The downside is that getting rid of covalent and ionic bonding means the material is weaker than regular rubber.
Regular polymers can be made very strong from covalent bonds (polycarbonates, polysulfones). Making a very strong polymer requires quite a lot of covalent bonds, and creates a very strong material that lacks tensile strength. The problem with almost all polymers in engineering applications is two things: creep and degradation. The "creep" part is when the polymer chains, loaded with some force, start to slip and rearrange themselves. This has to be taken into account in many applications, unless you're designing commodity applications such as trash bags, etc. The degradation problem is also largely unavoidable and occurs when these bonds are broken, whether it be from radiation (sunlight, UV, etc.), chemical attack (acids, ozone..). This material lacks these susceptible bonds creating a material that is much weaker, but also much more reliable in the long run. TFA states some potential applications:
The material could eventually make it a cinch to repair holes in shoes, snapped fan belts and punctured kitchen gloves. It might also make strange new products possible - for instance bags that can be ripped open and then resealed. "You don't need a zip when you can make a resealable hole in it," Leibler says.
I've heard the same thing, but I've also wondered that if they had longer lives and even more intelligence - would they be capable of moving on from where they are now? Perhaps they would develop some form of domestication and rationing of resources, but I don't see how it's possible for aquatic life to ever enter "the bronze age" since it's formidably difficult to light a fire under water...
I've been formally trained to use ProE and have used SolidWorks for a reasonably long time. ProE used to have an edge with stability and some 3D features such as sweep-blends, but now it seems both Solidworks and Autodesk Inventor have caught up and ProE is the software that needs to push ahead. In my experience, ProE has a horrible user interface though great stability. I've used both latest releases of Solidworks and Inventor, and both user interfaces are excellent. Inventor does have a great deal of the market here in the North East, and is far from dying. Personally I think Solidworks will win in the long run due to their add-on packages which provide phenomenal simulations for whatever purpose you have (heat, fluid flow, stress...).
The user interface isn't an issue at all for Autodesk.
Waste tires can be recycled and used in lots of ways, though this one is particularly interesting. Tires actually have a fuel value and energy density greater than coal, and the slag left over can be used in construction materials and concrete. The crumb rubber the article mentions is actually somewhat difficult to take out of the tire, you generally cryogenically freeze the tire then hammer at it - this separates the crumb rubber from the fibers within the tire. The recycled rubber isn't the kind of rubber you'd use in everyday life without treatment, so it's used in things like rubber mats and in highway construction.
Crumb rubber has found uses in sewage plants as a filler material to bulk up the sewage, replacing the tons of wood chips that would normally have to be discarded. In places with erosion problems burying tires make excellent barriers combined with terracing techniques. There have also been programs to make artificial reefs with tires, making great fish habitats (if done properly that is). I read an article on using the 2" chips as mulch for blueberry plants. Some companies are playing with pyrolysis as well - getting a good deal of oil from the tires by heating them under an oxygen free and high pressure environment.
There's really no limit to what you can do with waste tires. If this method works well I'm sure some countries could benefit, though I don't know how well the filters work. I can't imagine them removing arsenic or bacteria, but possibly they could condition the water so that a better filter could last longer? The article was a little vague on details - anyone provide some insight to this end?
In high school I was largely unmotivated to do a whole lot of work. The computer science classes consisted of how to use Microsoft word and excel, instead of any real programming (my only option was a local campus where I could learn basic). The sciences were very limited, though biology was strong at our school. We had microbiology equipment, centrifuges, incubators, etc. Physics was a bore; we spent the whole year doing blocks on ramps essentially. I entered high school freshmen year having designed a program that calculates the Lorentz transform, and while that wasn't particularly impressive it goes to show how unmotivated I was to work below my level. Other students were brighter than I was - two that were particularly intelligent decided not to pursue college. I myself was more interested in the Army than I was in going to college, but thanks to my parents demand I went. I've since been challenged beyond my level since and find the work so much more enjoyable (I'm a physics major).
