Since when did antimatter become the ultimate in energy storage? Huge amounts of energy are wasted in its creation, and the subsequent annihilation of that antimatter to get energy back out is very small compared. It may still be a lot, but lead-acid batteries are FAR more efficient.
The earth is rotating. That's a lot different than the linear relations, because rotating objects can feel a force that stationary ones do not. It's also evident by the bulge around the equator.
Also, we are moving with respect to the cosmic microwave background radiation. If there's any measure of our velocity through space, that's a pretty good one. I could go find the paper detailing the experiment (done decades ago), but suffice it to say things are a lot simpler conceptually if you let the earth do the moving.:)
"We aren't discussing whether terrestrial climate models are accurate..."
We aren't here to discuss the facts! We're here to point out why I think you're silly! Don't you dare go addressing and rebutting the supporting details of my argument and showing that we can't trust climate models. They may not be accurate, but they're the truth anyway!
Actually, you've done a very good job of proving the point: Direct TV ads are effective like that solely because the word "sucks" has come to mean primarily the taboo sense of the word. "Is of poor quality," or "plus ungood" ARE the taboo senses of the word that have come into mainstream. The word suck refers originally to suction, and usually when people say it nowadays, suction isn't what they mean.
The taboo sense of the word "sucks" comes of course from oral sex, something that originally was supposed (not necessarily intended, but people supposed it) to be intimate and sacred. Why everything to do with sex ultimately ends up being a derogatory and an expletive is beyond me, but it certainly agrees with TFA.
Granted, it's becoming less offensive with time (and that's why they could use it in the ad), but when the woman first says that cable sucks, does anybody really think of an atmospheric pressure differential? The play on words works only because the expletive sense of the word has driven out the alternative (and original) meanings.
The asteroid belt would provide enormous amounts of resources. There are a few large asteroids that are as much as three percent iron, and if we were able to get that from just one, that would be more iron than we've mined in the history of mankind. The magnitude of what's out there is simply staggering.
However, we don't have any crowding problem, really. People who think that spend too much time in cities. The vast amount of land that has absolutely nobody on it is staggering too. Cities are too crowded, perhaps, but that has little to do with how much room is available. Cities have always been crowded, even when the population has been a hundredth of what it is today.
But I'm glad that even a self described tree-hugging liberal can see the same benefit in space development.:)
Very little escapes NASA's financial potential well. How much money are we spending every year on NOT sending people up into space? I suppose we have a representative government, and ultimately I'm accountable with the rest of my fellow voters. I simply don't understand why my fellow voters want to have indentured servitude (taxes) to pay for folks who DON'T PRODUCE ANYTHING.
It's a simple trade relationship. So what are we buying from NASA? And ultimately, can we get what we're buying from NASA cheaper from somebody else? If somebody else is willing to provide it, I'm willing to buy it. Of course, we need to talk to our masters (servants?) in Congress and ask them to relieve a bit of our servitude.
Free market economics and private property protection are going to guarantee more effective exploration, scientific understanding, and development of space. If I as an individual have a claim on the results of my work or money, then space can be profitable. NASA will be made obsolete in every way when competition gains momentum, and the only reason it (or other non-protective governmental programs) has survived is because we've been tricked into supporting such a bloated budget with very little return. Cut NASA out of the budget with associated tax cuts, and see if the gain in economic growth isn't more than enough to fuel a vibrant private space industry.
Why, the US doesn't have to push any of its laws, but it can and will look after its own interests. There's these things called treaties, like, "We'll allow our folks to ship stuff to you if you'll recognize American intellectual property rights." Beautiful, isn't it?
This kind of research has been done before with regenerative mice. Mammals typically don't have this regenerative ability because we traded it for our deluxe immune systems: immune systems the regenerative mice don't have.
The grandparent has the assumption that "generating" means "creating out of thin air." It doesn't. The original article is completely technically right because all current and power is generated from other sources. There weren't 19 million amps of current flowing before the device was activated. There were 19 million when it was. Obviously it generated the current.
Everybody's well aware that mass-energy can neither be created nor destroyed, but that doesn't deserve an informative modifier for saying the article is incorrect when claiming that amperage was generated. By that logic, all generators are misnamed, aren't they? So, yes, please mod the parent up for pointing out the grandparent's silliness.
