Mentioned in the original article, a problematic, potentially fatal time-lag for transplants involving any but living donors:
"We took normal, healthy mice, injected them for three consecutive days with the complex, then transplanted insulin-producing cells on the fourth day..."
Vital organs like hearts are 'harvested' from the dying, often people who are terminally brain-injured in motor vehicle accidents. Medical policies and procedures involving keeping such traumatically injured people 'alive' on 'life support' for four days hold complex layers of ethical issues for doctors and excruciatingly painful emotional issues for families of those donors fatally injured.
That isn't a 'nay' to improving pancreatic islet transplantation (which, in my understanding, does not generally kill the donor), but rather an urgent 'caution' and plea to biomedical researchers: proceed honestly, transparently, and with as much public awareness as humanly possible of unintended consequences.
Seems to me that, in general, re-envisioning our lifestyles, diets, and relationships with our planet, seeking healthier ways of being, is a far more viable long-term cure for many degenerative diseases, than heroic and often inaccessibly expensive treatments.
Faced with a big project that my XP system (built in 2004) wouldn't handle, I bought a new HP machine that came with Vista, factory-installed. I cursed it vigorously for two weeks, and then returned it.
I'm self-employed: research and writing, digital photography, audio production, website design.
Seemed to me that the user interface in Vista manifested something like arrogant, paranoid corporate culture at Microsoft. I spent a lot of time figuring out how to work around the idiot-proofing built into Vista, reinventing things that had worked seamlessly in XP. Also spent a lot of time pondering the bloated CPU and Memory usage in the "processes" window, as Vista chugged oh-so-VERY-slowly through some big graphics files (using Adobe Photoshop CS3).
There is a lot of memory-hogging *&#@!%! running in the background in Vista. It crashed repeatedly. It changed itself around when it was supposed to be 'sleeping,' doing bizarre things like switching my dual monitors (and trapping the mouse cursor on the second monitor, so I couldn't even access the controls without turning off the second monitor and rebooting). The drivers for my NEW scanner and NEW monitor wouldn't work with Vista, nor would other software that I use frequently and like.
Vista spent LOTS of time sending data - what??? - to Microsoft.
I spent an inordinate amount of time uninstalling factory-installed resource-hogging JUNK.
Because of the limitations of my old computer, I had been using several other computers; when I tried to consolidate the several copies of my working files, it indexed everything, including the files I had deleted as I consolidated, so finding the actual files was tortuous.
Etc., etc., etc.
Some people probably want to look at resource-hogging pretty OS details, like those cutesy semi-transparent window frames. Some people might even like a computer that sends all sorts of info to Microsoft, and reconfigures itself while you sleep. Some people might like buying all-new software (and some new hardware) whenever they get a new computer.
Me, I would just like a smart, fast, SANE OS: one that works cleanly, efficiently, and with a 'good working relationship' in human-machine interface.
If Adobe and ProTools worked with Linux, I would abandon Windows.
The more 'compact' a data storage format, the more likely that just a little bit of 'aging' will degrade it beyond intelligibility.
If it's REALLY important, rewrite it so that it's interesting to more than 'just you,' and publish it on archival-quality paper. If there are several thousand copies around, the odds are that a few will survive for a couple of centuries. Decay that would render any digital media format unreadable, just makes archival paper smell a bit musty.
Beyond the 'clay tablets' mentioned above, the most enduring long-term storage I've found is 'oral tradition' in a cultural context that values both integrity and history. Assuming that whatever you want to save long-term is interesting and important to anyone besides you, tell it in a memorable format to your grandchildren's generation.
A couple of decades ago, I worked on a history project involving both oral tradition and archival material: the elders' memories of events retold through the generations were, in some instances, MORE accurate than archival documents. But, of course, most of the younger generations in that community are paying more attention to TV and the Internet than to their elders.
My dad was a maniac about data preservation: made multiple copies of everything, indexed it meticulously, etc., etc. My sister threw it all away after he died.
Seems to me that part of the problem is that Newton's basic axioms about space, time, etc., are flawed; and that although Einstein resolved some of the problems, he did not address the basic structure of Newton's one-dimensional notion of time, etc.
If the axioms are different, then the theory is inevitably different. Some of you yonger SlashDotters may not have read Thomas Kuhn's "Structure of Scientific Revolutions." At the time it was written, Kuhn did a trenchant job of describing how axiomatic changes influence the entire epistemological infrastructure of scientific theory.
