yes, but in smaller capacities, they will probably catch up before the end of the decade. At 320GB or so, a 250 GB SSD that costs $30 or $50 more will be a no brainer. I'm looking forward to the days when the cheapest laptops all come with SSDs because it's cheaper. It's kind of happening already with the 16 GB chromebooks, but a few more steps of moore's law will put that into very competitive capacities.
Not to counter an ad with another, but has anyone here tried an emWave2, as blogged about here: http://www.bulletproofexec.com...
It seems like it's the same thing the S5 is claiming, but as a separate device for $200. It'd be nice if phones could provide the same info for free/much cheaper. It looks like some HR bluetooth accessories can be paired with cheap apps to get a similar measurement. Any experience about their usefulness for stress management?
Look at the graph at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_cell_efficiency (about half way down). All the multijunction solar cells are run under concentration ranging up to ~1000 suns (1000:1 focusing of the suns energy).
What's really impressive is that they are getting closer and closer to the 86% efficiency limit imposed by Carnot. Just like with Wind (~59% limit imposed by Betz's Law), our solar cells are approaching as good as we can get.
I assume they are concentrating the contamination in order to have a smaller volume to store for 100+ years.
Can anyone comment on:
"In fact, I am writing this article while sitting on an airplane, and I am receiving more ionizing radiation from cosmic rays at this higher altitude than I would receive from drinking effluent water from the Advanced Liquid Waste Processing System. "
Does this mean the 99.999% clean water from the treatment process would do no lasting damage over the rest of his life if he drank it? I feel like comparing external radiation to internal (and potentially more concentrated by bodily functions) is nice and calming, but over what time scales is the author's statement valid? Drink nothing but the permeate for the rest of your life and be no worse off than one intercontinental flight?
There are two big things that can help electric cars (does Musk also include plugin hybrids?)
1) like you said, is the cost of gas. It's not going to stay at $3.50 or $4 a gallon, in 20 years, we may well have hit oil's terminal decline phase, and even if not, the cheap stuff is gone. Expect at least $10/gallon in current dollars in 20 years.
2) the cost of batteries. They're going down. Fast. see: http://www.plugincars.com/lithium-ion-battery-prices-drop-160-kwh-2025-123193.html
I actually used the 8% growth in energy density claimed above, which brings my price to $220/kWh in 2025 (not $160 like mckinsey claims). At that price, a 100 mile range battery will cost $8000, down from about $20,000 today. By 2032, prices could come down to $4500 for a 100 mile range. This assumes exponential gains in capacity/density/etc, but those gains have happened in the last ~15 years. The big question is whether they'll continue in the future. I'd say we'll get to about $250/kWh before battery scientists slow down, but improvements won't stop. That will get us to some pretty cheap, reasonable range electric cars in 20 years. Basically, the Nissan Leaf will go from $35,000 ($20k for the car, $15k for the battery) to $25,000 ($20k for the car, $5k for the battery)
[assumptions: no EV efficiency gains, still 35 kWh/100miles, which is what the Leaf, Volt, and plug in Prius achieve today.]
The next 1 gigawatt nuclear plant built in the west will cost 5-10 Billion dollars. Look at Finland's effort: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/29/business/energy-environment/29nuke.html three years or more behind schedule and easily 50% over budget. The economics and short work schedules are what make renewables more attractive than these hulking plants designed with the 1960s mindset. Smaller plants have much lower impact if they go down, and can usually get back online faster than a large coal plant (1 day) or a nuke (1-4 weeks).
I used to like nukes, being a technocrat, but the economics don't work out. They actually never worked out. Over the history of the grid, total capital expenditures have been roughly equally divided between generation (power plants), transmission (high voltage, long distance lines) and distribution (the lower voltage lines on wood poles bespoiling your suburb). In fact, transmission was 10-20% more than the other two, which tells you the problem with giant wind farms in the Dakotas. The exception to this was the 1970s, when our current fleet of nukes was built, and generation took up almost 50% of that CapEx pie.
So be happy that your utilities are encouraging everyone to save energy rather than build new plants, because we need end use efficiency to get us more cold beers and hot showers for less energy, before we need more power plants, nukes included.
