Good technology isn't something that "could work very elegantly in a few years, but is squirrely right now." It's "works well right now" and sometimes "works well right now, and can be upgraded to work even better in the future."
Solar need not mean solar panels. It's trivially easy to make a number of large flat surfaces of relativly reflective stuff, point them at a heat engine and get your power that way.
Well the inspiration appears to be a misunderstanding of how planetary magnetism works(1), a misconception about the effects of magnetism on electromagnetic radiation(2), a misunderstanding about angular momentum(3), a misunderstanding of geometry(4), a complete failure to learn the second law of thermodynamics(5), some fanciful thinking about nuclear physics(6), and plenty more misconceptions, fabrications, and failures to think critically.
1: it is not generated by the rotation of the core. The core has a net charge of zero, so solutions to maxwell's equations on the problem of a charged spinning sphere are invalid. They also fail to accurately predict the shape of the earth's magnetic field and its periodic reversal. The prevalent theory that I am aware of is that it has something to do with convection, which also explains some processes in the outer layers of the sun.
2: a magnetic field does not affect electromagnetic radiation in any way. All of the radiation that we recieve from the sun (including that which happens to be in microwave bands) already comes in with all the energy it would. The thing that protects us from this is the atmosphere, which you'll not is largely transparent over the portion of the sun's spectrum which contains the most energy. We don't need all that much protection.
It only affects charged particles, and what it does to them isn't much help to us anyway. It traps them, and directs them toward the poles. hence: the aurora. If anyone was to be affected by this it would be people living at northern latitudes. Without the field, fewer particles would be trapped, and would be spread out evenly over all latitudes. So instead of Canada hogging all the cool northern lights, we'd be treated to a weak earth-wide auroral display. Oh and the thing that protects from the actual charged particles is the same thing that protects us from the radiation. The atmosphere. In fact, that's what the aurora is.
3: angular momentum has nothing to do with turblence. It takes energy to change it, and the momentum of a spinning sphere of iron "the size of mars" would take far more energy to change than could be achieved with any satelite launched by man. Unless we could launch things of the order of the MOON. Even so, angular momentum is conserved, so reducing the momentum of the core would require something else to gain that momentum. It is not like a hurricane: the butterfly effect has nothing to do with it.
4: the ship had rotating decks so they'd be level regardless of the ship's orientation. This was about the only thing that made any sense in the film, but they ignored IT as well. When the ship was pointing straight down, they were still able to move from car to car as if the decks hadn't rotated at all. 4a: they also missed an opportunity to show an interestig physical effect: as you get closer to the center of the earth, force due to gravity decreases. At the depth the terranauts were, they should have been able to bounce around the cabin.
5: Entropy in closed system increases for all real processes. You can't just take energy from heat and have the heat disappear. And you can't just solder a wire to the hull randomly and power the damn ship from your magical entropy decreasing hull. And even if you could, why wasn't that the original PRIMARY power system?
6: You can't make a fusion bomb 50% more powerful by adding plutonium. The fusion part already increased the yield of a fission bomb by orders of magnitude. why would a little extra fissioning.. NEARBY.. do any good whatsoever?
So, the kernel of truth to the film "The Core" appears to be, "The earth has a magnetic field."
You moron. It's not too much money, it's too much oil. Oil & coal are so rediculously cheap right now that it's almost pointless to try anything else. Ok, oil costs more than some people would like to pay at the pump, but they're still buying it. Is it really reasonable to demand that "natural resource-x" that happens to be extremely useful continue to be sold at the same price despite finite supply and artificially limited exploration?
sun->plant is something like 1.5% efficient, and still needs to be converted somehow to perform useful work. Compare that to even crappy solar panels of 8% efficiency, where the output is something we can use directly.
Why would the radio have a magnet? Also, you can't do the stars thing without an accurate clock. The best you can hope for is to figure out your latitude.
Ball bearings are compressible. ideal anything will violate at least one law if you extrapolate enough. that does not invalidate the law since by definition, "ideal" is not the way things are.
Example: the ideal gas law does not predict detonating tea kettles due to superheated liquid rapidly transitioning to vapor phase, yet people have been killed by this very effect.
Perhaps he means the startup menu, which is a subitem in the start menu. A lot of cruft gets deposited there if you're not careful. And that's not even going into the services menu and futzing around in there. What the hell do svchost and csrss do anyway, and why did the need such letter-frugal names?
He's a very well-named commentator on CNN. Or at least, very gutsy. I mean, it takes a certain kind of character to, when life sticks you with the name, "Wolf," grow a set of mutton chops to accentuate the point.
Why does Microsoft have to keep buying the games I enjoy (or think I'm going to enjoy), delay their development, and kill every innovative feature, proprietise and homogenize until I have no interest whatsoever.
I remember playing tribes and drooling over the graphics and physics that were supposedly going to be in halo. Then Tribes 2 came out, and suddenly I didn't care. Finally Halo came out on a platform I didn't have anyway, looking very little like it had years before, and vastly less.. errr. vast than promised. I mean seriosly.. goldeneye-like controls, linear play? I shudder to think what they're going to do with rockstar's gem. Well at least there will be plenty of photoshoppy lens flare.
erm.. my first sentence was uncalled for. But they're still two different stories. There's enough overlap and contradiction that they really can't be the same story.
