I never saw anything that said Edison was racist and cruel. Read quite a bit about him, but could be wrong. Most first hand accounts portray Edison as a very likable guy (great book - "Uncommon Friends"). The elephant fiasco was partially Edison, but as always the big picture is more complicated. The elephant killed was going to be put to death anyway as it had killed people at the circus. The brainchild of electrocution by AC was Morgan, Edison's business partner. However, Edison has stated the whole AC DC feud was his biggest regret.
You're correct Edison didn't know much, however he hired people who did and ran the world's first industrial R&D lab for profit. While he was the "front" guy, credit was applied to those who innovated. Personnel in his lab invented myriad new devices and received credit. Edison's contributions came through tinkering, but quite successfully. You can't denounce his contributions towards working economical bulbs and phonographs, for example.
Believe it or not Tesla too was a tinkerer. He didn't believe in atoms, for one, and had his own (incorrect) ideas about how the universe worked. Most of what came from his lab has messing around with coils, not a mathematically rigorous method. And to your point on whether or not he was a "good person", he was a proponent of eugenics and had an odd hatred of obese people, especially obese women.
Really, everyone has faults and today's trend of painting everyone historically by their worst actions gets a little tiresome. Edison by all accounts was a great person who made fantastic contributions to society either directly or indirectly through his funding and personnel at his laboratory. The 20th century was born in his laboratory. Tesla too was by all accounts overall a great person, but his contributions to society have, in my opinion, been horrendously exaggerated.
Risk aversion may correlate with intelligence but I doubt the correlation is very strong. Some of the smartest people I know seem to have the part of their brain responsible for weighing risks absent.
I'm not so enthused about this feature either, but in what way is calling rude? I prefer calling over email if the latter will likely result in an ongoing chain, but figured if the other person is busy, I'll just leave a message. First time I ever considered it being rude (unless after 8 PM or so).
Especially since this came about by him responding to a question on Twitter. But evil evil successful people standing on us and weighing us down, right?
If you needed to use a hatch door, presumably the entire system would be shut down yes.
I never understood the thermal expansion argument against it either. Each pylon could connect tubes with a bellows with the bellows oribatally welded to each tube and each tube mated with one cut halfway on OD and other cut halfway on ID, bellows on outside. You would have a tube welder anyway. Simple shroud, even out of plastic, could help protect the bellows. Fatigue life would be decades and failure would be slow leak.
I thought the video was done rather poorly. It's not a perfect vacuum, and it's not that hard to do. I think you could provide counter thrust in a breach, brake either electromagnetically or mechanically, and vent the tube. His collapsing tubes are just silly, these aren't going to be soda cans.
As a mechanical engineer with a background in physics I think everything is certainly doable, but whether or not it can be done economically remains to be seen.
One possibility: have small gas thrusters with a nozzle in front of each hyperloop pod. Wouldn't have to be expensive, could be built using sodium azide canisters, the same compound behind airbag deployment, and a nozzle. Activating these would provide braking thrust but also a "counterwall" of gas to help dissipate the breach gas. While braking vents open up in the tube wall. Keep in mind that while a breach will be fast, it will still be limited to the speed of sound so pods further down the line should have plenty of time to stop with this method. Alas if the pod is very near the breach this would be difficult, but in a terrorist attack at least one pod would presumably be destroyed.
I love the concept of the hyperloop, and think it could be made to work, but it just appears this company is a joke largely focused on PR and capital investment than actually focusing on engineering. Even clicking on their website you find Steve Jobs type quotes "come with me if you want to change the world" and so on.
Just recently they showed a video of the "first" vacuum hyperloop. Ridiculous countdowns, systems checks with different teams like they were launching a rocket, etc. The test was a *linear motor* and absolutely nothing new. I would have expected much more; in fact the SpaceX contest student teams seemed to be further along! It makes me embarrassed just watching those kinds of videos.
So really no surprise Musk recently announced his intention to give it a go himself.
What's amazing is that book was loosely inspired by stories of his father. Alexandre Dumas (author) was half black - his father, a black man, was born in Saint-Domingue (Haiti now) in 1762. He became one of the most courageous and respected soldiers achieving almost unbelievable feats. Went to Egypt, Malta, etc. Racism came back in force with Napoleon and he died in very poor circumstances. All statues of him were destroyed in WWI and WWII if I recall, and now no one seems to remember him. The book "The Black Count" is amazing and I highly recommend it.
Most Americans haven't heard of either Farnsworth or Baird, and don't care. Every country holds on to "their" inventors, don't act like it's a point of pride just for us over here. However in my opinion Farnsworth should be the one credited with the invention every adapted for use, the most accepted definition of "inventor". If you really want to split hairs you also need to include Zworykin.
