Cronulla is near Sydney. There is quite a bit of racial segregation and racial violence in Sydney. Places like Redfern have also had riots. But this does not represent the common view of most people in Sydney or Australia. I think you'll find Sydney also has had the Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras since 1978, so in terms of being unaccepting of people being different... And just because the PM lives in Sydney doesn't make it the only large capital city in Australia. Come to places like Melbourne and segregation only exists in the form of finding more italian or chinese restaurants on certain streets.
To give an idea of the futility of your comment in Melbourne, here's a quote from wikipedia:
"Today Melbourne is a diverse and multicultural city. Almost a quarter of Victoria's population was born overseas, and the city is home to residents from 233 countries, who speak over 180 languages and dialects and follow 116 religious faiths. In 2004, 43.5 per cent were either born overseas, or have a parent who was born overseas."
In Melbourne most people can't cut out these countries as easily as you can. Because they have known people from them, been to school or university with people from them, and have realised how full of crap what you just said is. I don't know a huge amount about American cities, but could it be that because of your approach these people are left on the streets and tend to fall into earning a living the criminal way?
I think you'll find we have a population density of two people per square kilometer and live on quater acre blocks. It's not like we are running out of space. And the average Australian is quite welcoming of foreigners, or at least here in Melbourne.
Generally if they are coming from countries which are war torn or they are oppressed by governments, they have a bit of Aussie history in them anyway. There's a thing in our culture and history we call the 'Aussie battler'. It's sort of an unwritten respect for those who take up the fight, against all odds. Like the little man who shouldn't be able to win but gives it a go. It's probably there because we came from convicts and the bottom of the pack and had to fight our way up to remove the aristocracy. The Australian movie 'the castle' sums it up quite well if anyone overseas has seen it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Castle_(film)
I've noticed recently our PM has tryed to make us a bit more racist and unaccepting, but I think now people are pretty bored of it and have settled back into normal life. In Melbourne it's pretty hard to be racist anyway, and I wouldn't worry about us become like London or Paris, we're miles ahead of them already. The mayor of Melbourne hardly speaks English and he's one of our most popular politicians.
He's done more than ignore global warming and go to iraq. So far since Howard's been PM he has dropped our nuclear ban, given up our opposition to the death penalty, supported torture under certain circumstances, destroyed our position as a leader in the world environmentally, dropped funding for science, stopped support for refugees from oppressed nations, 'reformed' our tax system, flooded the housing market by giving incentives, taken away employee rights (what he calls workplace reform), lowered welfare support, stopped the giving of money to poorer countries. And claimed that he is the best PM we've ever had because interest rates are low and we are in budget surplus, YAY!
If by "self-sufficient reaction" you mean a long-time (at least a few seconds) fusion reaction that doesn't suck power for most of its lifetime, I'd really like to see one of those.
You probably wouldn't if you knew what sort of damage it would do to your eyes.
The main reason the reaction isn't self-sufficient so far is containment problems. Nuclear Fusion works perfectly above a certain temperature and will put out far more energy than it needs to occur. It is just the issue of keeping all the ions in the plasma contained after they collide at extremely high speeds and are accelerated randomly by the fusion reactions. So far I don't think they have got that far on this at all. I think that is why they are building ITER to test it on a full scale and try to understand it and get it right.
The only time when this statement actually makes sense in the last week, it doesn't get modded up. I thought mod +5 for any pointless 'i for one welcome...overlords' statement had become mandatory.
Yeh, I remember the storms at peak. We're amazing down here in Australia. You got bored of shooting stars after a few minutes and just hung out for the massive green fireballs. You could hear them too, like fighter jets. Which I thought was quite cool.
Yeh, it's been all over the place this year in Melbourne, though that is normal for spring here. But unusually we got hail in Melbourne and snow nearby 2 days ago, which is quite strange for mid-November. Think I heard something about a temperate cyclone a few days earlier also.
It is el nino again this year though. So everyone is expecting weird weird weather. And another year without decents rainfall. I heard cattle farmers are selling rather than trying to keep the stock for summer, because they know if they hope for rain and it doesn't come most will die. Ahh..the joys of freezing our arse off and still not getting much rain for water:).