Studying at a college campus has yielded some insights. I noticed foreign students breezing through our classes like nothing, and that always amazed me. How can someone with English as their second language do so much better in class than the rest of us? I naively assumed it was because they were the "best and brightest" in their country and were "privileged" enough to come to the US to get a real education. It seems however, that the truth is much simpler and the solution much easier.
These students learned calculus while I was drawing triangles. With a more advanced math background you can go much more in depth with physics, and understand how formulas were created rather than be given a function to plug numbers into. You can understand why taking the derivative equal to zero of a function can yield the maximum of a trajectory, instead of being given a formula to find the apex. After you get through these particularly boring subjects you can have enough math to touch on some basic quantum, just so that you know there is more to physics than pushing blocks around and conserving momentum.
Now of course I'm biased towards physics and math, but even with the other subjects the issues were similar. English seemed more to me like vocabulary memorization and forcing students to read books instead of teaching them how to appreciate the literature. We were given no background on why we would ever want to learn a foreign language, but instead were asked to memorize yet more words. Had I known that learning German would open up doors to engineers and physicists alike I would have been more motivated.
So yes, while the world does need ditch diggers and this work can be rewarding (I worked construction through high school), the world needs competent and innovative scientists and engineers more than anything. The educational system as i've seen it in the US is dry, unchallenging, and unmotivating. Major change needs to be implemented to keep our competitive edge.
GE I believe had some experiments with shock synthesis, and still does that if i'm not mistaken. The diamonds that method produces are very small, great for machining tools etc.
There was a company in Florida that was one of the first to produce large grown diamonds which the Wired article mentions. Their diamonds had nitrogen "contaminants" creating that yellow color. Apollo diamond of Boston produced much more pure diamonds through a deposition process, and these could apply to the computer industry. Boron doped diamond creates a 'p' type semiconductor, but I don't believe there is a well accepted method of producing an 'n' type semiconductor essential for a computer chip (perhaps someone here could enlighten us on this?).
Purity aside diamonds are a great material. Most of you are aware of the hardness, which is great, but the thermal conductivity is even more astounding. Diamond has a thermal conductivity of about 1000 W/m K while silver has a thermal conductivity of about 406.0 W/m K. I've heard that if a pure isotope carbon is used in depostion the thermal conductivity can be much larger than that. If diamond were to become available to engineers cheaply through these processes entire new opportunities would be opened.
I've actually heard diamond can conduct heat away in a wave like manner, but I couldn't find a source to validate that...
If you visit the site they have some nice projection technology, including video projectors that fit in your pocket. I wouldn't expect the TV would deviate from this technology and is probably a sort of laser-projector put into one package. Whether or not it's superior, we'll have to see...
Using the Finite Element Method (FEM) will give you very good results. I've worked with Comsol and Floworks simulations designing a variety of things - but mostly cooling loops. This is where the problem lies - these simulations are very computer intensive and even a simple simulation such as a cooling loop through copper (one bend) can take over a day to converge to a solution (and i would make all sorts of assumptions to cut the time down, like perfectly smooth walls). A desktop computer wouldn't even be able to handle a more realistic simulation of the same loop. So the problem isn't with our knowledge of teh equations or the algorithms, it's a lack of available computer power. It turns out it's easier to build a wind tunnel than a supercomputer.
There is research into fusion where hydrogen beams (generally ion beams) are shot at each other, such as the Farnsworth Fusor (there are other methods but this is a common one). Though this method can produce fusion, the process is very inefficient and is really only good for a neutron source. I'm not sure what you'd hope to achieve by cooling them right after however...
If you're interested in the science behind fusion beyond the wikipedia article I would recommend reading "The Science of JET", available for free online here.
JET was the highly successful predecessor to ITER.
I hope you're all being sarcastic about water wars erupting if fusion succeeds, but if not here's a quote:
"Deuterium is abundant in ocean water, and one cubic kilometer of seawater could, in principle, supply all the world's energy needs for several hundred years." - According to an article in IEEE
Add to this the fact that it's proposed Lithium be used to adsorb the neutron radiation from a reactor, which would in turn breed Tritium for use in the fusion reaction.
