When it is solid, heat is transfered mainly by conduction. When liquid, heat is transfered by both conduction and convection. Granted, conduction in a solid is usually a bit greater than in a liquid, but convective transfer is typically greater than conductive.
You know, I've never seen an explanation of why they went to copper interconnects and not silver. Silver is a better conductor, and the material cost doesn't seem significant.
I'm sure there IS a good reason, I just wonder what it is.
I agree about it being every citizen's duty to uphold the constitution, even if the Supreme Court has a different interpretation.
The courts don't seem to agree, though. Jurors are told only decide what the facts are, and then rule according to the court's instructions.
Judges banning arguing for jury nullification during a trial is not the only way citizen's judgments are being removed from our courts. Jurors are asked before being selected if they have a problem convicting for certain crimes, and they are kicked out of the jury pool if they do. So if you think that laws outlawing drug possession, for example, are unconstitutional, you are eliminated from the jury pool even before the lawyers start kicking people out. At least you are if you tell the truth during voir dire.
I have seen reports of jurors being dismissed, and replaced by alternates, for not deliberating properly. I'm worried that jury decisions will start to be regularly thrown out for 'improper' deliberation about the correctness or fairness of a law.
The only answer I can see is that we need to start an underground public information campaign about the need to lie to judges when they ask questions that could be used abridge your right to decide a case based on your belief in what is fair and constitutional. If you feel your reasons for deciding a case may not be allowed by the court, say you believe whatever ridiculous argument is put forth by one of the lawyers, and keep voting your convictions.
Hot rocks and sea water probably means cracked rocks and water migration. Look at how hard it has been to be certain Yucca Mountain is stable. I can't imagine how to certify that a subduction zone offers no transport route to the surface.
Ok, more likely warm mud than hot rocks, which might have lower migration, but how can we be certain?
Transporting nuclear wastes to a subduction zones runs the risk of a loaded ship sinking into deep water. Recovery might be impossible. People worry about transporting nuclear materials by railroad, ship transport looks much more dangerous.
The slow rate of subduction makes it not very important. If wastes are stored a thousand meters deep, it will take about ten thousand years for them to be subducted to double their burial depth, by which time the radioactivity of the wastes will be about that of the original ore.
Drilling deep holes deep under water is possible, but very difficult. I don't see any significant advantage gained from all that work.
I don't see the appeal of subduction zones for waste storage. We would be putting dangerous materials in a high pressure, corrosive (sea water) environment, and where a leak would contaminate 11/16 of the earth. All this so subduction would move the wastes some three inches farther away each year.
I think an interesting idea is for above ground storage of vitrified wastes where we could keep an eye on them and monitor for potential leaks. This would also keep them available for reprocessing, should we decide to do so in the future.
The long term danger of nuclear wastes is exagerated. The really bad stuff decays within a few centuries, so that what is left after a thousand or so years isn't much worse than high grade arsenic ore. Not nice stuff, but easily managed in moderate amounts.
I am using Firefox, and the message shows up for me. This is the sort of thing I would find very confusing if I saw it while browsing.
I suppose this because I have my background color very dark and my text color light. I really don't see how people can tolerate this dark text on a white field standard that all the GUIs use.
You were the first person in this thread to mention astronauts, though prior ones sort of implied it. See the other reply to my post for a way around the implication.
Neither the blurb nor the early comments mentioned that it was a robotic mission. I was mostly trying to provide that information to those who hadn't read the article, rather than criticize you.
The fact that a robotic mission is being proposed, and that there is a stronger commitment to de-orbit Hubble safely than repair it, makes the news much less exciting than it seemed at first.
Since these panels also function as digital displays, they probably are not cost effective unless you really WANT a display (for advertising, I guess).
If they catch on enough, a cheaper non-display version could along in the future, once the economy of scale kicks in.
The proportion of heavy elements in our solar system is unusually high for one as old as ours, though not by a huge margin. There are plenty of older systems with more heavy elements.
While this could enhance the odds of ours being the first technological species in our galaxy, it seems too small an edge to pay much attention to.
Evidence for liquid water was not expected on Mars, to the extent that a lot of thought was put into finding other explanations for the apparent water channels, such gas flows. Water was the cause that came to be generally agreed on.
Once it was accepted that the Martian features were carved by water, it was proposed that there might just have been a few brief, local, episodes of liquid water on Mars, caused by such events as magma rising to near the surface and melting a lot of permafrost.
