What the fuck? Nutrients do not "find their way into vegetables" (apart from microelements like zinc or iodine that are concentrated by some plants) - they are _synthesized_ by plants. And let me tell you - the current cultivars are almost invariably better at that than their 1950 era relatives.
It'll soon be possible to diagnose Down's Syndrome from a simple maternal blood test. AFAIK, it's already in the clinical trials phase. And it also gives unambiguous results.
Lithium refining is not bad per se, it's just a straightforward molten salt electrolysis (but it does require a lot of energy). And lithium is dirt-cheap - the price for lithium carbonate is about $15 per kg right now. And we can mine it from seawater pretty much indefinitely for about $60 per kg if Bolivia and Chile decide to play OPEC.
Cadmium was indeed used in the early Li-Ion batteries as a cathode material dopant, but it had not been used for a long time.
Electric motors do not degrade, brushless motors used in EVs do not have wearable parts at all, aside from bearings. So electric motors, without any maintenance, will easily outlive any gasoline engine. Then we have power distribution system which is by now is fully solid state IGBTs. They have MTBF measured in _thousands_ of years (seriously, look it up). So the weakest part is the battery, even though failure rates for Li-Ion batteries are very low by now, batteries degrade with the time.
But that's not such a big deal for environment.
Lithium 'mining' is about as benign for environment as it gets - it's mined from salt plains (not known for their complex ecologies) by solar evaporation of concentrated brine. Other battery components are not that bad either - organic electrolyte is not hazardous (unless you want to drink it). By far the major environmentally-unfriendly component of a Li-Ion battery is the energy invested into its creation.
Proton-M is not man-rated (that's also why it uses hydrazine as a propellant), so a small chance of failure is OK if it goes with a much smaller launch price.
The problem is that you _need_ large size to store a large number of particles, they are not moving as a constant stream but in batches and you need a certain distance between them. I think a 1GeV electron cyclotron was about 5 meters in size - not exactly a field-size, but still big.
We already have had fairly cheap "tabletop" (or small car-sized) accelerators for a long, long time. Accelerating electrons to 2GeV is not terribly complicated.
However, accelerating a LARGE number of electrons is complicated. Accelerating a large number of ions is even more so. That's why LHC is necessary - you can't hope get enough luminosity with small tools, even if you can reach the same energies.
Seriously, wheat and corn are so genetically fucked up by humans that you should stop eating them if you are afraid of a couple of new genes in GM products. And these genetic changes are not harmless. For example, wheat lost a lot of its protein content and fat compared to the wild precursor. It also gained a couple of allergens (probably from cross-pollination by another close species).
No they don't. GM crops are nothing magical, they just have several extra genes inserted. They mutate with the same speed as "normal" crops (which quite often are already hideous mutants only alive because of human support).
So what happens once someone accidentally drops a wrench on a PDP machine? How are you going to source replacement parts and where are you going to find expertise to fix it? And what about the price of electricity to power it?
Keeping old outdated equipment just because it works is NOT a good solution.
You're confusing about 10 different issues. Let's start:
1) Standard Model deals with subatomic particles.
2) Standard Model has no effect on _chemical_ properties of elements. They are determined by the structure of electron shells. Incidentally, the Periodic Table models the structure of the outer electron shell.
3) To predict _chemical_ properties you need only to use relativistic Schroedinger equation, it can't be solved exactly for anything past hydrogen, but it certainly can be solved numerically. For example, the color of gold and copper is a relativistic effect that can be derived from quantum description of electron orbitals. It's possible to simulate even fairly large molecules and people are now working on protein folding simulations from the first principles.
4) Predicting nuclear stability is another problem entirely - it's way too complicated, because of a huge number of strongly interacting particles in a nucleus of a typical atom. It's like the many-body problem in classical mechanics - you get a chaotic behavior even with a small number of weakly interacting bodies and a simple inverse-square motion law.
It is a phenomenological model. I.e. it doesn't describe the underlying cases, but that's OK. For example, first light spectrum laws are another examples of phenomenological models.
Clearly, you'd skipped chemistry lessons at school. Periodic table _is_ a model, it successfully predicted properties of new elements. The fact that it looks like a table is just a detail.