A fusion reactor has so many challenges behind it that ignition is only a small step towards something useful. Assuming you ignite a plasma you then have to maintain it, keep it stable, and fuel it fast enough to keep it burning. After that you're left with "mere" engineering problems, such as removing ~ 1 MW of heat per m^2 on the walls of the tokomak, making a gun fire a pellet of solid hydrogen into the plasma at one pellet per second, and finally creating a structure that can handle the intense neutron flux so the reactor can survive long enough to break even.
Though ITER is being built soon, it's being designed as its going up. I'm involved with creating an H- ion beam to inject the plasma (called neutral beam injection). The idea is to fire a high energy beam of neutral hydrogen into the plasma to heat it up (neutral so the atoms can travel through the containment magnets without deflection).
So even if the Chinese managed to build a reactor that beats previous records, it's a long while before fusion powers your home. Nevertheless I consider Fusion research to be one of the most important fields; it takes no imagination to understand what it would mean if nations could be powered on water.
I RTFA and visited the site but exactly how is this car "designed entirely by computers"? More likely is that the computers optimized each component through simulations based on human input. Can anyone fill us in to how exactly the computers helped design the car?
In some (if not most) situations neutron beams can determine more about the structure of a material than alternative methods.
Using neutron beams scientists determined the structure of insulin, YBCO, and cell membrane structures. The SNS site has a page that discusses the importance here
I'm fortunate enough to be working with the SNS this summer as an intern, so this is exciting news for me. I watched a presentation on the SNS about a year ago, and the Phd who gave the presentation told us the machine is already booked for the next ten years.
Though there may be other neutron sources out there, as FP mentioned, I don't believe any of them can hold a candle to the power and energy spectrum of the SNS. The reasearch is useful for just about every field out there - from basic materials science to protein dynamics. Industries are interested in the SNS as well - if I remember correctly he mentioned one company was planning to observe shampoo (though I don't recall why).
I seem to recall that something similar to this was brought up a few months ago here at Slashdot and several seemingly very intelligent posters made citations and pointed out that the amount of uranium we have available that can be processed will last for only a very limited timespan and that nuclear perhaps isn't the best way to go.
The uranium used in slow neutron reactors, or most commercial US reactors, is in fact in limited supply - but even if we just used that uranium we would have thousands of years of energy available. Using the newer reactor designs with other isotopes/elements we have hundreds of thousands of years available (using fast neutron or breeder reactors). Surely by then we'll have figured out fusion;)
Of course, there's always the "we'll run out of oil by 1995" theories running around, but the arguments seemed quite compelling.
You're probably referring to peak oil production, which most agree now is very real. Peak oil may have already passed us in the 90s, or maybe it's coming within a decade - either way it's soon (just look at the oil prices now). Hubbert was the economist that came up with the theory of peak oil, and though people were originally very critical of his theory after seeing data correlate very closely to his projections they listened.
Economists have run simulations using system dynamics and so forth to find the "weak points" of the US economy - basically simulating various catastrophes and seeing if the economy as a whole could adjust. Surprisingly, our economy was shown to be remarkably strong with the exception of one area - our oil market. Destroy some refineries and cut back the supply and the economy couldn't recover.
Mind you those were just simulations, but they helped to illustrate a point. Our nation is in fact addicted to oil, and while other countries have realized this and lowered their dependence through alternative energy we are lagging far behind. Nuclear energy is the only answer.
Podkletnov spun a levitated superconducting YBCO disk at high RPMs. As the story goes he walked into the room smoking a pipe and saw the smoke from the pipe rising in a column above the superconductor. Measurements showed a slight decrease in gravitational attraction above the superconductor. Of course, the science involved wasn't exactly careful (who would smoke a pipe next to equipment like that?), and he was dismissed as a crank.
If you've read The Hunt for Zero Point by Nick Cook, Cook actually talks with Podkletnov about his "discovery". He then admits it wasn't a random experiment, but based off some Russian papers around WWII with some Nazi connections or something.