The Opportunity investigations of Eagle crater finally showed that there was water standing long enough to form sediments, but that might have taken only many thousands of years. The new evidence in Endurance crater seems to imply millions of years of standing water, which is news, although no longer unexpected.
Planetary scientists think a significant part of Europa is liquid water, so it looks like there's another "planet" with liquid water in our own system.
Ok, it's a moon, not a planet, but the distinction doesn't seem important in this discussion.
Crafty won a major chess tournament at the beginning of 2004, CCT-6.
Crafty was running on the best computer used in the tournament, a quad Opteron, which must have helped. Crafty is close enough to the best programs that over eleven rounds it has an outside chance of winning.
If the center of mass is at GEO, it will come crashing down, as Blaise explains on his site. This is because the gravitational pull lessens with distance, and the elevator is not even close to being an ideal point object.
If you want want a usable and stable elevator, you want significant tension in the cable, from a center of mass well above the minimum.
Fossils are found in the La Brea tar pits because they got trapped in the sticky tar. This started happening a few tens of thousands of years ago, after the tar was exposed on the surface. The tar was formed millions of years ago, but the extreme conditions that change buried organic matter to tar don't preserve fossils.
The tar sands have had no opportunity to acquire fossils except for the surface layer; and, since they are not sticky like real tar pits, not a large number even there.
In order for life to evolve, it has to be very tolerant of mutations, even if most of them are harmful. This ability is amazing, but there is no reason for us to design such capability into our creations. Instead, we would have checksums that would stop the creation of any variants.
How likely is it that a flaw in the mask used to create the processor in your computer would have improved it? The flexibility to have errors evolve into improvements just isn't there.
Actually, one of the thing I think Drexler got wrong in "Engines of Creation" is the assemblers carrying around instructions on how to copy themselves. I think they would be kept separate.
Slashdot Mirror
This one? http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm? story_id=706591
When it is solid, heat is transfered mainly by conduction. When liquid, heat is transfered by both conduction and convection. Granted, conduction in a solid is usually a bit greater than in a liquid, but convective transfer is typically greater than conductive.
You know, I've never seen an explanation of why they went to copper interconnects and not silver. Silver is a better conductor, and the material cost doesn't seem significant.
I'm sure there IS a good reason, I just wonder what it is.
An EMACS clone yes, but Mince Is Not Complete EMACS!
I agree about it being every citizen's duty to uphold the constitution, even if the Supreme Court has a different interpretation.
The courts don't seem to agree, though. Jurors are told only decide what the facts are, and then rule according to the court's instructions.
Judges banning arguing for jury nullification during a trial is not the only way citizen's judgments are being removed from our courts. Jurors are asked before being selected if they have a problem convicting for certain crimes, and they are kicked out of the jury pool if they do. So if you think that laws outlawing drug possession, for example, are unconstitutional, you are eliminated from the jury pool even before the lawyers start kicking people out. At least you are if you tell the truth during voir dire.
I have seen reports of jurors being dismissed, and replaced by alternates, for not deliberating properly. I'm worried that jury decisions will start to be regularly thrown out for 'improper' deliberation about the correctness or fairness of a law.
The only answer I can see is that we need to start an underground public information campaign about the need to lie to judges when they ask questions that could be used abridge your right to decide a case based on your belief in what is fair and constitutional. If you feel your reasons for deciding a case may not be allowed by the court, say you believe whatever ridiculous argument is put forth by one of the lawyers, and keep voting your convictions.
The OnTheIssues quiz was interesting.
I got a 30% match with both Bush and Kerry.
I knew I didn't really LIKE either of them.
Hot rocks and sea water probably means cracked rocks and water migration. Look at how hard it has been to be certain Yucca Mountain is stable. I can't imagine how to certify that a subduction zone offers no transport route to the surface.
Ok, more likely warm mud than hot rocks, which might have lower migration, but how can we be certain?
Transporting nuclear wastes to a subduction zones runs the risk of a loaded ship sinking into deep water. Recovery might be impossible. People worry about transporting nuclear materials by railroad, ship transport looks much more dangerous.
The slow rate of subduction makes it not very important. If wastes are stored a thousand meters deep, it will take about ten thousand years for them to be subducted to double their burial depth, by which time the radioactivity of the wastes will be about that of the original ore.
Drilling deep holes deep under water is possible, but very difficult. I don't see any significant advantage gained from all that work.
I don't see the appeal of subduction zones for waste storage. We would be putting dangerous materials in a high pressure, corrosive (sea water) environment, and where a leak would contaminate 11/16 of the earth. All this so subduction would move the wastes some three inches farther away each year.