In chapter 1, God creates both man and woman in his own image, they are the last thing He creates, AFTER all the animals, even. In chapter 2, God creates man, decides it is not good for him to be alone, and so creates all of the animals. But this is not enough, so He creates woman from the man's rib. They don't even get their names until chapter 3.
Heh. reminds me of the ol' joke about the doctor and the lawyer at a dinner party. People keep asking the doctor for free advice, but he notices no one asks the lawyer for advice. Intrigued, he asks the lawyer what his secret is, "I just give them the advice, then send a bill the next morning."
Yes it was a war-bot. In fact, since it was designed to kill but didn't, one could say that it's just another case of hollywood depicting robots inevitably malfunctioning yet again.
Think of a spring. If you stretch a spring and release it, it will return to its equilibrium position. If you stretch it too far (beyond the elastic limit) it will return to a new equilibrium position. It will not eventually return to its original position unless you compress it "too far" and make it return there.
Hysteresis is by definition non-conservative, and therefore it is a mechanism by which energy is "lost."
That's not all that stupid of an assumption at all. On the highway, most of that 33 kW goes into overcoming wind resistance. and all of it goes into overcoming some kind of mechanical resistance. So your assumption about cars "getting 50mpg" is not so imporant, since a car that gets 100 mpg wouldn't be doing it by using less energy per mile*, but by extracting more energy per gallon.
*wouldn't be doing as long as long as we drive metal boxes with crumple zones, air bags, etc. instead of solar-racers with thin profiles, and all balsa-wood construction.
Slashdot Mirror
So.. you don't spool your tape? You'd just kind of have it lying around.. flat.. on the floor?
Who cares about the AREA required. We don't live in flatland. Tape is freaky thin. What is the VOLUME required for all that storage.
And that's different from modules... how?
But Betamax WAS inferior to VHS.
t ory/0,12449,881780,00.html
http://technology.guardian.co.uk/online/comment/s
In all the ways that mattered.
Good technology isn't something that "could work very elegantly in a few years, but is squirrely right now." It's "works well right now" and sometimes "works well right now, and can be upgraded to work even better in the future."
VHS won because it solved the problem people had.
Solar need not mean solar panels. It's trivially easy to make a number of large flat surfaces of relativly reflective stuff, point them at a heat engine and get your power that way.
Well the inspiration appears to be a misunderstanding of how planetary magnetism works(1), a misconception about the effects of magnetism on electromagnetic radiation(2), a misunderstanding about angular momentum(3), a misunderstanding of geometry(4), a complete failure to learn the second law of thermodynamics(5), some fanciful thinking about nuclear physics(6), and plenty more misconceptions, fabrications, and failures to think critically.
1: it is not generated by the rotation of the core. The core has a net charge of zero, so solutions to maxwell's equations on the problem of a charged spinning sphere are invalid. They also fail to accurately predict the shape of the earth's magnetic field and its periodic reversal. The prevalent theory that I am aware of is that it has something to do with convection, which also explains some processes in the outer layers of the sun.
2: a magnetic field does not affect electromagnetic radiation in any way. All of the radiation that we recieve from the sun (including that which happens to be in microwave bands) already comes in with all the energy it would. The thing that protects us from this is the atmosphere, which you'll not is largely transparent over the portion of the sun's spectrum which contains the most energy. We don't need all that much protection.
It only affects charged particles, and what it does to them isn't much help to us anyway. It traps them, and directs them toward the poles. hence: the aurora. If anyone was to be affected by this it would be people living at northern latitudes. Without the field, fewer particles would be trapped, and would be spread out evenly over all latitudes. So instead of Canada hogging all the cool northern lights, we'd be treated to a weak earth-wide auroral display. Oh and the thing that protects from the actual charged particles is the same thing that protects us from the radiation. The atmosphere. In fact, that's what the aurora is.
3: angular momentum has nothing to do with turblence. It takes energy to change it, and the momentum of a spinning sphere of iron "the size of mars" would take far more energy to change than could be achieved with any satelite launched by man. Unless we could launch things of the order of the MOON. Even so, angular momentum is conserved, so reducing the momentum of the core would require something else to gain that momentum. It is not like a hurricane: the butterfly effect has nothing to do with it.
4: the ship had rotating decks so they'd be level regardless of the ship's orientation. This was about the only thing that made any sense in the film, but they ignored IT as well. When the ship was pointing straight down, they were still able to move from car to car as if the decks hadn't rotated at all.
4a: they also missed an opportunity to show an interestig physical effect: as you get closer to the center of the earth, force due to gravity decreases. At the depth the terranauts were, they should have been able to bounce around the cabin.
5: Entropy in closed system increases for all real processes. You can't just take energy from heat and have the heat disappear. And you can't just solder a wire to the hull randomly and power the damn ship from your magical entropy decreasing hull. And even if you could, why wasn't that the original PRIMARY power system?