Bad idea. Quite often cars are stolen with children in them - in this case there'll be license plate info as well. And it's a good idea to make note of these alerts because carjackers quite often simply abandon stolen cars with children.
You're forgetting that unlike regular cars most EVs are charged at home at leisurely speeds. You only need to use superchargers when you do long road trips. Besides, your calculations are a bit off. If we assume that 85kW*h give you 200 miles of range (somewhat lower than Tesla's specs) then you need 340kW to charge battery in 15 minutes. Driving 200 miles takes about 3.5 hours at typical highway conditions, so you're looking for a break of about 20 minutes every 4 hours - that's not terribly different from regular gasoline car refueling.
Assuming that your charging station hosts about 50 cars you'll need to use a 180MW power line to power your refueling station. Such power lines are not terribly expensive these days and can be buried underground. And you have some flexibility in siting refueling stations, so you can place them near generating facilities or major trunk lines. And you also can reduce charging power if you need to shed some grid load (i.e. your charging can take 25 minutes instead of 15 minutes if the grid is overloaded).
So a network of Supercharger stations is definitely possible and doesn't even require much new upgrades to the existing grid.
If you check the map or try to actually drive a Tesla (I did) then you'll notice that superchargers are located at service plazas, which typically have fast food restaurants (maybe even MacDonalds).
They are NOT going to continue the "free forever" model indefinitely. Right now it's a promotion and at some point in future new Teslas (and other car makes if they license Tesla technology) are going to pay for charging.
Slashdot Mirror
What the fuck? Nutrients do not "find their way into vegetables" (apart from microelements like zinc or iodine that are concentrated by some plants) - they are _synthesized_ by plants. And let me tell you - the current cultivars are almost invariably better at that than their 1950 era relatives.
It'll soon be possible to diagnose Down's Syndrome from a simple maternal blood test. AFAIK, it's already in the clinical trials phase. And it also gives unambiguous results.
Ok, yet another ion thruster. This time it uses water. So?
It's no big deal, right now we have ion engines that can successfully work for years: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/06/28/nasa_to_shut_down_long_running_next_ion_propulsion_test/ We have missions that use ion thrusters to move across the Solar system: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dawn_Mission
Low-thrust propulsion is basically a solved problem. What is yet unsolved is getting to the LEO cheaply enough.
Lithium refining is not bad per se, it's just a straightforward molten salt electrolysis (but it does require a lot of energy). And lithium is dirt-cheap - the price for lithium carbonate is about $15 per kg right now. And we can mine it from seawater pretty much indefinitely for about $60 per kg if Bolivia and Chile decide to play OPEC.
Cadmium was indeed used in the early Li-Ion batteries as a cathode material dopant, but it had not been used for a long time.
Just look at COBRA premiums.
EVs such as Chevy Volt easily work years in heavy conditions without any electric engine maintenance.
Electric motors do not degrade, brushless motors used in EVs do not have wearable parts at all, aside from bearings. So electric motors, without any maintenance, will easily outlive any gasoline engine. Then we have power distribution system which is by now is fully solid state IGBTs. They have MTBF measured in _thousands_ of years (seriously, look it up). So the weakest part is the battery, even though failure rates for Li-Ion batteries are very low by now, batteries degrade with the time.
But that's not such a big deal for environment.
Lithium 'mining' is about as benign for environment as it gets - it's mined from salt plains (not known for their complex ecologies) by solar evaporation of concentrated brine. Other battery components are not that bad either - organic electrolyte is not hazardous (unless you want to drink it). By far the major environmentally-unfriendly component of a Li-Ion battery is the energy invested into its creation.
Proton-M is not man-rated (that's also why it uses hydrazine as a propellant), so a small chance of failure is OK if it goes with a much smaller launch price.
The efficiency of best LiIon batteries is close to 95%. The efficiency of the electric engine itself is close to 99%.
I played it for 20 minutes - it's perfect. The narrator is simply wonderful.
The problem is that you _need_ large size to store a large number of particles, they are not moving as a constant stream but in batches and you need a certain distance between them. I think a 1GeV electron cyclotron was about 5 meters in size - not exactly a field-size, but still big.