So really it's pseudoscience, and i'm sure the scientists mentioned in the article were both aware of Podkletnov's work and at the same time careful not to associate themselves with him. Just because it's pseudoscience doesn't mean nothing will come of it - it just means it's really unlikely. If you're interested in this sort of thing I recommend reading Cook's book, he worked for a military journal before deciding to explore the world of pseudoscience (the book almost has a mystery thriller aspect to it).
Scramjets are really interesting. They are just as powerful as rocket engines should they work properly, but they don't have to carry around nearly as much fuel. Liquid hydrogen/oxygen fuel for a rocket has most of it's weight stored as the heavier oxygen. The scramjet and ramjet engines intend to scoop the oxygen from the atmosphere, reducing the weight of the aircraft by several times.
The engineering behind the ramjet and scramjet couldn't be any more different. Ramjets are basically scramjet engines that purposefully slow the air intake so that combustion can occur. In a scramjet the big problem is that the air is moving so fast that when you ignite the fuel/air mixture, the combustion will actually take place outside the engine. It would be ridiculous to slow the air, so the problem lies in how you get the mixture to ignite sooner. To this end they are testing ionizing mixtures, etc. Some scramjet geometries are highly classified.
I'm currently an undergraduate at a small science/tech school majoring in physics. Since there are only a handful of people in my field of major the professors know each of us on a first name basis. What I'm getting at is I often speak with the professors about their research and interests.
If there is a deficit of science and engineering majors I doubt that is the true issue. I don't exactly believe the argument the quality and motivation of the graduates has decreased either - but rather ambitious research isn't what it used to be.
Just recently we had a story on the discovery of CCDs. The scientists had an idea, deviated from whatever project they were working on, an tested their idea which led to a new technology and market. This is where the problem lies - in the present industry there is little incentive for ambitious or abnormal projects. Funds are allocated for very specific projects, and if some side discovery is made with that funding it may very well be frowned upon (did I ask for a CCD chip!?). In the academia there is a similar attitude of "publish or perish". Why research cutting edge technologies involving complex quantum mechanics, nanotechnologies, and so on if there's a chance of failure? You don't, because if you failed you'd be done. So, many scientists are studying basic things that can be guaranteed results. The professor I know well here has toyed with the idea of testing the EPR hypothesis with entangled atoms or particles. Unfortunately that's difficult, and after much funding he could very well fail. So most likely he'll never try, which is a shame because if he succeeded it would be one for the textbooks. Instead he's studying something practical, such as wetting of surfaces, that can assure a solid review and published papers.
It's really unfortunate people aren't taking chances due to this attitude.
I've actually been following Dr. Mills for some time now. This theory of his, as well as his claims of energy production have been around for quite some time. Slashdot even covered it before:
What makes this case interesting is the length of time this "hoax" has persisted. The funding means nothing; a company with a large budget doesn't care to gamble with the amounts claimed. The validations of his energy claims are the most significant. Many laboratories have found anomalies in reproduced experiments (and some have failed). His theory does not have nearly as much support - nearly every qualified physicist I have given his book to has politely said he's wrong. His derivations just don't make sense.
Some of the more open minded physicists then said that doesn't mean he's wrong. There may be energy produced that current physics can account for, and at worst QM would need amends. This speculation is really irrelevant if he is claiming a product- all we have to do is wait a while and see how it pans out.
"The connection between microwave exposure and cancer has been documented for years. During the Cold War, the Soviets irradiated the U.S. embassy in Moscow, Russia, with low level, twin-beam microwave radiation. Two successive ambassadors developed leukemia. Other staffers also developed cancer, or their blood showed DNA damage, which precedes cancer."
Slashdot Mirror
The downside is that getting rid of covalent and ionic bonding means the material is weaker than regular rubber.