1. Global cooling will follow global warming. But it's not on a sensible time scale for us to call it a solution.
2. Interesting article, but both tidal gauges and satellite measurements read the sea level as rising over the last 10 years. Only dispute is by how much it has risen.
3. Ice floating in water raises water level minimally. But no one said the seas will rise from icebergs. The fact is most of the ice they talk about is run off from above the waterlevel on land ie. antarctica and greenland. This obviously would add to the oceans volume. And by a pretty similar amount if you add salt:).
The places that are most likely to rebound up are also the ones that have lost the most ice. Depending on the nature of this rebound it could make it better or significantly worse. If it means the ocean floor is raised around Antarctica say, then the water levels would rise more. If it opens up deeper holes beneath the ocean so the ocean can hold more water water levels would rise less.
4. It has always been about shifts in climate. Call it climate change it will confuse you less.
5. What I was pointing to, is that it is not necessarily good to promote large amounts of algae in the ocean. Algae is not just a fish food source. And you wouldn't do it near any beach I wanted to swim at.
On the subject of being an environmentalist. I think it is a good thing. But you shouldn't be following the environmentalists on global warming. Follow the scientists, and the majority rather than the minority. Because in science the minority are usually a minority for a reason. It's good to read up on it too. I'm actually interested how the one thing you found in a science journal was to disagree with the general opinion. Not that there is anything wrong with that, it is just the accepted version of scientific theories normally takes preference over the ones on the edge. Like if I did a literature review on global warming and posted your journal article as the only thing I found in the area, and debated it based on that, I'd get laughed into the ground. It is good to try to pick holes though. But finding holes in a theory that has tens of thousands of journal articles and 30+ years of research by top scientists behind it, usually refines the theory, doesn't disprove it. May be different this time, but with the odds I wouldn't be placing bets.
I wasn't going to give a response but here's two cents of your logic for you.
Ice caps are melting - They will stop melting, it is illogical to say they will continue melting given the scientists are hedging on evidence of lack of logic in the arguements by scientists in the 90s.
Ice turns into water - It has not yet been proven that ice from icebergs turns into water. Many scientists still believe that aliens are abducting parts of the icebergs and putting them on Europa.
More water in the ocean causes oceans to rise - Scientists have argued for a long time that the sea is infinitely deep. Various philosophers in the 1st century confirmed this theory along with the theory of water flowing off the end of the world. We also have no conclusive data on ocean depth.
They ran out of names for hurricanes in the US last year and had a record number of catagory 5 hurricanes - That is not science
Australia has been in drought for 10 years and climate has shifted so cities have no water - That is not science
We can dump iron in a sensitive ecosystem like the ocean and it will grow disproportionate amounts of algae which will make more fish in the ocean and end climate change - Thats what I call science!
I was giving a rundown for the masses of what we are seeing. But yeah...
Nice to see you mention Enron too. "It's what we breathe out and the plants breathe in", if I remember correctly. Photosynthesis, now that's real science.:)
P.S. If this was just a trolling joke, feel free to laugh at me for biting...I probably should've taken more care on the last mail.
I didn't say physicists can't get rewarded for theory. I said you can't award until it is shown to have some benefits. It's common sense. And I think the number of people doing purely theoretical physics is disproportionate to the outcomes of it. Too many want to be Einsteins. There are a lot of quite useful areas of fundamental physics research in theoretical physics, I never said there wasn't. There is also a large amount of totally pointless research that is interesting but can not be made useful in the present or near future (ie. quantum computing). If you didn't realise a lot of what is created in these theories can not be used because we haven't done the ground work in supporting areas. As I said too many wannabe Einsteins. And too much work on too futuristic or trendy stuff.
Agree with all you said though I still think you are underrating your experimental counterparts. An experimental physicist creates theory from experiment. He is a normal physicist as opposed to the specialised theoretical physicist. Applied physics is closer to engineering, though you'd be foolish to write off engineers either, seeing the average undergrad engineer would own the average undergrad physics student in most areas. Scary as that may be:).