What, no computer fraud? I wonder how the prosecutor missed that - he could have accused him of HACKING and CYBERTERRORISM!!!!11111!
We already have had fairly cheap "tabletop" (or small car-sized) accelerators for a long, long time. Accelerating electrons to 2GeV is not terribly complicated.
However, accelerating a LARGE number of electrons is complicated. Accelerating a large number of ions is even more so. That's why LHC is necessary - you can't hope get enough luminosity with small tools, even if you can reach the same energies.
So STOP EATING YOUR CORN AND BREAD NOWWWWW!!!!
Seriously, wheat and corn are so genetically fucked up by humans that you should stop eating them if you are afraid of a couple of new genes in GM products. And these genetic changes are not harmless. For example, wheat lost a lot of its protein content and fat compared to the wild precursor. It also gained a couple of allergens (probably from cross-pollination by another close species).
No they don't. GM crops are nothing magical, they just have several extra genes inserted. They mutate with the same speed as "normal" crops (which quite often are already hideous mutants only alive because of human support).
So what happens once someone accidentally drops a wrench on a PDP machine? How are you going to source replacement parts and where are you going to find expertise to fix it? And what about the price of electricity to power it?
Keeping old outdated equipment just because it works is NOT a good solution.
You're confusing about 10 different issues. Let's start:
1) Standard Model deals with subatomic particles.
2) Standard Model has no effect on _chemical_ properties of elements. They are determined by the structure of electron shells. Incidentally, the Periodic Table models the structure of the outer electron shell.
3) To predict _chemical_ properties you need only to use relativistic Schroedinger equation, it can't be solved exactly for anything past hydrogen, but it certainly can be solved numerically. For example, the color of gold and copper is a relativistic effect that can be derived from quantum description of electron orbitals. It's possible to simulate even fairly large molecules and people are now working on protein folding simulations from the first principles.
4) Predicting nuclear stability is another problem entirely - it's way too complicated, because of a huge number of strongly interacting particles in a nucleus of a typical atom. It's like the many-body problem in classical mechanics - you get a chaotic behavior even with a small number of weakly interacting bodies and a simple inverse-square motion law.
It is a phenomenological model. I.e. it doesn't describe the underlying cases, but that's OK. For example, first light spectrum laws are another examples of phenomenological models.
Clearly, you'd skipped chemistry lessons at school. Periodic table _is_ a model, it successfully predicted properties of new elements. The fact that it looks like a table is just a detail.
Bad idea. Quite often cars are stolen with children in them - in this case there'll be license plate info as well. And it's a good idea to make note of these alerts because carjackers quite often simply abandon stolen cars with children.
These problems have been solved for the vanilla Li-Pol batteries. Do you think it'll be so impossible to solve them for the future batteries?
Real-live Teslas charge to 80% within 40 minutes. It makes no real sense to charge them to 100% as it takes disproportionate amount of time.
You're forgetting that unlike regular cars most EVs are charged at home at leisurely speeds. You only need to use superchargers when you do long road trips. Besides, your calculations are a bit off. If we assume that 85kW*h give you 200 miles of range (somewhat lower than Tesla's specs) then you need 340kW to charge battery in 15 minutes. Driving 200 miles takes about 3.5 hours at typical highway conditions, so you're looking for a break of about 20 minutes every 4 hours - that's not terribly different from regular gasoline car refueling.
Assuming that your charging station hosts about 50 cars you'll need to use a 180MW power line to power your refueling station. Such power lines are not terribly expensive these days and can be buried underground. And you have some flexibility in siting refueling stations, so you can place them near generating facilities or major trunk lines. And you also can reduce charging power if you need to shed some grid load (i.e. your charging can take 25 minutes instead of 15 minutes if the grid is overloaded).
So a network of Supercharger stations is definitely possible and doesn't even require much new upgrades to the existing grid.
If you check the map or try to actually drive a Tesla (I did) then you'll notice that superchargers are located at service plazas, which typically have fast food restaurants (maybe even MacDonalds).
They are NOT going to continue the "free forever" model indefinitely. Right now it's a promotion and at some point in future new Teslas (and other car makes if they license Tesla technology) are going to pay for charging.