Regular polymers can be made very strong from covalent bonds (polycarbonates, polysulfones). Making a very strong polymer requires quite a lot of covalent bonds, and creates a very strong material that lacks tensile strength. The problem with almost all polymers in engineering applications is two things: creep and degradation. The "creep" part is when the polymer chains, loaded with some force, start to slip and rearrange themselves. This has to be taken into account in many applications, unless you're designing commodity applications such as trash bags, etc. The degradation problem is also largely unavoidable and occurs when these bonds are broken, whether it be from radiation (sunlight, UV, etc.), chemical attack (acids, ozone..). This material lacks these susceptible bonds creating a material that is much weaker, but also much more reliable in the long run. TFA states some potential applications:
The material could eventually make it a cinch to repair holes in shoes, snapped fan belts and punctured kitchen gloves. It might also make strange new products possible - for instance bags that can be ripped open and then resealed. "You don't need a zip when you can make a resealable hole in it," Leibler says.
I've heard the same thing, but I've also wondered that if they had longer lives and even more intelligence - would they be capable of moving on from where they are now? Perhaps they would develop some form of domestication and rationing of resources, but I don't see how it's possible for aquatic life to ever enter "the bronze age" since it's formidably difficult to light a fire under water...
This link provides a little more information.
If you missed last year's discussion here on the most dangerous idea you should read through it. There were some pretty interesting ideas...
The user interface isn't an issue at all for Autodesk.
Crumb rubber has found uses in sewage plants as a filler material to bulk up the sewage, replacing the tons of wood chips that would normally have to be discarded. In places with erosion problems burying tires make excellent barriers combined with terracing techniques. There have also been programs to make artificial reefs with tires, making great fish habitats (if done properly that is). I read an article on using the 2" chips as mulch for blueberry plants. Some companies are playing with pyrolysis as well - getting a good deal of oil from the tires by heating them under an oxygen free and high pressure environment.
There's really no limit to what you can do with waste tires. If this method works well I'm sure some countries could benefit, though I don't know how well the filters work. I can't imagine them removing arsenic or bacteria, but possibly they could condition the water so that a better filter could last longer? The article was a little vague on details - anyone provide some insight to this end?
Studying at a college campus has yielded some insights. I noticed foreign students breezing through our classes like nothing, and that always amazed me. How can someone with English as their second language do so much better in class than the rest of us? I naively assumed it was because they were the "best and brightest" in their country and were "privileged" enough to come to the US to get a real education. It seems however, that the truth is much simpler and the solution much easier.
These students learned calculus while I was drawing triangles. With a more advanced math background you can go much more in depth with physics, and understand how formulas were created rather than be given a function to plug numbers into. You can understand why taking the derivative equal to zero of a function can yield the maximum of a trajectory, instead of being given a formula to find the apex. After you get through these particularly boring subjects you can have enough math to touch on some basic quantum, just so that you know there is more to physics than pushing blocks around and conserving momentum.
Now of course I'm biased towards physics and math, but even with the other subjects the issues were similar. English seemed more to me like vocabulary memorization and forcing students to read books instead of teaching them how to appreciate the literature. We were given no background on why we would ever want to learn a foreign language, but instead were asked to memorize yet more words. Had I known that learning German would open up doors to engineers and physicists alike I would have been more motivated.
So yes, while the world does need ditch diggers and this work can be rewarding (I worked construction through high school), the world needs competent and innovative scientists and engineers more than anything. The educational system as i've seen it in the US is dry, unchallenging, and unmotivating. Major change needs to be implemented to keep our competitive edge.
There was a company in Florida that was one of the first to produce large grown diamonds which the Wired article mentions. Their diamonds had nitrogen "contaminants" creating that yellow color. Apollo diamond of Boston produced much more pure diamonds through a deposition process, and these could apply to the computer industry. Boron doped diamond creates a 'p' type semiconductor, but I don't believe there is a well accepted method of producing an 'n' type semiconductor essential for a computer chip (perhaps someone here could enlighten us on this?).
Purity aside diamonds are a great material. Most of you are aware of the hardness, which is great, but the thermal conductivity is even more astounding. Diamond has a thermal conductivity of about 1000 W/m K while silver has a thermal conductivity of about 406.0 W/m K. I've heard that if a pure isotope carbon is used in depostion the thermal conductivity can be much larger than that. If diamond were to become available to engineers cheaply through these processes entire new opportunities would be opened.