The culture looks down on intelligence unless you live on the coasts? I've spent plenty of time on the coasts, and much more inland. The only conclusion I've been able to draw is that people are people where-ever you go, including bigots like yourself.
As for religion hampering science, that's ridiculous. Utah, one of the most religious states in the union, has historically produced more scientists per capita than any other state. Religion encourages learning and bettering yourself. If I were you, I'd examine your stereotypes.
The magnitude of difference between the Mormon faith and protestant sects makes it really a class of its own and it really isn't fair to compare. However, several news stories and popular lore nowadays claim that the LDS Church is the fastest growing religion in the world (in terms of percentages), and that isn't true.
Of course, that's only a small metric of success. The other organization and cohesiveness of the LDS Church are phenomenal.
I'm LDS myself, and while I of course disagree with your view of Joseph Smith and Brigham Young, this new religion isn't the most successful, at least not in terms of size of membership.
The Seventh-Day Adventists were started in 1849 (LDS Church was started in 1830) and recently reached 13 million people (LDS Church has near 12 million). Pentecostal Christianity was started in Topeka, Kansas, in 1901, and now claims about 450 million members worldwide (150 million in Africa). The Assemblies of God have about 35 million members, and they started in 1914, also in Topeka.
Of course, it doesn't bother me that much. Nothing about prophecies concerning the last days said that Christ's church was going to be in a majority.:)
For claims of pseudoscience and paranormal, it's really just a little sensationalism on the part of journalists wanting to make a catchy introduction. Animals typically can "sense" these disasters before there's overt evidence something bad is going to happen. Why would it be so far-fetched to believe that humans have some element of this capability too? Unless, of course, you don't REALLY believe in evolution.:P
Identifying a neurological component in our intuition by way of a reasonable study doesn't scream "pseudoscience" to me. Maybe we, as supposedly enlightened slashdotters, can be a bit more open-minded about such things?
Oh yeah, that's fusion. Great. You know that phenomema where you know what you mean but it comes out all wrong? I'll blame it on the late hour and the lack of sleep.
Last I checked, spontaneous fission of hydrogen gas in canisters was a pretty rare occurance (i.e. it never happens). There's this thing, well, really, an electromagnetic potential wall, that stands between two happy hydrogen atoms trying to get together. We call it the Coulomb barrier. Protons, you see, don't like each other very much. And the closer they get to each other, the more they want to get away from each other.
So the best way to get some hanky panky going between two proton-rich nuclei is to force them together. And the only way to do that is to smash them up against each other with so much energy that even their electrical repulsion can't stand up to it.
That's where our friend plutonium comes in. All he needs is enough of himself and blamo! His nuclei destabilize, split apart, and go completely bonkers! Everything heats up REAL fast. So much energy is poured out of those nuclei that the temperature quickly reaches MILLIONS of degrees.
That's when hydrogen gets into the act. Plutonium's energy is just spilling over into everything, and hydrogen finally gets to the point where it begins to come together, releasing even more energy.
And that, my friend, is how you level a city in a small fraction of a second.
You did, eh, RTFA? You're the first poster and the site hasn't been/.ed yet. So you have no excuse From TFA:
"One case where defects matter is the behavior of surface phase transitions. A layer of tin atoms on a germanium surface forms a flat lattice, but at temperatures below about 150 Kelvin--for reasons that aren't entirely clear--the tin layer spontaneously corrugates to form a new structure, or phase, with one atom out of every three moving away from the substrate."
If you don't know why/how of these processes, you can't predict or control them. Thus engineering with any sort of multi-material boundaries and surfaces at low temperatures loses some precision and purity due to not-fully-understood effects.
As for questions of when we'd ever use nanoscale materials like this, think semiconductors. All semiconductors rely on doping one substance (like silicon) with another like germanium or aluminum (or pretty much any Group III or V elements). Yes, this is particular research is more for theoretical support, but various things tie in all over the place. In any research, the more general knowledge you have, the more particular applications you'll be able to come up with.
So much for arrogant, unjustified and ignorant rants. Heh. You DID read your own post, didn't you? But still, I really do wonder what on earth you were referring to when you said we Americans live like slaves compared to Europeans.