I think an interesting idea is for above ground storage of vitrified wastes where we could keep an eye on them and monitor for potential leaks. This would also keep them available for reprocessing, should we decide to do so in the future.
The long term danger of nuclear wastes is exagerated. The really bad stuff decays within a few centuries, so that what is left after a thousand or so years isn't much worse than high grade arsenic ore. Not nice stuff, but easily managed in moderate amounts.
I am using Firefox, and the message shows up for me. This is the sort of thing I would find very confusing if I saw it while browsing.
I suppose this because I have my background color very dark and my text color light. I really don't see how people can tolerate this dark text on a white field standard that all the GUIs use.
Unless space is quantized, as has been hypothesized.
"Two cars colliding head on at 60 mph..."
Right, it's the same as hitting a PARKED car at 120 mph, not an immovable object.
Of course, if you if you hit a smallish sort of tree, instead of the large one mentioned, it might work out about the same.
You were the first person in this thread to mention astronauts, though prior ones sort of implied it. See the other reply to my post for a way around the implication.
Neither the blurb nor the early comments mentioned that it was a robotic mission. I was mostly trying to provide that information to those who hadn't read the article, rather than criticize you.
The fact that a robotic mission is being proposed, and that there is a stronger commitment to de-orbit Hubble safely than repair it, makes the news much less exciting than it seemed at first.
Astronauts?
This is to be a robotic mision, no astronauts (or shuttles) involved.
Since these panels also function as digital displays, they probably are not cost effective unless you really WANT a display (for advertising, I guess).
If they catch on enough, a cheaper non-display version could along in the future, once the economy of scale kicks in.
The proportion of heavy elements in our solar system is unusually high for one as old as ours, though not by a huge margin. There are plenty of older systems with more heavy elements.
While this could enhance the odds of ours being the first technological species in our galaxy, it seems too small an edge to pay much attention to.
"Blue is the longest wavelength in the spectrum"
Blue is in the shorter visible wavelengths, though violet is shorter.
Evidence for liquid water was not expected on Mars, to the extent that a lot of thought was put into finding other explanations for the apparent water channels, such gas flows. Water was the cause that came to be generally agreed on.
Once it was accepted that the Martian features were carved by water, it was proposed that there might just have been a few brief, local, episodes of liquid water on Mars, caused by such events as magma rising to near the surface and melting a lot of permafrost.
The Opportunity investigations of Eagle crater finally showed that there was water standing long enough to form sediments, but that might have taken only many thousands of years. The new evidence in Endurance crater seems to imply millions of years of standing water, which is news, although no longer unexpected.
Planetary scientists think a significant part of Europa is liquid water, so it looks like there's another "planet" with liquid water in our own system.
Ok, it's a moon, not a planet, but the distinction doesn't seem important in this discussion.
A somewhat more informative article is
here
Crafty won a major chess tournament at the beginning of 2004, CCT-6.
Crafty was running on the best computer used in the tournament, a quad Opteron, which must have helped. Crafty is close enough to the best programs that over eleven rounds it has an outside chance of winning.
Ever try a 4x4 board?
It doesn't really give you a feel for the larger game, but it's amazing how hard it is to compleatly analyse even so small a board.
If the center of mass is at GEO, it will come crashing down, as Blaise explains on his site. This is because the gravitational pull lessens with distance, and the elevator is not even close to being an ideal point object.
If you want want a usable and stable elevator, you want significant tension in the cable, from a center of mass well above the minimum.
Ooh, intentional, I hadn't thought of that.
I sure hope if terrorists ever manage to set off a nuclear weapon they don't think to wrap it in cobalt.
"...aren't there fossils in tar pits?"
Fossils are found in the La Brea tar pits because they got trapped in the sticky tar. This started happening a few tens of thousands of years ago, after the tar was exposed on the surface. The tar was formed millions of years ago, but the extreme conditions that change buried organic matter to tar don't preserve fossils.
The tar sands have had no opportunity to acquire fossils except for the surface layer; and, since they are not sticky like real tar pits, not a large number even there.
In order for life to evolve, it has to be very tolerant of mutations, even if most of them are harmful. This ability is amazing, but there is no reason for us to design such capability into our creations. Instead, we would have checksums that would stop the creation of any variants.
How likely is it that a flaw in the mask used to create the processor in your computer would have improved it? The flexibility to have errors evolve into improvements just isn't there.
Actually, one of the thing I think Drexler got wrong in "Engines of Creation" is the assemblers carrying around instructions on how to copy themselves. I think they would be kept separate.