I've actually heard diamond can conduct heat away in a wave like manner, but I couldn't find a source to validate that...
Novalux : http://www.novalux.com/
If you visit the site they have some nice projection technology, including video projectors that fit in your pocket. I wouldn't expect the TV would deviate from this technology and is probably a sort of laser-projector put into one package. Whether or not it's superior, we'll have to see...
Using the Finite Element Method (FEM) will give you very good results. I've worked with Comsol and Floworks simulations designing a variety of things - but mostly cooling loops. This is where the problem lies - these simulations are very computer intensive and even a simple simulation such as a cooling loop through copper (one bend) can take over a day to converge to a solution (and i would make all sorts of assumptions to cut the time down, like perfectly smooth walls). A desktop computer wouldn't even be able to handle a more realistic simulation of the same loop. So the problem isn't with our knowledge of teh equations or the algorithms, it's a lack of available computer power. It turns out it's easier to build a wind tunnel than a supercomputer.
Hope this helps.
Justin
JET was the highly successful predecessor to ITER.
"Deuterium is abundant in ocean water, and one cubic kilometer of seawater could, in principle, supply all the world's energy needs for several hundred years." - According to an article in IEEE
Add to this the fact that it's proposed Lithium be used to adsorb the neutron radiation from a reactor, which would in turn breed Tritium for use in the fusion reaction.
Though ITER is being built soon, it's being designed as its going up. I'm involved with creating an H- ion beam to inject the plasma (called neutral beam injection). The idea is to fire a high energy beam of neutral hydrogen into the plasma to heat it up (neutral so the atoms can travel through the containment magnets without deflection).
So even if the Chinese managed to build a reactor that beats previous records, it's a long while before fusion powers your home. Nevertheless I consider Fusion research to be one of the most important fields; it takes no imagination to understand what it would mean if nations could be powered on water.
I RTFA and visited the site but exactly how is this car "designed entirely by computers"? More likely is that the computers optimized each component through simulations based on human input. Can anyone fill us in to how exactly the computers helped design the car?
Using neutron beams scientists determined the structure of insulin, YBCO, and cell membrane structures. The SNS site has a page that discusses the importance here
Though there may be other neutron sources out there, as FP mentioned, I don't believe any of them can hold a candle to the power and energy spectrum of the SNS. The reasearch is useful for just about every field out there - from basic materials science to protein dynamics. Industries are interested in the SNS as well - if I remember correctly he mentioned one company was planning to observe shampoo (though I don't recall why).
Take a look at the size of this thing: http://www.bnl.gov/nufo/images/facilities/SNS_lg.j pg
The uranium used in slow neutron reactors, or most commercial US reactors, is in fact in limited supply - but even if we just used that uranium we would have thousands of years of energy available. Using the newer reactor designs with other isotopes/elements we have hundreds of thousands of years available (using fast neutron or breeder reactors). Surely by then we'll have figured out fusion ;)
Of course, there's always the "we'll run out of oil by 1995" theories running around, but the arguments seemed quite compelling.
You're probably referring to peak oil production, which most agree now is very real. Peak oil may have already passed us in the 90s, or maybe it's coming within a decade - either way it's soon (just look at the oil prices now). Hubbert was the economist that came up with the theory of peak oil, and though people were originally very critical of his theory after seeing data correlate very closely to his projections they listened.
Economists have run simulations using system dynamics and so forth to find the "weak points" of the US economy - basically simulating various catastrophes and seeing if the economy as a whole could adjust. Surprisingly, our economy was shown to be remarkably strong with the exception of one area - our oil market. Destroy some refineries and cut back the supply and the economy couldn't recover.
Mind you those were just simulations, but they helped to illustrate a point. Our nation is in fact addicted to oil, and while other countries have realized this and lowered their dependence through alternative energy we are lagging far behind. Nuclear energy is the only answer.
I actually might take you up on that T-shirt deal...