Could it be the fact that slaves actually work and we still produce stuff? Or does it have more to do with some concept of the slums of Philadelphia being your concept of how everybody here lives? Or could it be that you've confused Armenia with America?
Or maybe you just need to stop believing all that soviet-style communist propaganda about how capitalism leaves everybody poor and destitute.:)
Why, yes, it's been an industry for more than a decade. It's very small, but now growing. These things don't just pop out like monkeys from your butt. They have to be worked on, researched, developed, etc.
The old Rotary-Rocket project split off into a few different groups, and there've been other companies working at it for a while. www.xcor.com www.masten-space.com are a couple I know pretty well (I watched the June Scaled Composites flight from XCor's hangar, just a few buildings down from Scaled, and one of the engineers at Masten Space is a good friend of mine). Anyway, if you'd like to find some good resources on the alt.space community, a GREAT place is www.hobbyspace.com .
You do know that this is the science section of slashdot, right? And that research-into-new-stuff constitutes news that belongs on a research-oriented news site? Why does it have to be a press release in order to be news?
If you've got a problem with research being talked about on science.slashdot.org, then perhaps you should just go somewhere else.
The problem is that baggy outfits in vacuum environments quickly become very rigid. And when you try to move, you're constantly fighting against the internal pressure which is trying to force your suit to assume a particular shape. Add to that all sorts of problems with non-constant volume designs we currently have, and things become really weird. I've worked with vacuum glove boxes, and it's incredibly obnoxious when I have to pull my left hand back to reach my right hand forward, in order to keep the volume about nearly constant without having to continuously be adding or sucking gas from the chamber.
Make the whole thing skin tight to begin with, and you're finally grasping the true meaning of KISS.
You know, eventually you DO reenter your habitat. And hopefully there's oxygen in there and, for a long-term habitat, recycling-type processes for biodegradable materials much like you have on earth. Not so fluffy, and far from meaningless. You're not an engineer, are you?
Slashdot Mirror
Since when did antimatter become the ultimate in energy storage? Huge amounts of energy are wasted in its creation, and the subsequent annihilation of that antimatter to get energy back out is very small compared. It may still be a lot, but lead-acid batteries are FAR more efficient.
The earth is rotating. That's a lot different than the linear relations, because rotating objects can feel a force that stationary ones do not. It's also evident by the bulge around the equator.
:)
Also, we are moving with respect to the cosmic microwave background radiation. If there's any measure of our velocity through space, that's a pretty good one. I could go find the paper detailing the experiment (done decades ago), but suffice it to say things are a lot simpler conceptually if you let the earth do the moving.
Don't you RTFA?
My word, if you have a question, wouldn't it take less time to read the article than to type this up and wait for a response? But here's my response:
It's a segmented mirror, with each small piece controlled by acuators with extreme sensitivity.
It was a lawsuit. Of course it was going to go to court.
That's where lawsuits go.
"We aren't discussing whether terrestrial climate models are accurate..." We aren't here to discuss the facts! We're here to point out why I think you're silly! Don't you dare go addressing and rebutting the supporting details of my argument and showing that we can't trust climate models. They may not be accurate, but they're the truth anyway!
Actually, you've done a very good job of proving the point: Direct TV ads are effective like that solely because the word "sucks" has come to mean primarily the taboo sense of the word. "Is of poor quality," or "plus ungood" ARE the taboo senses of the word that have come into mainstream. The word suck refers originally to suction, and usually when people say it nowadays, suction isn't what they mean.
The taboo sense of the word "sucks" comes of course from oral sex, something that originally was supposed (not necessarily intended, but people supposed it) to be intimate and sacred. Why everything to do with sex ultimately ends up being a derogatory and an expletive is beyond me, but it certainly agrees with TFA.
Granted, it's becoming less offensive with time (and that's why they could use it in the ad), but when the woman first says that cable sucks, does anybody really think of an atmospheric pressure differential? The play on words works only because the expletive sense of the word has driven out the alternative (and original) meanings.
The asteroid belt would provide enormous amounts of resources. There are a few large asteroids that are as much as three percent iron, and if we were able to get that from just one, that would be more iron than we've mined in the history of mankind. The magnitude of what's out there is simply staggering.