Note also that I hold both theoretical and experimental physicists in high regard. Definitely not creationists. I think I misread you and you misread me. We probably agree on all of this in some weird way. Just look at it from different perspectives. And place emphasis on different areas.
The only facts we really need to know are not disputable.
1. We have screwed up the carbon cycle and CO2 levels are higher than any we can detect having occurred previously. 2. Polar caps are melting, rare events are increasing, and global temperatures and climates are shifting.
You can try to argue against either of them, but both are global and both are real. While the world hears a lot about more storms around America in the northern hemisphere, down in Australia we have almost nation wide drought. In Victoria we haven't had a reasonable amount of rain for over ten years. And our water levels are at record lows at the moment heading into summer. But we've got it better than some places like Perth where they said at one stage that moving the city was the least expensive way to get drinking water. New Zealand had a rare event of the closest iceberg in 75 years a few weeks back. Or should I say nearest 100 icebergs. (I'll note that this wasn't blamed on global warming, but it is another rare event to add to the list.)
So the change is happening everywhere and we really should take notice of it. Whether the points 1 and 2 are linked is the big question. So far evidence published in journals rather than newspapers seems to support that they are. And if they are linked it is great, because we have a chance of stopping or slowing it. If they aren't linked we just have to take the blows and see if we are biologically tough enough to withstand this part of the cycle. And maybe watch a few cities go under when the ice caps are melt, and the oceans rise.
I think the reason people are disturbed with many who argue against it, is because the way they argue it is counter productive. It is going to happen whether we are the cause of it or not. So to justify that we don't need to do anything by claiming we aren't the cause comes down to blatant neglect. And doing things that look good but are pointless as political stunts gives the same impression. There is a major problem, and they won't take it seriously because it conflicts with their interests.
On the 'act now' part, I'm not sure what else you expect people to do, act now is the only reasonable conclusion. The bit you missed is court isn't in recess to discuss this. All science so far actually points toward it being a reality. And all observation so far points to it being a reality. Religion is blind faith. I'm not sure how you see it, but in my view you either live in somewhere completely unaffected or you are completely ignoring the facts. Observation and theory are agreeing quite well here.
I agree on the Perelman part and his was a great achievement in mathematical sciences. But to call physics a theoretical science is massively uninformed. Physics is primarily an experimental science, which is supported by some purely theoretical work. A recent move in funding and interest in theoretical science may have given an image that physics is just theoretical. But most of the recent breakthroughs are still experimental. Historically experimental physics has achieved far more than purely theoretical has and will ever achieve. Through testing things about the physical world around us we learn and find out far more than we can by ignoring these things and just using a pen and paper. Even physicists like Einstein stood on the shoulders of experimental physicists to achieve what they achieved. Nothing has ever been that far from the experiment and that is what science is. When the theoretical working gets proved to have some use experimentally then they get credit. Einstein didn't earn his nobel prize until 1921. I'm not suggesting theoretical work is of no use, but you can not give great credit to the scientist involved until it is shown to have great benefit.
Imagine if they started handing out awards for M-Theory a few years back. I know you probably aren't referring to string theorists but in my view they can have awards when they can show that the blahblahons are any more real and are any more useful to define than Klingons. Obviously the others who do theoretical work closer to a practical reality should and will be awarded when experiment confirms their findings, and their findings are put to good use.
Reference frames my friend... The space station is effectively in freefall toward the Earth, so is everything on it. ie. This makes it a gravity free environment.
"Yeah - We'll all have flying cars in the year 2000."
"Yeah - By 2010 we'll have space hotels and will be permanently living on mars."
"Yeah - In the year 2000 we'll all be 7 feet tall and bald."
I wonder if we would have been close on the first two, if we had've considered them important and put as much funding into researching them as we had with the successful ones.
I think no matter how ridiculous the idea is, if people seriously intend to achieve it, it will happen. The progress so far with the space elevator seems positive and suggests it is not scientifically impossible. So I would guess the deciding factor in the end will be whether people are prepared to go to the trouble of achieving it or not.