What do you mean by taxing generally? Huckabee's huge sales tax? How about controlling externalities. I see the slippery slope of taxing sin, but isn't every tax bad and discouraging, so we might as well raise revenue in this way.
Governments around the world are proposing bans on incandescent bulbs in the next 5 years. A tax is a cleaner, revenue-raising alternative. Think Amory Lovins' feebates http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feebate/ if they have to be revenue neutral.
I'm quite against TAX being used to modify behavior WHY?? Taxes are required to run a government (unless you want kleptocracy like Saudi Arabia/Russia) Since revenue is required, why not raise it by reducing harmful activities. Instead of discouraging working (a tax on income) or owning property, or buying things, we could discourage emitting CO2, particulates, methane, etc, or discourage smoking or drinking or flying etc etc etc
Let's face it, taxes DO manipulate our behavior, so we might as well conscientiously modify (manipulate being to strong a word) behavior while raising the required funds to build roads and run schools.
And with a tax on incandescent bulbs, you don't make them illegal, just more expensive, so the resulting black market will be much less widespread...
Does this kind of thinking about taxation make me a liberal or a conservative...
Funny how your replied to a topic "How to drive a hybrid" with this:
"I get - at the most - 42 mpg when I drive around Philadelphia. And that's when I'm pissing off every driver behind me by accelerating slowly"
Use some common sense!
You're supposed to accelerate briskly with a hybrid, so that you get the drive train to offer you extra torque from the electric motor. This allows you to get up to speed quickly and efficiently. Then you simply maintain speed.
I'm not telling you to slam your pedal to the carpet. I'm telling you to accelerate at a reasonable to quick rate. Jack rabbit start it's not, but it is quick.
Try this for a tank or two, You'll probably get better mileage and piss off the others on the road a bit less.
Oh, and another point. Coasting isn't the best either. You should brake slowly coming to a stop so you fill up your batteries again. then the quick start you're about to do is almost free!
No, it is not possible to have a rational discussion about energy production. Only wackos fail to believe in the first law of thermodynamics.
'Electricity Production,' maybe?
a quick look on wikipedia gives: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supercapacitor
As of spring 2006, EEStor Inc. claims to have a supercapacitor with a barium titanate dielectric nearing production. The company claims a unit with 37 farads capacitance and an operating voltage of 3.5 kV, capable of storing up to 280 Wh/kg with a cost of $40 per kWh [BusinessWeek , 3 September 2005 ]. The technology is scheduled for third-party verification during the summer of 2006.
----------------
Using those numbers the energy storage is 0.5*37*3500^2 = 227 MJ. This is equivalent to 8 liters of gasoline (2 gallons). It gets interesting when you consider that an electric car could be 4-5 times as efficient as one powered by an IC engine, so those 226 megajoules will go as far as 8-10 gallons...
now for the cost: $40/kWh. 227 MJ is 63 kWh, so the thing could cost only $2500, which ain't bad when you consider how much that storage level in li-ion batteries would cost.
Caveats: I did this math really fast so check my math, and judging by the wiki, it's being verified, whatever that means. If it's a viable product, let the market decide. I guess they're far from marketing a product; they just want VC funding.
The reason why no one sells a car that you can't refuel anywhere is because the market won't bear it. A normal car can be refilled everywhere, so why would anyone buy this limited car. The same goes for these new bolts. If the hood were bolted down, no one would buy them, or if they did, the class action suit and bad press would kill the idea faster'n you can say bob's your uncle.
People aren't stupid, neither car owners nor manufacturers. At least when it comes to mechanical parts... Now the software that locks them in is another matter, but that's where anti-trust legislation comes in. right.
I think you should read something about environmental kuznets curves. Kuznets studied environmental economics and found that pollution initially increases with income/GDP, but then levels off and actually decreases (concave down). this is because rich people have the means to dictate that they want high quality air, etc (i.e. they think having a clean enviroment adds to their quality of life). see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuznets_curve for some discussion.
