato, and inside there are real seeds. They aren't usually used because you won't get the exact same variety by planting them.
And what about the size, compared to SRAM and DRAM? From the article:
The unique MRAM was designed and fabricated by NEC and has a memory capacity of 1 megabit. I was hoping for better.
Slashdot Mirror
A different, but similar project has already been discussed on slashdot here: http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/01/09/2239206/
It also needs some commodity parts for full replication. This is also still in active development, and I'm glad to see multiple groups working on this concept.
Presumably this happened around the time the Earth formed, or at least before life developed here. The neutron star has presumably long since drifted away.
This sounds like it is another candidate solution to Fermi's paradox. If the genesis of life requires chiral chemicals (as suggested in the article), and if this only feasible through polarized neutron star radiation, and if such radiation events are rare then this could vastly reduce the number of planets in our galaxy expected to develop life. A lot of 'ifs' in this argument, so it's probably best not to take it too seriously at this point, but this type of condition (the young Earth being in a very unusual interstellar environment) may well be what kept life from overrunning the Universe.
The new lithium/phosphate batteries don't seem to have any notably toxic components, and in the larger uses (like cars) they'll almost always be recycled anyway.
Hydrogen might work out in the future as a storage/distribution medium, but for now there are still a lot of problems to be overcome. I think it's a long shot.
...an unlimited source of energy in the Sun. I understand why you would say this, but you think too small for my tastes. The Sun doesn't contain enough energy in total for some of my more grandiose schemes.However, extracting Mg metal from its ore is even more strongly endothermic. That energy still needs to come somewhere.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abundances_of_the_elements_(data_page)
World reserves of elements are usually misleading since the interest is in ores that are profitable at current prices and with current technology. An increase in demand will often lead to changes in both.
...there's this problem of obtaining lithium which isn't nearly as abundant as nickel. Lithium is about half as abundant as nickel, which isn't that great a difference. For comparison, boron, only half as abundant as lithium, is thrown away with the wash by people who use Borax.Considering that the lithium used will eventually be recycled, I don't expect lithium availability to be a major long term bottleneck.
Here it discusses the earlier concern about water vapor in the stratosphere reducing ozone concentrations, and that this is no longer thought to be a problem. It goes on to suggest NOx from large numbers of SSTs, which was a worry even before the CFC problem was identified, is still considered a potential danger.
I don't see how planting trees helps in the long run, either. What would help is harvesting trees, then storing the wood (carbon) somewhere where it won't decompose or burn for at least thousands of years. In essence, turn the trees into coal. Then the land will be available to grow more trees, continuing the process. You would need to fertilize the forests to replace the minerals taken out with the wood, of course.
It would probably be cheaper and less damaging to the environment to just stop mining coal in the first place.
It's 4.22 K at one atmosphere. At higher pressure it stays liquid at higher temperatures. At the easily achieved critical pressure of 2.24 atm, helium will stay liquid all the way up to 5.19 K, but that's as good as it gets.
(I was looking up the values to reply to the GP, but you beat me to it)
The more you save the more electricity France can sell to Italy to reduce their emissions.
This is the way life is, and there's no way around it.
That comment was originally posted here: http://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=393354&cid=21751726/, where it at least made sense. I don't know why it was reposted here, unless it was in annoyance of it having been moderated "Flamebait".
So they've demonstrated 10 charge/discharge cycles? Well, you have to start somewhere, but that shows how early this news is in the possible development of a commercial product. Something to keep an eye on, though.
But why would you choose a subduction zone? Does the mud there have some particular property making it suitable for long term storage? The subduction process is too slow to be useful. Why wouldn't the abyssal plain be better?
Seriously, we have little practical experience with burying dangerous chemicals for long term storage under the ocean, and I don't trust it. Another concern is that if a ship sinks carrying waste you could have a very difficult and dangerous clean up operation. Nuclear waste should be kept where we can monitor it.
Yes, of course, but there was no mention of fission reactions in your original post. Thinking about it now I realize you probably meant to say "fission fuel", but I didn't realize that earlier.
Assuming a D-T fusion reaction:
Deuterium was mostly created in the Big Bang. Tritium is bred from lithium, and some of that is from the same event.
I don't like the idea of storing dangerous waste under corrosive sea water in a place that is hard to monitor, and even harder to do something about it if a problem is discovered. Even if you think that is not such a big problem, why put it in a seismically active zone? The speed of subduction is so slow that it is almost irrelevant, so there is no gain from the risk.
You ever grow potatoes? They produce fruit, something like a cherry tomato, and inside there are real seeds. They aren't usually used because you won't get the exact same variety by planting them.
Are Slashdot readers only average American's now? That's why so many people are bringing this up: It's insulting!