I'm a fan of Musk, but the same reasons you shun Jobs also apply to Musk. Without either person what they had accomplished would have eventually been accomplished by others, which can be said about any human endeavor other than art. What makes both of them visionaries is how they both pushed boundaries ahead of their times, to glimpse a piece of the future and bring it to the present via exemplar leadership abilities. I will agree though that what Musk has accomplished to date greatly exceeds what Jobs has accomplished, although Jobs arguably had at bit of an artist's impact with his design in conjunction with Jonny Ives et. al.
Another anecdote, I heard a story of a guy who thought along the same lines and used a notebook to record his thoughts for reading after the trip. He was convinced it was all brilliant stuff. After the trip he read what he wrote, "orange juice".
Even if it was a cheap mass-producable metastable room temperature superconductor the stored energy in hydrogen compressed to such a density would mean it would be a very good explosive - not something you would want to use for energy transfer with wires. Maybe as a thin nm level coating for superconducting computers or something.
Likely though this will never be anything else other than a scientific curiosity. Diamond anvil cells are not something you can automate, but a complete pain in the ass to set up, align, and use. There is a reason that this took so long to accomplish despite DACs being around for decades. I very much doubt that it would be metastable at room temperature - I can't find any good publication that convinces me otherwise.
Only counter argument would be if it *was* metastable typically anything that can be made at high pressure can be made using other shortcuts - CVD, hydrothermal synthesis, chemically with catalysts, other plasma discharges, etc. If it turned out to be metastable you could bet someone would find another way of synthesizing it.
Aluminum oxynitride and aluminum oxide are no more "aluminum" than table salt is metallic sodium. This material might be good for high strength windows, but isn't altogether that different from high strength glass, quartz, or sapphire. It behaves more closely to concrete than a sheet of aluminum (no ductility).
The debate is more of a chicken-egg problem. Computers would certainly come about and then drive the mathematics. Actually, it's more common for experiments to drive theory. Superconductors, superfluids, semiconductors, etc. all existed before theory could account for their behavior. Even the phosphorus doping of semiconductors was "discovered" by a machinist who noticed the faint smell of the ones that worked (phosphorus lamps had a similar odor). It's actually harder to think of fundamental technologies that were imagined using theory - lasers are the only thing that come to mind immediately.
Now of course modern integrated circuits would never really be possible without theory, nor would state of the art superconducting cables. But, theory is almost always driven by experiments, not the other way around. Quantum theory needed black body / photoelectric experiments, relativity needed Michelson–Morley. In my opinion the modern stagnation in new theories failing to dig deeper into reality is due to the lack of experiments that challenge our understanding. CERN is verifying very old existing theories, not challenging them. All this is immensely valuable, but we need a new WTF moment to go to the next step.
I'll have to pick up a copy of that book, thanks. I don't think DeBeers has much control over patents, but purchases companies that start using the technology. For example e6.com was purchased by DeBeers, I presume to control their tech. The old press technology is still in use by several companies mostly to produce diamonds for drills, like Novatek (started by Hall but still in business). Many use CVD tech though, but sell under the radar to avoid DeBeers.
The first hydraulic presses (tetrahedral presses) were made by an american engineer Tracy Hall. The "diamond makers" is a great book that discusses these early efforts and the long history of trying to create artificial diamond. Also not sure about efficiency, but high pressure formed artificial diamonds tend to be way more defective - a problem if you're trying to create semiconductor properties of a beta voltaic. CVD actually produces diamonds with less flaws than nature.
I know a bit about artificial diamonds with the CVD process. De Beers has been fighting this hard for a while, even buying out CVD companies to help regulate (look up synthetic diamond companies and see who owns them). I'm hopeful De Beers loses not because I care about jewelry, but due to how useful cheap diamond would be. Diamond really is the superlative substance - highest hardness (save for a few theoreticals and nano-sized stuff) and highest thermal conductivity at room temperature. Resistant to chemical attack, and can be doped to form semiconductors, superconductors, electron emitting materials, etc. If we could buy 10 cm^3 cubes of the stuff for $150 the number of engineering applications would be limitless. Looks like things could go this way eventually. It wouldn't be without historical precedent; aluminum and sapphire used to be exorbitantly expensive. The latter is now used occasionally as a window for barcode swipers at grocery stores.
Also a fantastic and underrated book about the history of diamond and the artificial high pressure synthesis of it is "the diamond makers" by Robert Hazen. All his books are pretty good (no affiliation).
Slashdot Mirror
I never saw anything that said Edison was racist and cruel. Read quite a bit about him, but could be wrong. Most first hand accounts portray Edison as a very likable guy (great book - "Uncommon Friends"). The elephant fiasco was partially Edison, but as always the big picture is more complicated. The elephant killed was going to be put to death anyway as it had killed people at the circus. The brainchild of electrocution by AC was Morgan, Edison's business partner. However, Edison has stated the whole AC DC feud was his biggest regret.