6: You can't make a fusion bomb 50% more powerful by adding plutonium. The fusion part already increased the yield of a fission bomb by orders of magnitude. why would a little extra fissioning.. NEARBY.. do any good whatsoever?
So, the kernel of truth to the film "The Core" appears to be, "The earth has a magnetic field."
You moron. It's not too much money, it's too much oil. Oil & coal are so rediculously cheap right now that it's almost pointless to try anything else. Ok, oil costs more than some people would like to pay at the pump, but they're still buying it. Is it really reasonable to demand that "natural resource-x" that happens to be extremely useful continue to be sold at the same price despite finite supply and artificially limited exploration?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ram_Sabnis
oh wait.. scientists IN films...
sun -> plant -> food -> animal -> power
is WAY WAY less efficient than
sun -> solar panel -> power.
sun->plant is something like 1.5% efficient, and still needs to be converted somehow to perform useful work. Compare that to even crappy solar panels of 8% efficiency, where the output is something we can use directly.
Why would the radio have a magnet? Also, you can't do the stars thing without an accurate clock. The best you can hope for is to figure out your latitude.
Bah. that craft requires fuel. It's just that its fuel is an increasingly rare noble gas, whose extraction is linked to fossil fuel production anyway.
Ball bearings are compressible. ideal anything will violate at least one law if you extrapolate enough. that does not invalidate the law since by definition, "ideal" is not the way things are.
Example: the ideal gas law does not predict detonating tea kettles due to superheated liquid rapidly transitioning to vapor phase, yet people have been killed by this very effect.
Perhaps he means the startup menu, which is a subitem in the start menu. A lot of cruft gets deposited there if you're not careful. And that's not even going into the services menu and futzing around in there. What the hell do svchost and csrss do anyway, and why did the need such letter-frugal names?
He's a very well-named commentator on CNN. Or at least, very gutsy. I mean, it takes a certain kind of character to, when life sticks you with the name, "Wolf," grow a set of mutton chops to accentuate the point.
But.. "fan" is short for fanatic, is it not?
So how could someone with no team loyalty be described as "fanatic?"
Wouldn't they be called, "mods" for "moderate?"
It's no more deadly than hydric acid, which is the primary ingredient in many household cleaners.
No. They'll just ruin it.
Why does Microsoft have to keep buying the games I enjoy (or think I'm going to enjoy), delay their development, and kill every innovative feature, proprietise and homogenize until I have no interest whatsoever.
I remember playing tribes and drooling over the graphics and physics that were supposedly going to be in halo. Then Tribes 2 came out, and suddenly I didn't care. Finally Halo came out on a platform I didn't have anyway, looking very little like it had years before, and vastly less.. errr. vast than promised. I mean seriosly.. goldeneye-like controls, linear play? I shudder to think what they're going to do with rockstar's gem. Well at least there will be plenty of photoshoppy lens flare.
erm.. my first sentence was uncalled for. But they're still two different stories. There's enough overlap and contradiction that they really can't be the same story.
Say what now? Have you even read the bible?
In chapter 1, God creates both man and woman in his own image, they are the last thing He creates, AFTER all the animals, even. In chapter 2, God creates man, decides it is not good for him to be alone, and so creates all of the animals. But this is not enough, so He creates woman from the man's rib. They don't even get their names until chapter 3.
Heh. reminds me of the ol' joke about the doctor and the lawyer at a dinner party. People keep asking the doctor for free advice, but he notices no one asks the lawyer for advice. Intrigued, he asks the lawyer what his secret is, "I just give them the advice, then send a bill the next morning."
I'm sure we all know what happened next.
Amateurs. http://www.conferencebike.com/
Nonono. You don't understand. Al Gore wasn't claiming to have been responsible for the creation of the internet. He was admitting a theft.
Examine the quote carefully, "I took the initiative in creating the internet."
Clearly, someone else had the initiative, Mr. Gore became envious and absconded it.
Yes it was a war-bot. In fact, since it was designed to kill but didn't, one could say that it's just another case of hollywood depicting robots inevitably malfunctioning yet again.
No, that's not it at all. That's just damping.
Think of a spring. If you stretch a spring and release it, it will return to its equilibrium position. If you stretch it too far (beyond the elastic limit) it will return to a new equilibrium position. It will not eventually return to its original position unless you compress it "too far" and make it return there.
Hysteresis is by definition non-conservative, and therefore it is a mechanism by which energy is "lost."
Maybe they're planning on people adding to the prize as time goes on, just like the X-prize.
That's not all that stupid of an assumption at all. On the highway, most of that 33 kW goes into overcoming wind resistance. and all of it goes into overcoming some kind of mechanical resistance. So your assumption about cars "getting 50mpg" is not so imporant, since a car that gets 100 mpg wouldn't be doing it by using less energy per mile*, but by extracting more energy per gallon.
*wouldn't be doing as long as long as we drive metal boxes with crumple zones, air bags, etc. instead of solar-racers with thin profiles, and all balsa-wood construction.