(The third one was never going to happen because it wasn't something the majority wanted to be. If anything people try to prevent baldness.)
From what I've seen most of what big business throws out are generally good computers. A lot of the stuff they get rid of these days are things like 17" monitors and pentium 2 or 3 computers normally around 533Mhz, that are definitely good enough to run internet and word. They also have 10 or 20GB HDDs and quite a few 256MB memory chips around too. I think in Australia a lot of it gets redistributed to others though, if possible. Anything from let employees have first grab, to give to charity, to resell, or even put it obviously in the dumpster for someone to take:).
I'm not sure what is used in processors currently, but having the links as nanotubes would help the heat transfer within the material also. Nanotubes have a thermal conductivity of around 2000-3000 W/m/K at normal CPU operating temperatures. This is a huge increase when you compare it to the 149 W/m/K for silicon and 318 W/m/K for gold at room temperature.
So the increase in thermal conductivity by just having a proportion of the CPU made from nanotubes could possibly be enough to make up for the shape change. I wouldn't have thought much power would be saved by using nanotubes over any other conductor though. I'd be guessing most of the power loss is in the silicon gates, but I might be wrong.
And third world famine at the same time. The concept has been around a long time. I'm not sure why they haven't implemented it yet...maybe underfed people don't taste as nice or something.
If he thought it was right and he is a scientist, I would guess he would send it to a peer reviewed scientific journal, not the Telegraph.
That is one of the easiest clues in these things. If it links to a pdf document on the Telegraph or New Scientist site, it most likely has as much merit as the relativity drive. When you see a link to Nature or something, take more notice.
Yeh, that seems to be the thing a lot of people are missing. Whether we are the cause or not, oceans will still rise, ice shelfs will go, and the results of global warming will still occur. So we have to make it an issue an do something about it, regardless.
Slashdot Mirror
Will the next post be finish with, Seig Heil?
Cronulla is near Sydney. There is quite a bit of racial segregation and racial violence in Sydney. Places like Redfern have also had riots. But this does not represent the common view of most people in Sydney or Australia. I think you'll find Sydney also has had the Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras since 1978, so in terms of being unaccepting of people being different... And just because the PM lives in Sydney doesn't make it the only large capital city in Australia. Come to places like Melbourne and segregation only exists in the form of finding more italian or chinese restaurants on certain streets.
To give an idea of the futility of your comment in Melbourne, here's a quote from wikipedia:
"Today Melbourne is a diverse and multicultural city. Almost a quarter of Victoria's population was born overseas, and the city is home to residents from 233 countries, who speak over 180 languages and dialects and follow 116 religious faiths. In 2004, 43.5 per cent were either born overseas, or have a parent who was born overseas."
In Melbourne most people can't cut out these countries as easily as you can. Because they have known people from them, been to school or university with people from them, and have realised how full of crap what you just said is. I don't know a huge amount about American cities, but could it be that because of your approach these people are left on the streets and tend to fall into earning a living the criminal way?
I think you'll find we have a population density of two people per square kilometer and live on quater acre blocks. It's not like we are running out of space. And the average Australian is quite welcoming of foreigners, or at least here in Melbourne.
Generally if they are coming from countries which are war torn or they are oppressed by governments, they have a bit of Aussie history in them anyway. There's a thing in our culture and history we call the 'Aussie battler'. It's sort of an unwritten respect for those who take up the fight, against all odds. Like the little man who shouldn't be able to win but gives it a go. It's probably there because we came from convicts and the bottom of the pack and had to fight our way up to remove the aristocracy. The Australian movie 'the castle' sums it up quite well if anyone overseas has seen it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Castle_(film)
I've noticed recently our PM has tryed to make us a bit more racist and unaccepting, but I think now people are pretty bored of it and have settled back into normal life. In Melbourne it's pretty hard to be racist anyway, and I wouldn't worry about us become like London or Paris, we're miles ahead of them already. The mayor of Melbourne hardly speaks English and he's one of our most popular politicians.