Aboriginal Indigenous understanding of time, for example, is nonlinear (and not just in the sense of being curved as a part of the space-time continuum in relationship with gravity).
A lot of people dismiss Indigenous knowledge - there are quite a few negative stereotypes about us - but at least some of our science / ways-of-being are very thoroughly grounded in the astute observation, mindful / brilliantly aware interaction with the world (i.e. a parallel of scientific experimentation), and wisdom of countless millennia.
FFI, the current draft of Chapter 2 of my (in process) Ph.D. dissertation has a discussion of some of the axiomatic limitations of contemporary scientific world-views (linked to http://www.maquah.blogspot.com/ ).
I'm still working on it; and am interested in discussing it.
Looking at Google's three-layered Mars map: dunno how they determined their 'zero' with the elevations, but it looks like there are significantly more meteor craters on the 'above zero elevation' parts of the map (Surface water = insulation from meteor impact).
A few thoughts:
(1) Arsia Mons - the enormous volcanic mountain - is almost exactly on the other side of the planet from the -9 km near-circular depression, Hellas Planitia (there's a map with geographic names linked to the the USGS astrogeology image gallery). I wonder if Hellas Planitia is the scar of a meteor that penetrated the planet's crust, and the volcanoes on the other side of the planet from the shock of the impact?
(2) Please correct me if I'm wrong, but the Odyssey Mars radiation environment experiment seems to have focused on the impact of solar and other cosmic radiation, rather than scanning Mars for any naturally 'hot' spots? It seems as though Argyre Planitia might be a place to 'look' for higher-than-average radiation of planetary origin: according to Google's Map - the 'infrared' scans - it's thermally "hotter" than surrounding areas, could that be from radioactive decay? Was there a thermonuclear 'event' on Mars, millions of years ago???
(3) It seems that most ecologists do not think all that deeply about the overall and very powerful influences of 'life' on the ecosystem: moderating temperature, plant roots bringing water back to the surface and then transpiring water vapor into the atmosphere, etc., etc. The living ecosystem has a bigger role than most people realize, in maintaining an life-sustaining environment... but if was stressed beyond certain bounds, it would collapse.
Thermonuclear event??? Ecosystem stressed beyond life-sustaining limits??? Like the drifting dunes of what was once the Sahara Forest, perhaps we are looking at the consequences of a planetary ecological disaster, millions of years ago... and, how many 'signs of life' might a Rover find, randomly looking, on the arid drifting sand of Earth's deserts?
The Tasmanian plant has been cloning itself for at least 43,600 years, so its genetic code hasn't changed. A part of the point of sexual reproduction is 'swapping' our genes so that our descendants are more readily adaptable to new or changed environments: in a sense, 'editing' our genetic code for each new generation. Although some single-celled organisms do reproduce sexually - in bacteria that's called conjugation - many (usually) don't. So... in the sense that each of us humans is the "same" organism even though we have new cells / some of our cells have died, some blue-green algae are at least a billion years old, some amoeba are more than a million years old, etc. If "continuously existing community of genetically identical cells" is how you define "individual," then some algae mats are awesomely ancient beings!
Seems to me that the oldest living single organism (on this planet, anyway) is probably some virus or single-celled creature.
Critters who have been fissioning almost forever, there are Ur-Amoebas and suchlike who are millions of years old, giant (albeit thinly distributed) creatures encompassing large geographical areas.
Although - if a person really stops to think about it, probably the oldest being (ecosystem is a complex networked system, but nonetheless almost wholly integrated) on / of this planet is the Earth herself. Unlike amoebas, there have been a few 'upgrades' over the millennia, though.
Thank you for the insightful information:-)
Some European peoples, including the Scots, also had Clans that were similar to our Dodems, although not quite the same. I've known some Scots whose Clan and name were a VERY valued part of their identity!
Also, I think that most of those sacred names are courteously respected. So, for example, if George Washington's long-lost relative was found and identified using DNA analysis, that news might not be received with the same kind of jokes about his name as... well, some of the postings here.
If you were really "sorry" you would have canceled your comment, rather than posting it.
But: I'm curious as to how someone like you thinks. What is it that you think is funny - or whatever it is that motivated you - in making obscene comments about other people's names?
For a great many Aboriginal peoples, Clans or, in my language, Dodems [the source of the English word "Totemic"], are a very important part of family relationships and identity.
I am Bear Dodem - that's what my screen name here at SlashDot means, "Bear."
