The National Academies is currently reviewing the prospect for inertial confinement fusion (http://fire.pppl.gov/NAS_ICF_interim_review_2012.pdf). There are serious challenges that need to be overcome, but hopefully NIF can ignite this year before the end of the national ignition campaign.
Say what you will but I live close enough to Waltham that I'm now worried about these things coming to my house in the middle of the night. It's like a prototype for the Rat Things in Snow Crash...
Even scientific research is affected heavily by this and requires fewer people to do the same job. In one week I can do experiments that 5 years ago would have taken 10 people a full year to perform. With such throughput it isn't necessary even to formulate a hypothesis. You just test every possible variation and let the data speak for itself.
You use the word science, I don't think it means what you think it means.
Just make sure you add a bunch of heat on all the number keys before you leave to mess up their analysis. I recommend urinating on the keypad to get a good even distribution.
I agree with your basic premise and found myself thinking the same thing at first. Then after playing for a while I'd get in the zone where I could go for long stretches w/o dying, that there was a certain logic in the layout. I ended up having a lot of fun playing it and wished it was longer. The atmosphere was well done, too. Also, I tried it with a gamepad at first and found the mouse/keyboard is WAAAY better, as usual, so perhaps that didn't help console sales.
A few year ago a tried parkour around the Boston area and found it a lot of fun and very challenging. I stopped quickly after a) being terrible at it and b) breaking my toe. But, the people I did meet and watched had a philosophy which I think was captured very well in this game. That being said, I can imagine why video game that intends to appeal to people who are interested in parkour didn't sell well. They're too busy doing crazy stuff at your local T-stop.
We should try to compile a list of a gaming companies that have shit on their fans when trying to add something to their community...
I'll start with Games Workshop
Not that I agree with the massive tuition hikes, but the difference here is that the journal is getting most of it's content and editing for free. It would be like the UC tuition rising despite all the professors and janitors working for free.
Also some journals actually charge your for publishing articles. It cost me a $1000 to publish in an IOP journal...and by me I mean the taxpayer since I work on a DOE experiment.
I had just watched Aliens over the weekend after not having seen it for awhile (and recently suffering though the AVP:R). It was amazing at how much better the movie was since it didn't dump crappy CGI monsters into it. The Winston team worked hard to make realistic looking Aliens, not to mention all the models and the lifesize stuff like the load-lifter and the queen....*sigh*
I'm not suprised to see studies like this coming out. With renewed interest in fission power as a clean (emissions-free) energy source, a big hurdle will be changing the public perception and fear of radiation. But, if something gets changed people are going to have all kinds of conspiracy theories about industry leaning on the government to change regulations so they can make $$ at the expensive of people/environment. There are many honest dangers with radioactive sources, but most of those that get used in labs aren't that harmful unless you do something stupid like eat them. I'm all for a critcal re-evaluation of radiation standards.
I disagree with the whole "Devil you know" idea. Getting rid of morons who participate in public debate should be a goal no matter what side you're on. I'd rather have someone intelligent in the opposition so a real exchange of ideas can take place, even if it means I loose the debate. Otherwise you get the same talking points bounced back at one another for decades and nothing changes. There is an objective truth about whether or not violence/sex in video games is harmful to minors. Theories can be formed and tested, evidence can be presented and the subject can be laid to rest for a length of time. Having a JT on the other team just generates waste in furthering the discussion.
I've done a lot of work with scientific grade CCDs and like other people are pointing out, there are unavoidable limits to the noise in your image. For a $50,000 scientific grade CCD, you are able to be cooled via solidstate (peltier) cooling down to around -50 degC, Using a LN2 dewar based unit, down to 77+ Kelvin. The rule of thumb is that dark current (thermal noise) reduces by a factor of 2 for every 5 degree (Kelvin) drop in the temperature of the CCD. The LN2 cooled cameras are how astro people get decent signal from very long (hours) exposures.
So, take a picture of the sky on a very cold day in northern canada.
IAFS (I am a fusion scientist) Your comments about the size of the heating equipment is ill posed. If we put a coal mine next to the coal furnace then apparently it wouldn't work either? It does, currently, take a substantial amount of hardware and external power to heat a tokamak plasma, but that is by design. None of the current experiments were designed to be self-sustaining, which is the main focus of the ITER experiment. The power density of a fusion reaction is not easy to comprehend when you're used to burning wood/oil/coal, but a small increases in plasma volume can mean large absolute gains in output power that offset such "HUGE" equipment. Your claim that heating and current drive techniques destablize the plasma is just plain wrong and I don't know where you're getting this. The H-mode or enhanced confinement regime is accessible at higher input powers (when you put more power in, you use it more efficiently) and has been achieved using RF heating alone on serveral tokamks.
Lastly, your love of the Farnsworth fusor as a power device is odd. Electrostatic conefinement devices cannot achieve the power densities necessary to be a commercial power source (several GW). If you look at current experiments (http://fti.neep.wisc.edu/iec/ftisite1.htm) the applications are many and important, but none are commercial power. I like these devices but mainly because their simplicity allows them to be portable.
The tokamak is not without its problems (alpha-ash, exhaust heat flux, steady-state operations), but it also has no competitors when you look at the absolute plasma pressures achieved. Overall, people should still realize that ITER is an experiment and not a demo reactor. While there is confidence that ITER can be run at it's target Q=10 (10 times more fusion power than input), this is formed from scaling previous experiments and needs to be verified.
Although it looks cool, I wouldn't trust a static frame as 'evidence' of a planet. Things like tracking it's path or spectroscopically analyzing body's emission would go further to prove things. Then again this may just be the pretty face on a whole boatload of research and I need to dig a little deeper.