:)
However, we don't have any crowding problem, really. People who think that spend too much time in cities. The vast amount of land that has absolutely nobody on it is staggering too. Cities are too crowded, perhaps, but that has little to do with how much room is available. Cities have always been crowded, even when the population has been a hundredth of what it is today.
But I'm glad that even a self described tree-hugging liberal can see the same benefit in space development.
Very little escapes NASA's financial potential well. How much money are we spending every year on NOT sending people up into space? I suppose we have a representative government, and ultimately I'm accountable with the rest of my fellow voters. I simply don't understand why my fellow voters want to have indentured servitude (taxes) to pay for folks who DON'T PRODUCE ANYTHING.
It's a simple trade relationship. So what are we buying from NASA? And ultimately, can we get what we're buying from NASA cheaper from somebody else? If somebody else is willing to provide it, I'm willing to buy it. Of course, we need to talk to our masters (servants?) in Congress and ask them to relieve a bit of our servitude.
Free market economics and private property protection are going to guarantee more effective exploration, scientific understanding, and development of space. If I as an individual have a claim on the results of my work or money, then space can be profitable. NASA will be made obsolete in every way when competition gains momentum, and the only reason it (or other non-protective governmental programs) has survived is because we've been tricked into supporting such a bloated budget with very little return. Cut NASA out of the budget with associated tax cuts, and see if the gain in economic growth isn't more than enough to fuel a vibrant private space industry.
Why, the US doesn't have to push any of its laws, but it can and will look after its own interests. There's these things called treaties, like, "We'll allow our folks to ship stuff to you if you'll recognize American intellectual property rights." Beautiful, isn't it?
This kind of research has been done before with regenerative mice. Mammals typically don't have this regenerative ability because we traded it for our deluxe immune systems: immune systems the regenerative mice don't have.
The grandparent has the assumption that "generating" means "creating out of thin air." It doesn't. The original article is completely technically right because all current and power is generated from other sources. There weren't 19 million amps of current flowing before the device was activated. There were 19 million when it was. Obviously it generated the current.
Everybody's well aware that mass-energy can neither be created nor destroyed, but that doesn't deserve an informative modifier for saying the article is incorrect when claiming that amperage was generated. By that logic, all generators are misnamed, aren't they? So, yes, please mod the parent up for pointing out the grandparent's silliness.
The culture looks down on intelligence unless you live on the coasts? I've spent plenty of time on the coasts, and much more inland. The only conclusion I've been able to draw is that people are people where-ever you go, including bigots like yourself.
As for religion hampering science, that's ridiculous. Utah, one of the most religious states in the union, has historically produced more scientists per capita than any other state. Religion encourages learning and bettering yourself. If I were you, I'd examine your stereotypes.
Yes, you've got a good point.
The magnitude of difference between the Mormon faith and protestant sects makes it really a class of its own and it really isn't fair to compare. However, several news stories and popular lore nowadays claim that the LDS Church is the fastest growing religion in the world (in terms of percentages), and that isn't true.
Of course, that's only a small metric of success. The other organization and cohesiveness of the LDS Church are phenomenal.
I'm LDS myself, and while I of course disagree with your view of Joseph Smith and Brigham Young, this new religion isn't the most successful, at least not in terms of size of membership. The Seventh-Day Adventists were started in 1849 (LDS Church was started in 1830) and recently reached 13 million people (LDS Church has near 12 million). Pentecostal Christianity was started in Topeka, Kansas, in 1901, and now claims about 450 million members worldwide (150 million in Africa). The Assemblies of God have about 35 million members, and they started in 1914, also in Topeka. Of course, it doesn't bother me that much. Nothing about prophecies concerning the last days said that Christ's church was going to be in a majority. :)
You just gave me a strange mental image of Jan Lee wearing a bikini top.
For claims of pseudoscience and paranormal, it's really just a little sensationalism on the part of journalists wanting to make a catchy introduction. Animals typically can "sense" these disasters before there's overt evidence something bad is going to happen. Why would it be so far-fetched to believe that humans have some element of this capability too? Unless, of course, you don't REALLY believe in evolution. :P
Identifying a neurological component in our intuition by way of a reasonable study doesn't scream "pseudoscience" to me. Maybe we, as supposedly enlightened slashdotters, can be a bit more open-minded about such things?
But the claims of global warming are on the scale of a few degrees celsius. We don't have THAT kind of climate data very far back.