Also, what sort of competition are we imagining? a card game? Competition is fierce and violent when it comes to survival, and since the Neanderthals were in direct competition with our ancestors' resources of food, living area, etc., it's almost guaranteed that it came to blows. Whether there was something more organized than a tribe of humans ganging up on a family of Neanderthals (weren't they less socially advanced and so didn't organize into groups larger than families?) will probably never be known. But to say that there will be competition without killing is dumb. Just look at the rest of the animal kingdom. Those members of the species that are less competitive are driven to another area, and when they've lost their habitat, they die. I don't think early Homo Sapiens waged a crusade against the Neanderthals, but that doesn't mean the struggle between them wasn't violent.
It's being called nanotech because it uses nanoparticles, very small groupings of atoms, containing 100s or 1000s of atoms. Government money for nanotech research applies if you're working with objects smaller than 100nm in some dimension. IIRC, carbon nanotubes are sized roughly 5nm and larger in diameter.
The current state of the art of nanotech is not nanobots that can cure cancer. That's just what people speculate might come out of this technology, but how often is such exhuberance warranted? where's my flying car?
Also, by the way, something one micron across would be microtech by definition, not nanotech, but that's more me being a stickler than informative...
"We are also the number one exporter in the world."
In fact, Germany has been the highest exporter in the world for 2003 and 2004. The numbers for 2005 aren't out yet as far as I can tell; It could have changed. I seem to recall that the top three are Germany, the US, and China, but Japan could be there in someone else's stead.
references (I don't know if you need an account to see this): http://www.economist.com/countries/Germany/profile .cfm?folder=Profile-FactSheet
also, a wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germany#Economy
Question: That list is adjusted for ticket price inflation. In 1939, America was still very much in the Great Depression, so cheap tickets would have been expected. Also, how does ticket price inflation line up with general inflation as measured by Consumer Price Index. My guess is that ticket prices have gone up much faster than other goods, although I must admit that the last 3 or 4 years have shown fairly constant prices at ~9 bucks..
I'd just like to point out that the new BMW Mini isn't nearly as small as a smart car. In Europe, the Mini is averagedly sized while the smart is small. In America, where the Mini is the smallest car currently sold new on the market, a smart car should be considered minute.
Um, I just ran a tiny bit of calculation with info from the top of my head, which indicates that your 500 exaJoules/year is a 0.1% effect compared to solar irradiation. the diameter of the earth is like 12,750 km; that squared times pi/4 (area of a circle) is like 1E14 m^2 (working in orders of magnitude here). lets guess that of the 1300 W/m^2 that hit the earth, all but 100 W/m^2 is reflected, the rest absorbed.
Our calculation now is 100 W/m^2 * 1E14 m^2 = 1E16 J/s. 1E16 J/s * 3600s/hr * 24hr/day * 365days/year = 4E23 Joules/year = 400 zettajoules/year. this makes the the 500 exajoules/year a little more than a 0.1% effect. Humanity's effects are doubtless huge in an absolute sense, but compared to our favorite nuclear furnace, we aren't heating the atmosphere. What we are doing, is adding to the greenhouse effect, which means the energy that the sun irradiates us with, gets lost to space at a slower rate than it did 200 years ago.
Admittedly, I could be off by an order of magnitude in either direction, but my guess is that the Earth's atmosphere is less than 90% reflective of infrared light. Also, I might've done the real calculation of blackbodies exchanging heat across space, but this is meant more as a sanity check than rigourous math. Please tear my thinking apart; I'll think better for it.
I'm getting a bunch of 503 Service Unavailable errors. Anyone else? This can't be the first time that slashdot has been unable to cope with its own traffic, can it?
God! What a mess of units. 254 000 square miles is more than twice that in square km (~650 000 sq km). Then they go on to talk about million acres and hectacres and what the hell is their problem? Have they never heard of typing conversions into google? Friggen Reuters.
The problem with these quote sites is that they don't provide you with context. Justice Douglas said the first quote in the dissenting opinion on a 1950's case about mailing lewd images or something (who has time to read court cases, mebbe some prelaw student can chime in). In any case, while this quote may be inspiring, the sentiment it evokes in us slashdotters was not shared by the majority of the court and so should not be taken as evidence that our freedoms were more sacred back then...
Slashdot Mirror
yes, but in smaller capacities, they will probably catch up before the end of the decade. At 320GB or so, a 250 GB SSD that costs $30 or $50 more will be a no brainer. I'm looking forward to the days when the cheapest laptops all come with SSDs because it's cheaper. It's kind of happening already with the 16 GB chromebooks, but a few more steps of moore's law will put that into very competitive capacities.