He's done more than ignore global warming and go to iraq. So far since Howard's been PM he has dropped our nuclear ban, given up our opposition to the death penalty, supported torture under certain circumstances, destroyed our position as a leader in the world environmentally, dropped funding for science, stopped support for refugees from oppressed nations, 'reformed' our tax system, flooded the housing market by giving incentives, taken away employee rights (what he calls workplace reform), lowered welfare support, stopped the giving of money to poorer countries. And claimed that he is the best PM we've ever had because interest rates are low and we are in budget surplus, YAY!
Now all we need is an asteroid for them to save us from.
You probably wouldn't if you knew what sort of damage it would do to your eyes.
The main reason the reaction isn't self-sufficient so far is containment problems. Nuclear Fusion works perfectly above a certain temperature and will put out far more energy than it needs to occur. It is just the issue of keeping all the ions in the plasma contained after they collide at extremely high speeds and are accelerated randomly by the fusion reactions. So far I don't think they have got that far on this at all. I think that is why they are building ITER to test it on a full scale and try to understand it and get it right.
The only time when this statement actually makes sense in the last week, it doesn't get modded up. I thought mod +5 for any pointless 'i for one welcome...overlords' statement had become mandatory.
Yeh, I remember the storms at peak. We're amazing down here in Australia. You got bored of shooting stars after a few minutes and just hung out for the massive green fireballs. You could hear them too, like fighter jets. Which I thought was quite cool.
Yeh, it's been all over the place this year in Melbourne, though that is normal for spring here. But unusually we got hail in Melbourne and snow nearby 2 days ago, which is quite strange for mid-November. Think I heard something about a temperate cyclone a few days earlier also.
:).
It is el nino again this year though. So everyone is expecting weird weird weather. And another year without decents rainfall. I heard cattle farmers are selling rather than trying to keep the stock for summer, because they know if they hope for rain and it doesn't come most will die. Ahh..the joys of freezing our arse off and still not getting much rain for water
El Niño-Southern Oscillation
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_nino
1. Global cooling will follow global warming. But it's not on a sensible time scale for us to call it a solution.
:).
2. Interesting article, but both tidal gauges and satellite measurements read the sea level as rising over the last 10 years. Only dispute is by how much it has risen.
3. Ice floating in water raises water level minimally. But no one said the seas will rise from icebergs. The fact is most of the ice they talk about is run off from above the waterlevel on land ie. antarctica and greenland. This obviously would add to the oceans volume. And by a pretty similar amount if you add salt
The places that are most likely to rebound up are also the ones that have lost the most ice. Depending on the nature of this rebound it could make it better or significantly worse. If it means the ocean floor is raised around Antarctica say, then the water levels would rise more. If it opens up deeper holes beneath the ocean so the ocean can hold more water water levels would rise less.
4. It has always been about shifts in climate. Call it climate change it will confuse you less.
5. What I was pointing to, is that it is not necessarily good to promote large amounts of algae in the ocean. Algae is not just a fish food source. And you wouldn't do it near any beach I wanted to swim at.
On the subject of being an environmentalist. I think it is a good thing. But you shouldn't be following the environmentalists on global warming. Follow the scientists, and the majority rather than the minority. Because in science the minority are usually a minority for a reason. It's good to read up on it too. I'm actually interested how the one thing you found in a science journal was to disagree with the general opinion. Not that there is anything wrong with that, it is just the accepted version of scientific theories normally takes preference over the ones on the edge. Like if I did a literature review on global warming and posted your journal article as the only thing I found in the area, and debated it based on that, I'd get laughed into the ground. It is good to try to pick holes though. But finding holes in a theory that has tens of thousands of journal articles and 30+ years of research by top scientists behind it, usually refines the theory, doesn't disprove it. May be different this time, but with the odds I wouldn't be placing bets.
I wasn't going to give a response but here's two cents of your logic for you.
Ice caps are melting - They will stop melting, it is illogical to say they will continue melting given the scientists are hedging on evidence of lack of logic in the arguements by scientists in the 90s.