You're correct Edison didn't know much, however he hired people who did and ran the world's first industrial R&D lab for profit. While he was the "front" guy, credit was applied to those who innovated. Personnel in his lab invented myriad new devices and received credit. Edison's contributions came through tinkering, but quite successfully. You can't denounce his contributions towards working economical bulbs and phonographs, for example.
Believe it or not Tesla too was a tinkerer. He didn't believe in atoms, for one, and had his own (incorrect) ideas about how the universe worked. Most of what came from his lab has messing around with coils, not a mathematically rigorous method. And to your point on whether or not he was a "good person", he was a proponent of eugenics and had an odd hatred of obese people, especially obese women.
Really, everyone has faults and today's trend of painting everyone historically by their worst actions gets a little tiresome. Edison by all accounts was a great person who made fantastic contributions to society either directly or indirectly through his funding and personnel at his laboratory. The 20th century was born in his laboratory. Tesla too was by all accounts overall a great person, but his contributions to society have, in my opinion, been horrendously exaggerated.
Risk aversion may correlate with intelligence but I doubt the correlation is very strong. Some of the smartest people I know seem to have the part of their brain responsible for weighing risks absent.
I'm not so enthused about this feature either, but in what way is calling rude? I prefer calling over email if the latter will likely result in an ongoing chain, but figured if the other person is busy, I'll just leave a message. First time I ever considered it being rude (unless after 8 PM or so).
Especially since this came about by him responding to a question on Twitter. But evil evil successful people standing on us and weighing us down, right?
The age cutoff of 40 years old, which is oddly discriminatory. Would be nice if they updated it.
Michelson-Morley unequivocally proved the non-existence of an interferometer based aether proof.
Unless a crypto-currency is created to let you borrow money you don't yet have, it will never replace credit cards.
If you needed to use a hatch door, presumably the entire system would be shut down yes.
I never understood the thermal expansion argument against it either. Each pylon could connect tubes with a bellows with the bellows oribatally welded to each tube and each tube mated with one cut halfway on OD and other cut halfway on ID, bellows on outside. You would have a tube welder anyway. Simple shroud, even out of plastic, could help protect the bellows. Fatigue life would be decades and failure would be slow leak.
I thought the video was done rather poorly. It's not a perfect vacuum, and it's not that hard to do. I think you could provide counter thrust in a breach, brake either electromagnetically or mechanically, and vent the tube. His collapsing tubes are just silly, these aren't going to be soda cans.
As a mechanical engineer with a background in physics I think everything is certainly doable, but whether or not it can be done economically remains to be seen.
One possibility: have small gas thrusters with a nozzle in front of each hyperloop pod. Wouldn't have to be expensive, could be built using sodium azide canisters, the same compound behind airbag deployment, and a nozzle. Activating these would provide braking thrust but also a "counterwall" of gas to help dissipate the breach gas. While braking vents open up in the tube wall. Keep in mind that while a breach will be fast, it will still be limited to the speed of sound so pods further down the line should have plenty of time to stop with this method. Alas if the pod is very near the breach this would be difficult, but in a terrorist attack at least one pod would presumably be destroyed.
I love the concept of the hyperloop, and think it could be made to work, but it just appears this company is a joke largely focused on PR and capital investment than actually focusing on engineering. Even clicking on their website you find Steve Jobs type quotes "come with me if you want to change the world" and so on.
Just recently they showed a video of the "first" vacuum hyperloop. Ridiculous countdowns, systems checks with different teams like they were launching a rocket, etc. The test was a *linear motor* and absolutely nothing new. I would have expected much more; in fact the SpaceX contest student teams seemed to be further along! It makes me embarrassed just watching those kinds of videos.
So really no surprise Musk recently announced his intention to give it a go himself.
Oops, you're right. I bet it would be great to reread the stories after reading 'The Black Count'.
What's amazing is that book was loosely inspired by stories of his father. Alexandre Dumas (author) was half black - his father, a black man, was born in Saint-Domingue (Haiti now) in 1762. He became one of the most courageous and respected soldiers achieving almost unbelievable feats. Went to Egypt, Malta, etc. Racism came back in force with Napoleon and he died in very poor circumstances. All statues of him were destroyed in WWI and WWII if I recall, and now no one seems to remember him. The book "The Black Count" is amazing and I highly recommend it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Most Americans haven't heard of either Farnsworth or Baird, and don't care. Every country holds on to "their" inventors, don't act like it's a point of pride just for us over here. However in my opinion Farnsworth should be the one credited with the invention every adapted for use, the most accepted definition of "inventor". If you really want to split hairs you also need to include Zworykin.