Not to counter an ad with another, but has anyone here tried an emWave2, as blogged about here: http://www.bulletproofexec.com... It seems like it's the same thing the S5 is claiming, but as a separate device for $200. It'd be nice if phones could provide the same info for free/much cheaper. It looks like some HR bluetooth accessories can be paired with cheap apps to get a similar measurement. Any experience about their usefulness for stress management?
Look at the graph at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_cell_efficiency (about half way down). All the multijunction solar cells are run under concentration ranging up to ~1000 suns (1000:1 focusing of the suns energy). What's really impressive is that they are getting closer and closer to the 86% efficiency limit imposed by Carnot. Just like with Wind (~59% limit imposed by Betz's Law), our solar cells are approaching as good as we can get.
I assume they are concentrating the contamination in order to have a smaller volume to store for 100+ years. Can anyone comment on: "In fact, I am writing this article while sitting on an airplane, and I am receiving more ionizing radiation from cosmic rays at this higher altitude than I would receive from drinking effluent water from the Advanced Liquid Waste Processing System. " Does this mean the 99.999% clean water from the treatment process would do no lasting damage over the rest of his life if he drank it? I feel like comparing external radiation to internal (and potentially more concentrated by bodily functions) is nice and calming, but over what time scales is the author's statement valid? Drink nothing but the permeate for the rest of your life and be no worse off than one intercontinental flight?
There are two big things that can help electric cars (does Musk also include plugin hybrids?) 1) like you said, is the cost of gas. It's not going to stay at $3.50 or $4 a gallon, in 20 years, we may well have hit oil's terminal decline phase, and even if not, the cheap stuff is gone. Expect at least $10/gallon in current dollars in 20 years. 2) the cost of batteries. They're going down. Fast. see: http://www.plugincars.com/lithium-ion-battery-prices-drop-160-kwh-2025-123193.html I actually used the 8% growth in energy density claimed above, which brings my price to $220/kWh in 2025 (not $160 like mckinsey claims). At that price, a 100 mile range battery will cost $8000, down from about $20,000 today. By 2032, prices could come down to $4500 for a 100 mile range. This assumes exponential gains in capacity/density/etc, but those gains have happened in the last ~15 years. The big question is whether they'll continue in the future. I'd say we'll get to about $250/kWh before battery scientists slow down, but improvements won't stop. That will get us to some pretty cheap, reasonable range electric cars in 20 years. Basically, the Nissan Leaf will go from $35,000 ($20k for the car, $15k for the battery) to $25,000 ($20k for the car, $5k for the battery) [assumptions: no EV efficiency gains, still 35 kWh/100miles, which is what the Leaf, Volt, and plug in Prius achieve today.]
The next 1 gigawatt nuclear plant built in the west will cost 5-10 Billion dollars. Look at Finland's effort: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/29/business/energy-environment/29nuke.html three years or more behind schedule and easily 50% over budget. The economics and short work schedules are what make renewables more attractive than these hulking plants designed with the 1960s mindset. Smaller plants have much lower impact if they go down, and can usually get back online faster than a large coal plant (1 day) or a nuke (1-4 weeks). I used to like nukes, being a technocrat, but the economics don't work out. They actually never worked out. Over the history of the grid, total capital expenditures have been roughly equally divided between generation (power plants), transmission (high voltage, long distance lines) and distribution (the lower voltage lines on wood poles bespoiling your suburb). In fact, transmission was 10-20% more than the other two, which tells you the problem with giant wind farms in the Dakotas. The exception to this was the 1970s, when our current fleet of nukes was built, and generation took up almost 50% of that CapEx pie. So be happy that your utilities are encouraging everyone to save energy rather than build new plants, because we need end use efficiency to get us more cold beers and hot showers for less energy, before we need more power plants, nukes included.
What do you mean by taxing generally? Huckabee's huge sales tax? How about controlling externalities. I see the slippery slope of taxing sin, but isn't every tax bad and discouraging, so we might as well raise revenue in this way. Governments around the world are proposing bans on incandescent bulbs in the next 5 years. A tax is a cleaner, revenue-raising alternative. Think Amory Lovins' feebates http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feebate/ if they have to be revenue neutral.