Ice turns into water - It has not yet been proven that ice from icebergs turns into water. Many scientists still believe that aliens are abducting parts of the icebergs and putting them on Europa.
More water in the ocean causes oceans to rise - Scientists have argued for a long time that the sea is infinitely deep. Various philosophers in the 1st century confirmed this theory along with the theory of water flowing off the end of the world. We also have no conclusive data on ocean depth.
They ran out of names for hurricanes in the US last year and had a record number of catagory 5 hurricanes - That is not science
Australia has been in drought for 10 years and climate has shifted so cities have no water - That is not science
We can dump iron in a sensitive ecosystem like the ocean and it will grow disproportionate amounts of algae which will make more fish in the ocean and end climate change - Thats what I call science!
I was giving a rundown for the masses of what we are seeing. But yeah...
:)
Nice to see you mention Enron too. "It's what we breathe out and the plants breathe in", if I remember correctly. Photosynthesis, now that's real science.
P.S. If this was just a trolling joke, feel free to laugh at me for biting...I probably should've taken more care on the last mail.
I didn't say physicists can't get rewarded for theory. I said you can't award until it is shown to have some benefits. It's common sense. And I think the number of people doing purely theoretical physics is disproportionate to the outcomes of it. Too many want to be Einsteins. There are a lot of quite useful areas of fundamental physics research in theoretical physics, I never said there wasn't. There is also a large amount of totally pointless research that is interesting but can not be made useful in the present or near future (ie. quantum computing). If you didn't realise a lot of what is created in these theories can not be used because we haven't done the ground work in supporting areas. As I said too many wannabe Einsteins. And too much work on too futuristic or trendy stuff.
:).
Agree with all you said though I still think you are underrating your experimental counterparts. An experimental physicist creates theory from experiment. He is a normal physicist as opposed to the specialised theoretical physicist. Applied physics is closer to engineering, though you'd be foolish to write off engineers either, seeing the average undergrad engineer would own the average undergrad physics student in most areas. Scary as that may be
Note also that I hold both theoretical and experimental physicists in high regard. Definitely not creationists. I think I misread you and you misread me. We probably agree on all of this in some weird way. Just look at it from different perspectives. And place emphasis on different areas.
Okay, an environment where things experience weightlessness. Or do not 'feel' the effects of gravity. You know what I meant. :)
The only facts we really need to know are not disputable.
1. We have screwed up the carbon cycle and CO2 levels are higher than any we can detect having occurred previously.
2. Polar caps are melting, rare events are increasing, and global temperatures and climates are shifting.
You can try to argue against either of them, but both are global and both are real. While the world hears a lot about more storms around America in the northern hemisphere, down in Australia we have almost nation wide drought. In Victoria we haven't had a reasonable amount of rain for over ten years. And our water levels are at record lows at the moment heading into summer. But we've got it better than some places like Perth where they said at one stage that moving the city was the least expensive way to get drinking water. New Zealand had a rare event of the closest iceberg in 75 years a few weeks back. Or should I say nearest 100 icebergs. (I'll note that this wasn't blamed on global warming, but it is another rare event to add to the list.)
So the change is happening everywhere and we really should take notice of it. Whether the points 1 and 2 are linked is the big question. So far evidence published in journals rather than newspapers seems to support that they are. And if they are linked it is great, because we have a chance of stopping or slowing it. If they aren't linked we just have to take the blows and see if we are biologically tough enough to withstand this part of the cycle. And maybe watch a few cities go under when the ice caps are melt, and the oceans rise.
I think the reason people are disturbed with many who argue against it, is because the way they argue it is counter productive. It is going to happen whether we are the cause of it or not. So to justify that we don't need to do anything by claiming we aren't the cause comes down to blatant neglect. And doing things that look good but are pointless as political stunts gives the same impression. There is a major problem, and they won't take it seriously because it conflicts with their interests.