Posted by: Anonymous Coward | Mar 31, 2006 at 10:16 PM
If you've read The Hunt for Zero Point by Nick Cook, Cook actually talks with Podkletnov about his "discovery". He then admits it wasn't a random experiment, but based off some Russian papers around WWII with some Nazi connections or something.
So really it's pseudoscience, and i'm sure the scientists mentioned in the article were both aware of Podkletnov's work and at the same time careful not to associate themselves with him. Just because it's pseudoscience doesn't mean nothing will come of it - it just means it's really unlikely. If you're interested in this sort of thing I recommend reading Cook's book, he worked for a military journal before deciding to explore the world of pseudoscience (the book almost has a mystery thriller aspect to it).
Podkletnov's Device: http://www.mufor.org/antigrav.html
The engineering behind the ramjet and scramjet couldn't be any more different. Ramjets are basically scramjet engines that purposefully slow the air intake so that combustion can occur. In a scramjet the big problem is that the air is moving so fast that when you ignite the fuel/air mixture, the combustion will actually take place outside the engine. It would be ridiculous to slow the air, so the problem lies in how you get the mixture to ignite sooner. To this end they are testing ionizing mixtures, etc. Some scramjet geometries are highly classified.
Here's a good link that talks about the combustion issue: http://www.aip.org/tip/INPHFA/vol-10/iss-4/p24.htm l
And of course some general information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scramjet
I'm currently an undergraduate at a small science/tech school majoring in physics. Since there are only a handful of people in my field of major the professors know each of us on a first name basis. What I'm getting at is I often speak with the professors about their research and interests.
If there is a deficit of science and engineering majors I doubt that is the true issue. I don't exactly believe the argument the quality and motivation of the graduates has decreased either - but rather ambitious research isn't what it used to be.
Just recently we had a story on the discovery of CCDs. The scientists had an idea, deviated from whatever project they were working on, an tested their idea which led to a new technology and market. This is where the problem lies - in the present industry there is little incentive for ambitious or abnormal projects. Funds are allocated for very specific projects, and if some side discovery is made with that funding it may very well be frowned upon (did I ask for a CCD chip!?). In the academia there is a similar attitude of "publish or perish". Why research cutting edge technologies involving complex quantum mechanics, nanotechnologies, and so on if there's a chance of failure? You don't, because if you failed you'd be done. So, many scientists are studying basic things that can be guaranteed results. The professor I know well here has toyed with the idea of testing the EPR hypothesis with entangled atoms or particles. Unfortunately that's difficult, and after much funding he could very well fail. So most likely he'll never try, which is a shame because if he succeeded it would be one for the textbooks. Instead he's studying something practical, such as wetting of surfaces, that can assure a solid review and published papers.
It's really unfortunate people aren't taking chances due to this attitude.
The HST doesn't really do too much x-ray observations as far as I know- the Chandra telescope has amazing x-ray resolution on the other hand.
http://science.slashdot.org/science/02/12/07/22522 59.shtml?tid=126
http://science.slashdot.org/science/02/06/07/21592 10.shtml?tid=134
What makes this case interesting is the length of time this "hoax" has persisted. The funding means nothing; a company with a large budget doesn't care to gamble with the amounts claimed. The validations of his energy claims are the most significant. Many laboratories have found anomalies in reproduced experiments (and some have failed). His theory does not have nearly as much support - nearly every qualified physicist I have given his book to has politely said he's wrong. His derivations just don't make sense.
Some of the more open minded physicists then said that doesn't mean he's wrong. There may be energy produced that current physics can account for, and at worst QM would need amends. This speculation is really irrelevant if he is claiming a product- all we have to do is wait a while and see how it pans out.
Company website: http://www.blacklightpower.com/ (download theory book for free)
"The connection between microwave exposure and cancer has been documented for years. During the Cold War, the Soviets irradiated the U.S. embassy in Moscow, Russia, with low level, twin-beam microwave radiation. Two successive ambassadors developed leukemia. Other staffers also developed cancer, or their blood showed DNA damage, which precedes cancer."