Taxes are required to run a government (unless you want kleptocracy like Saudi Arabia/Russia)
Since revenue is required, why not raise it by reducing harmful activities. Instead of discouraging working (a tax on income) or owning property, or buying things, we could discourage emitting CO2, particulates, methane, etc, or discourage smoking or drinking or flying etc etc etc
Let's face it, taxes DO manipulate our behavior, so we might as well conscientiously modify (manipulate being to strong a word) behavior while raising the required funds to build roads and run schools.
And with a tax on incandescent bulbs, you don't make them illegal, just more expensive, so the resulting black market will be much less widespread...
Does this kind of thinking about taxation make me a liberal or a conservative...
Funny how your replied to a topic "How to drive a hybrid" with this:
"I get - at the most - 42 mpg when I drive around Philadelphia. And that's when I'm pissing off every driver behind me by accelerating slowly"
Use some common sense!
You're supposed to accelerate briskly with a hybrid, so that you get the drive train to offer you extra torque from the electric motor. This allows you to get up to speed quickly and efficiently. Then you simply maintain speed.
I'm not telling you to slam your pedal to the carpet. I'm telling you to accelerate at a reasonable to quick rate. Jack rabbit start it's not, but it is quick.
Try this for a tank or two, You'll probably get better mileage and piss off the others on the road a bit less.
Oh, and another point. Coasting isn't the best either. You should brake slowly coming to a stop so you fill up your batteries again. then the quick start you're about to do is almost free!
No, it is not possible to have a rational discussion about energy production. Only wackos fail to believe in the first law of thermodynamics. 'Electricity Production,' maybe?
oh, you mean like microsoft wasn't caught napping by real or google?
a quick look on wikipedia gives: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supercapacitor As of spring 2006, EEStor Inc. claims to have a supercapacitor with a barium titanate dielectric nearing production. The company claims a unit with 37 farads capacitance and an operating voltage of 3.5 kV, capable of storing up to 280 Wh/kg with a cost of $40 per kWh [BusinessWeek , 3 September 2005 ]. The technology is scheduled for third-party verification during the summer of 2006. ---------------- Using those numbers the energy storage is 0.5*37*3500^2 = 227 MJ. This is equivalent to 8 liters of gasoline (2 gallons). It gets interesting when you consider that an electric car could be 4-5 times as efficient as one powered by an IC engine, so those 226 megajoules will go as far as 8-10 gallons... now for the cost: $40/kWh. 227 MJ is 63 kWh, so the thing could cost only $2500, which ain't bad when you consider how much that storage level in li-ion batteries would cost. Caveats: I did this math really fast so check my math, and judging by the wiki, it's being verified, whatever that means. If it's a viable product, let the market decide. I guess they're far from marketing a product; they just want VC funding.
I hold that floopy drives are the slowest advancing technology. they started out at 360 KB some time in the eighties, and are currently at 1.44 MB.
[\dry wit]
The reason why no one sells a car that you can't refuel anywhere is because the market won't bear it. A normal car can be refilled everywhere, so why would anyone buy this limited car. The same goes for these new bolts. If the hood were bolted down, no one would buy them, or if they did, the class action suit and bad press would kill the idea faster'n you can say bob's your uncle.
People aren't stupid, neither car owners nor manufacturers. At least when it comes to mechanical parts... Now the software that locks them in is another matter, but that's where anti-trust legislation comes in. right.
I think you should read something about environmental kuznets curves. Kuznets studied environmental economics and found that pollution initially increases with income/GDP, but then levels off and actually decreases (concave down). this is because rich people have the means to dictate that they want high quality air, etc (i.e. they think having a clean enviroment adds to their quality of life). see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuznets_curve for some discussion.
Also, what sort of competition are we imagining? a card game? Competition is fierce and violent when it comes to survival, and since the Neanderthals were in direct competition with our ancestors' resources of food, living area, etc., it's almost guaranteed that it came to blows. Whether there was something more organized than a tribe of humans ganging up on a family of Neanderthals (weren't they less socially advanced and so didn't organize into groups larger than families?) will probably never be known. But to say that there will be competition without killing is dumb. Just look at the rest of the animal kingdom. Those members of the species that are less competitive are driven to another area, and when they've lost their habitat, they die. I don't think early Homo Sapiens waged a crusade against the Neanderthals, but that doesn't mean the struggle between them wasn't violent.