I'm a fan of Musk, but the same reasons you shun Jobs also apply to Musk. Without either person what they had accomplished would have eventually been accomplished by others, which can be said about any human endeavor other than art. What makes both of them visionaries is how they both pushed boundaries ahead of their times, to glimpse a piece of the future and bring it to the present via exemplar leadership abilities. I will agree though that what Musk has accomplished to date greatly exceeds what Jobs has accomplished, although Jobs arguably had at bit of an artist's impact with his design in conjunction with Jonny Ives et. al.
New Hampshire and Connecticut both are > 50% nuclear and pay more than Illinois.
Another anecdote, I heard a story of a guy who thought along the same lines and used a notebook to record his thoughts for reading after the trip. He was convinced it was all brilliant stuff. After the trip he read what he wrote, "orange juice".
Even if it was a cheap mass-producable metastable room temperature superconductor the stored energy in hydrogen compressed to such a density would mean it would be a very good explosive - not something you would want to use for energy transfer with wires. Maybe as a thin nm level coating for superconducting computers or something.
Likely though this will never be anything else other than a scientific curiosity. Diamond anvil cells are not something you can automate, but a complete pain in the ass to set up, align, and use. There is a reason that this took so long to accomplish despite DACs being around for decades. I very much doubt that it would be metastable at room temperature - I can't find any good publication that convinces me otherwise.
Only counter argument would be if it *was* metastable typically anything that can be made at high pressure can be made using other shortcuts - CVD, hydrothermal synthesis, chemically with catalysts, other plasma discharges, etc. If it turned out to be metastable you could bet someone would find another way of synthesizing it.
Aluminum oxynitride and aluminum oxide are no more "aluminum" than table salt is metallic sodium. This material might be good for high strength windows, but isn't altogether that different from high strength glass, quartz, or sapphire. It behaves more closely to concrete than a sheet of aluminum (no ductility).
The debate is more of a chicken-egg problem. Computers would certainly come about and then drive the mathematics. Actually, it's more common for experiments to drive theory. Superconductors, superfluids, semiconductors, etc. all existed before theory could account for their behavior. Even the phosphorus doping of semiconductors was "discovered" by a machinist who noticed the faint smell of the ones that worked (phosphorus lamps had a similar odor). It's actually harder to think of fundamental technologies that were imagined using theory - lasers are the only thing that come to mind immediately.
Now of course modern integrated circuits would never really be possible without theory, nor would state of the art superconducting cables. But, theory is almost always driven by experiments, not the other way around. Quantum theory needed black body / photoelectric experiments, relativity needed Michelson–Morley. In my opinion the modern stagnation in new theories failing to dig deeper into reality is due to the lack of experiments that challenge our understanding. CERN is verifying very old existing theories, not challenging them. All this is immensely valuable, but we need a new WTF moment to go to the next step.
Well, Yellowstone will surely do itself in and take a good deal of nature away from the US.
Many exit signs and gun sights use radioluminescent paint (with tritium if I remember correctly).
I'll have to pick up a copy of that book, thanks. I don't think DeBeers has much control over patents, but purchases companies that start using the technology. For example e6.com was purchased by DeBeers, I presume to control their tech. The old press technology is still in use by several companies mostly to produce diamonds for drills, like Novatek (started by Hall but still in business). Many use CVD tech though, but sell under the radar to avoid DeBeers.
The first hydraulic presses (tetrahedral presses) were made by an american engineer Tracy Hall. The "diamond makers" is a great book that discusses these early efforts and the long history of trying to create artificial diamond. Also not sure about efficiency, but high pressure formed artificial diamonds tend to be way more defective - a problem if you're trying to create semiconductor properties of a beta voltaic. CVD actually produces diamonds with less flaws than nature.
I know a bit about artificial diamonds with the CVD process. De Beers has been fighting this hard for a while, even buying out CVD companies to help regulate (look up synthetic diamond companies and see who owns them). I'm hopeful De Beers loses not because I care about jewelry, but due to how useful cheap diamond would be. Diamond really is the superlative substance - highest hardness (save for a few theoreticals and nano-sized stuff) and highest thermal conductivity at room temperature. Resistant to chemical attack, and can be doped to form semiconductors, superconductors, electron emitting materials, etc. If we could buy 10 cm^3 cubes of the stuff for $150 the number of engineering applications would be limitless. Looks like things could go this way eventually. It wouldn't be without historical precedent; aluminum and sapphire used to be exorbitantly expensive. The latter is now used occasionally as a window for barcode swipers at grocery stores.
Also a fantastic and underrated book about the history of diamond and the artificial high pressure synthesis of it is "the diamond makers" by Robert Hazen. All his books are pretty good (no affiliation).