Oh yeah, that's fusion. Great. You know that phenomema where you know what you mean but it comes out all wrong? I'll blame it on the late hour and the lack of sleep.
Last I checked, spontaneous fission of hydrogen gas in canisters was a pretty rare occurance (i.e. it never happens). There's this thing, well, really, an electromagnetic potential wall, that stands between two happy hydrogen atoms trying to get together. We call it the Coulomb barrier. Protons, you see, don't like each other very much. And the closer they get to each other, the more they want to get away from each other.
So the best way to get some hanky panky going between two proton-rich nuclei is to force them together. And the only way to do that is to smash them up against each other with so much energy that even their electrical repulsion can't stand up to it.
That's where our friend plutonium comes in. All he needs is enough of himself and blamo! His nuclei destabilize, split apart, and go completely bonkers! Everything heats up REAL fast. So much energy is poured out of those nuclei that the temperature quickly reaches MILLIONS of degrees.
That's when hydrogen gets into the act. Plutonium's energy is just spilling over into everything, and hydrogen finally gets to the point where it begins to come together, releasing even more energy.
And that, my friend, is how you level a city in a small fraction of a second.
You did, eh, RTFA? You're the first poster and the site hasn't been /.ed yet. So you have no excuse From TFA:
"One case where defects matter is the behavior of surface phase transitions. A layer of tin atoms on a germanium surface forms a flat lattice, but at temperatures below about 150 Kelvin--for reasons that aren't entirely clear--the tin layer spontaneously corrugates to form a new structure, or phase, with one atom out of every three moving away from the substrate."
If you don't know why/how of these processes, you can't predict or control them. Thus engineering with any sort of multi-material boundaries and surfaces at low temperatures loses some precision and purity due to not-fully-understood effects.
As for questions of when we'd ever use nanoscale materials like this, think semiconductors. All semiconductors rely on doping one substance (like silicon) with another like germanium or aluminum (or pretty much any Group III or V elements). Yes, this is particular research is more for theoretical support, but various things tie in all over the place. In any research, the more general knowledge you have, the more particular applications you'll be able to come up with.
So much for arrogant, unjustified and ignorant rants. Heh. You DID read your own post, didn't you? But still, I really do wonder what on earth you were referring to when you said we Americans live like slaves compared to Europeans.
:)
Could it be the fact that slaves actually work and we still produce stuff? Or does it have more to do with some concept of the slums of Philadelphia being your concept of how everybody here lives? Or could it be that you've confused Armenia with America?
Or maybe you just need to stop believing all that soviet-style communist propaganda about how capitalism leaves everybody poor and destitute.
Why, yes, it's been an industry for more than a decade. It's very small, but now growing. These things don't just pop out like monkeys from your butt. They have to be worked on, researched, developed, etc.
The old Rotary-Rocket project split off into a few different groups, and there've been other companies working at it for a while. www.xcor.com www.masten-space.com are a couple I know pretty well (I watched the June Scaled Composites flight from XCor's hangar, just a few buildings down from Scaled, and one of the engineers at Masten Space is a good friend of mine). Anyway, if you'd like to find some good resources on the alt.space community, a GREAT place is www.hobbyspace.com .
You do know that this is the science section of slashdot, right? And that research-into-new-stuff constitutes news that belongs on a research-oriented news site? Why does it have to be a press release in order to be news?
If you've got a problem with research being talked about on science.slashdot.org, then perhaps you should just go somewhere else.
The problem is that baggy outfits in vacuum environments quickly become very rigid. And when you try to move, you're constantly fighting against the internal pressure which is trying to force your suit to assume a particular shape. Add to that all sorts of problems with non-constant volume designs we currently have, and things become really weird. I've worked with vacuum glove boxes, and it's incredibly obnoxious when I have to pull my left hand back to reach my right hand forward, in order to keep the volume about nearly constant without having to continuously be adding or sucking gas from the chamber.
Make the whole thing skin tight to begin with, and you're finally grasping the true meaning of KISS.
You know, eventually you DO reenter your habitat. And hopefully there's oxygen in there and, for a long-term habitat, recycling-type processes for biodegradable materials much like you have on earth. Not so fluffy, and far from meaningless. You're not an engineer, are you?