It's being called nanotech because it uses nanoparticles, very small groupings of atoms, containing 100s or 1000s of atoms. Government money for nanotech research applies if you're working with objects smaller than 100nm in some dimension. IIRC, carbon nanotubes are sized roughly 5nm and larger in diameter.
The current state of the art of nanotech is not nanobots that can cure cancer. That's just what people speculate might come out of this technology, but how often is such exhuberance warranted? where's my flying car?
Also, by the way, something one micron across would be microtech by definition, not nanotech, but that's more me being a stickler than informative...
"We are also the number one exporter in the world." In fact, Germany has been the highest exporter in the world for 2003 and 2004. The numbers for 2005 aren't out yet as far as I can tell; It could have changed. I seem to recall that the top three are Germany, the US, and China, but Japan could be there in someone else's stead. references (I don't know if you need an account to see this): http://www.economist.com/countries/Germany/profile .cfm?folder=Profile-FactSheet
also, a wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germany#Economy
Question: That list is adjusted for ticket price inflation. In 1939, America was still very much in the Great Depression, so cheap tickets would have been expected. Also, how does ticket price inflation line up with general inflation as measured by Consumer Price Index. My guess is that ticket prices have gone up much faster than other goods, although I must admit that the last 3 or 4 years have shown fairly constant prices at ~9 bucks..
I'd just like to point out that the new BMW Mini isn't nearly as small as a smart car. In Europe, the Mini is averagedly sized while the smart is small. In America, where the Mini is the smallest car currently sold new on the market, a smart car should be considered minute.
Um, I just ran a tiny bit of calculation with info from the top of my head, which indicates that your 500 exaJoules/year is a 0.1% effect compared to solar irradiation. the diameter of the earth is like 12,750 km; that squared times pi/4 (area of a circle) is like 1E14 m^2 (working in orders of magnitude here). lets guess that of the 1300 W/m^2 that hit the earth, all but 100 W/m^2 is reflected, the rest absorbed.
m l
Our calculation now is 100 W/m^2 * 1E14 m^2 = 1E16 J/s. 1E16 J/s * 3600s/hr * 24hr/day * 365days/year = 4E23 Joules/year = 400 zettajoules/year. this makes the the 500 exajoules/year a little more than a 0.1% effect. Humanity's effects are doubtless huge in an absolute sense, but compared to our favorite nuclear furnace, we aren't heating the atmosphere. What we are doing, is adding to the greenhouse effect, which means the energy that the sun irradiates us with, gets lost to space at a slower rate than it did 200 years ago.
Admittedly, I could be off by an order of magnitude in either direction, but my guess is that the Earth's atmosphere is less than 90% reflective of infrared light. Also, I might've done the real calculation of blackbodies exchanging heat across space, but this is meant more as a sanity check than rigourous math. Please tear my thinking apart; I'll think better for it.
diameter of earth: http://www.pubquizhelp.34sp.com/sci/planets.html
solar irradiation intensity: http://www.tfp.ethz.ch/Lectures/pv/irradiation.ht
I'm getting a bunch of 503 Service Unavailable errors. Anyone else? This can't be the first time that slashdot has been unable to cope with its own traffic, can it?
God! What a mess of units. 254 000 square miles is more than twice that in square km (~650 000 sq km). Then they go on to talk about million acres and hectacres and what the hell is their problem? Have they never heard of typing conversions into google? Friggen Reuters.
The problem with these quote sites is that they don't provide you with context. Justice Douglas said the first quote in the dissenting opinion on a 1950's case about mailing lewd images or something (who has time to read court cases, mebbe some prelaw student can chime in). In any case, while this quote may be inspiring, the sentiment it evokes in us slashdotters was not shared by the majority of the court and so should not be taken as evidence that our freedoms were more sacred back then...
you'll hopefully have all heard of http://www.harvardsucks.org/. I bet their video will be slashdotted before morning though...