On the 'act now' part, I'm not sure what else you expect people to do, act now is the only reasonable conclusion. The bit you missed is court isn't in recess to discuss this. All science so far actually points toward it being a reality. And all observation so far points to it being a reality. Religion is blind faith. I'm not sure how you see it, but in my view you either live in somewhere completely unaffected or you are completely ignoring the facts. Observation and theory are agreeing quite well here.
If this thing targets anything that looks like a person, wouldn't it be easiest to convince it that you won't a person.
I agree on the Perelman part and his was a great achievement in mathematical sciences. But to call physics a theoretical science is massively uninformed. Physics is primarily an experimental science, which is supported by some purely theoretical work. A recent move in funding and interest in theoretical science may have given an image that physics is just theoretical. But most of the recent breakthroughs are still experimental. Historically experimental physics has achieved far more than purely theoretical has and will ever achieve. Through testing things about the physical world around us we learn and find out far more than we can by ignoring these things and just using a pen and paper. Even physicists like Einstein stood on the shoulders of experimental physicists to achieve what they achieved. Nothing has ever been that far from the experiment and that is what science is. When the theoretical working gets proved to have some use experimentally then they get credit. Einstein didn't earn his nobel prize until 1921. I'm not suggesting theoretical work is of no use, but you can not give great credit to the scientist involved until it is shown to have great benefit.
Imagine if they started handing out awards for M-Theory a few years back. I know you probably aren't referring to string theorists but in my view they can have awards when they can show that the blahblahons are any more real and are any more useful to define than Klingons. Obviously the others who do theoretical work closer to a practical reality should and will be awarded when experiment confirms their findings, and their findings are put to good use.
Reference frames my friend... The space station is effectively in freefall toward the Earth, so is everything on it. ie. This makes it a gravity free environment.
I wonder if we would have been close on the first two, if we had've considered them important and put as much funding into researching them as we had with the successful ones.
I think no matter how ridiculous the idea is, if people seriously intend to achieve it, it will happen. The progress so far with the space elevator seems positive and suggests it is not scientifically impossible. So I would guess the deciding factor in the end will be whether people are prepared to go to the trouble of achieving it or not.
(The third one was never going to happen because it wasn't something the majority wanted to be. If anything people try to prevent baldness.)
From what I've seen most of what big business throws out are generally good computers. A lot of the stuff they get rid of these days are things like 17" monitors and pentium 2 or 3 computers normally around 533Mhz, that are definitely good enough to run internet and word. They also have 10 or 20GB HDDs and quite a few 256MB memory chips around too. I think in Australia a lot of it gets redistributed to others though, if possible. Anything from let employees have first grab, to give to charity, to resell, or even put it obviously in the dumpster for someone to take :).
I'm not sure what is used in processors currently, but having the links as nanotubes would help the heat transfer within the material also. Nanotubes have a thermal conductivity of around 2000-3000 W/m/K at normal CPU operating temperatures. This is a huge increase when you compare it to the 149 W/m/K for silicon and 318 W/m/K for gold at room temperature.
So the increase in thermal conductivity by just having a proportion of the CPU made from nanotubes could possibly be enough to make up for the shape change. I wouldn't have thought much power would be saved by using nanotubes over any other conductor though. I'd be guessing most of the power loss is in the silicon gates, but I might be wrong.
http://www.pa.msu.edu/cmp/csc/ntproperties/thermal transport.html Carbon Nanotube Thermal Conductivity
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon Silicon Thermal Conductivity
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold Gold Thermal Conductivity
When you take into account that India's population is over 1 000 000 000, the answer is obvious...
They must have run out of space for call centres.
If he thought it was right and he is a scientist, I would guess he would send it to a peer reviewed scientific journal, not the Telegraph.
That is one of the easiest clues in these things. If it links to a pdf document on the Telegraph or New Scientist site, it most likely has as much merit as the relativity drive. When you see a link to Nature or something, take more notice.
Yeh, that seems to be the thing a lot of people are missing. Whether we are the cause or not, oceans will still rise, ice shelfs will go, and the results of global warming will still occur. So we have to make it an issue an do something about it, regardless.