Slashdot Mirror
The National Academies is currently reviewing the prospect for inertial confinement fusion (http://fire.pppl.gov/NAS_ICF_interim_review_2012.pdf). There are serious challenges that need to be overcome, but hopefully NIF can ignite this year before the end of the national ignition campaign.
Say what you will but I live close enough to Waltham that I'm now worried about these things coming to my house in the middle of the night. It's like a prototype for the Rat Things in Snow Crash...
Even scientific research is affected heavily by this and requires fewer people to do the same job. In one week I can do experiments that 5 years ago would have taken 10 people a full year to perform. With such throughput it isn't necessary even to formulate a hypothesis. You just test every possible variation and let the data speak for itself.
You use the word science, I don't think it means what you think it means.
Just make sure you add a bunch of heat on all the number keys before you leave to mess up their analysis. I recommend urinating on the keypad to get a good even distribution.
I agree with your basic premise and found myself thinking the same thing at first. Then after playing for a while I'd get in the zone where I could go for long stretches w/o dying, that there was a certain logic in the layout. I ended up having a lot of fun playing it and wished it was longer. The atmosphere was well done, too. Also, I tried it with a gamepad at first and found the mouse/keyboard is WAAAY better, as usual, so perhaps that didn't help console sales. A few year ago a tried parkour around the Boston area and found it a lot of fun and very challenging. I stopped quickly after a) being terrible at it and b) breaking my toe. But, the people I did meet and watched had a philosophy which I think was captured very well in this game. That being said, I can imagine why video game that intends to appeal to people who are interested in parkour didn't sell well. They're too busy doing crazy stuff at your local T-stop.
We should try to compile a list of a gaming companies that have shit on their fans when trying to add something to their community... I'll start with Games Workshop
Just be glad in the Newton family never patented calculus so that you'd have to pay a license fee to do your homework.
Not that I agree with the massive tuition hikes, but the difference here is that the journal is getting most of it's content and editing for free. It would be like the UC tuition rising despite all the professors and janitors working for free. Also some journals actually charge your for publishing articles. It cost me a $1000 to publish in an IOP journal...and by me I mean the taxpayer since I work on a DOE experiment.
I had just watched Aliens over the weekend after not having seen it for awhile (and recently suffering though the AVP:R). It was amazing at how much better the movie was since it didn't dump crappy CGI monsters into it. The Winston team worked hard to make realistic looking Aliens, not to mention all the models and the lifesize stuff like the load-lifter and the queen....*sigh*
I'm not suprised to see studies like this coming out. With renewed interest in fission power as a clean (emissions-free) energy source, a big hurdle will be changing the public perception and fear of radiation. But, if something gets changed people are going to have all kinds of conspiracy theories about industry leaning on the government to change regulations so they can make $$ at the expensive of people/environment. There are many honest dangers with radioactive sources, but most of those that get used in labs aren't that harmful unless you do something stupid like eat them. I'm all for a critcal re-evaluation of radiation standards.
I disagree with the whole "Devil you know" idea. Getting rid of morons who participate in public debate should be a goal no matter what side you're on. I'd rather have someone intelligent in the opposition so a real exchange of ideas can take place, even if it means I loose the debate. Otherwise you get the same talking points bounced back at one another for decades and nothing changes. There is an objective truth about whether or not violence/sex in video games is harmful to minors. Theories can be formed and tested, evidence can be presented and the subject can be laid to rest for a length of time. Having a JT on the other team just generates waste in furthering the discussion.
I've done a lot of work with scientific grade CCDs and like other people are pointing out, there are unavoidable limits to the noise in your image. For a $50,000 scientific grade CCD, you are able to be cooled via solidstate (peltier) cooling down to around -50 degC, Using a LN2 dewar based unit, down to 77+ Kelvin. The rule of thumb is that dark current (thermal noise) reduces by a factor of 2 for every 5 degree (Kelvin) drop in the temperature of the CCD. The LN2 cooled cameras are how astro people get decent signal from very long (hours) exposures. So, take a picture of the sky on a very cold day in northern canada.
IAFS (I am a fusion scientist) Your comments about the size of the heating equipment is ill posed. If we put a coal mine next to the coal furnace then apparently it wouldn't work either? It does, currently, take a substantial amount of hardware and external power to heat a tokamak plasma, but that is by design. None of the current experiments were designed to be self-sustaining, which is the main focus of the ITER experiment. The power density of a fusion reaction is not easy to comprehend when you're used to burning wood/oil/coal, but a small increases in plasma volume can mean large absolute gains in output power that offset such "HUGE" equipment. Your claim that heating and current drive techniques destablize the plasma is just plain wrong and I don't know where you're getting this. The H-mode or enhanced confinement regime is accessible at higher input powers (when you put more power in, you use it more efficiently) and has been achieved using RF heating alone on serveral tokamks.
Lastly, your love of the Farnsworth fusor as a power device is odd. Electrostatic conefinement devices cannot achieve the power densities necessary to be a commercial power source (several GW). If you look at current experiments (http://fti.neep.wisc.edu/iec/ftisite1.htm) the applications are many and important, but none are commercial power. I like these devices but mainly because their simplicity allows them to be portable.
The tokamak is not without its problems (alpha-ash, exhaust heat flux, steady-state operations), but it also has no competitors when you look at the absolute plasma pressures achieved. Overall, people should still realize that ITER is an experiment and not a demo reactor. While there is confidence that ITER can be run at it's target Q=10 (10 times more fusion power than input), this is formed from scaling previous experiments and needs to be verified.
Although it looks cool, I wouldn't trust a static frame as 'evidence' of a planet. Things like tracking it's path or spectroscopically analyzing body's emission would go further to prove things. Then again this may just be the pretty face on a whole boatload of research and I need to dig a little deeper.