I can understand how people who don't know very much about Indigenous traditions - and the beauty which we have with the enduring wisdom of our ancient legacy - might think that our sacred relationships with wolves and bears and eagles... and lots of other animals... are HaHaHa funny.
To us, they are sacred. If you'd like to read more, several years ago my (now-deceased) husband, Wub-e-ke-niew, wrote an article explaining some of our culture and its value for us. It's online at http://www.maquah.net/AhnishinahbaeotjibwayReflections/1996/1996-02-11_Ahnishinahaeotjibway_Dodems.html
I'm not a christian, but (at least for the sake of argument) it seems there's a peculiar sort of logic to 'seven days'... since 'days' are a meaningful measurement of time only relative to the rotation of the Earth, well... who knows how long the first six 'days' were: before She started spinning the Earth? http://maquah.net/
Okay, I'll admit that I'm old enough that I remember when - in Americans' collective guilt over the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, or something like that - development of nuclear energy was being touted as "atoms for peace" and was presented to the general public as 'clean, limitless energy' that was going to create some sort of Utopia where the main problem confronting humanity was 'excess leisure time' [really].
And also, that most of my education in physics was back when there were a lot fewer subatomic particles than there are now.
But, it seems that the main problem with 'waste' heat from nuclear power plants (and radioactive waste) has to do with that old E=mc[squared] conversion of mass to energy.
Naturally radioactive isotopes - whether residue from the formation of the Earth, isotopes stable under the intense pressure at the Earth's core and decaying as they flow toward the surface, or created by bombardment by 'cosmic radiation' - create a certain amount of heat as they decay: some of it released by the breaking of subatomic bonds, and some of it by the conversion of mass to energy.
That heat, like - as Dunbal rightly points out - the energy bombarding this planet from the sun, is a factor in the complex and biologically integrated systems that have, over countless millennia, maintained a range of temperatures on the surface of the planet that are hospitable, even paradisical, to life-as-we-know-it.
The 'potential energy' in various fissionable isotopes of plutonium and other artificially-created and concentrated isotopes is not like some sort of 'battery': energy put into the uranium by bombardment, that 'comes out' as heat from fission. Instead, much of it is mass-to-energy conversion 'created' as part of the physical matter of the fissioning atom is transformed into energy. (The Earth loses mass as radioactive isotopes decay, and gains mass from cosmic debris... there's a net gain in weight.)
Both nuclear power plants and uranium/plutonium bombs work because of 'chain reactions': if fissionable materials are sufficiently concentrated then some of the debris from the decay of one atom will collide with other atoms, either to 'transform' them into some other unstable isotope/element (like Americium, etc., etc.), or to destabilize it to the point that it, too, fissions, creating more decay particles and more mass transformed into energy. The difference between a functioning power plant and an uncontrolled explosion is basically the rate of fission - both are self-sustaining chain reactions that generate lots more energy than was ever 'put into' them.
From an atomic standpoint, 'spent' fuel rods from nuclear power plants are a dirty mess, laden with all kinds of unstable isotopes and other byproducts of fission and bombardment, not just unspent plutonium and uranium. The point here is that the heat they generate wasn't there before: some of it is the energy that was holding the atom together, and some of it is that incredibly efficient mass-to-energy conversion, 'creating' energy that has been 'bound' as matter since before the beginning of geological time on this planet.
Nuclear waste affects the complex thermal balances of the planet in at least two ways:
1) creating quite a bit of heat that wasn't there before: just the 'waste' heat from nuclear power plants has been enough to have a significant effect salmon populations (and other aspects of the ecosystem) downriver, for example,
and
2) further degrading the ecosystem - and the thermal balances that are, in part, maintained by the interactive fabric of life - through radiation and other forms of toxicity (heavy metals and biological concentration of radioactive isotopes like Strontium-90, Technetium, etc.)
It seems to me that the crucial questions about 'heat' and 'nuclear waste' involve the ways additional heat that wasn't there before, might further shift an already precarious balance, rather than in comparison with the (at least until recently) stable balance between heat from the sun/earth's core and heat radiating away from the planet.
That's what I was wondering if anyone had researched, anyway.
The problems with storage of 'spent' fuel from nuclear reactors go beyond inadequate technology for 'containment' and the likelihood of highly radioactive material (and heavy metals) getting into the environment. Radioactivity is both carcinogenic and mutagenic - not usually creating 'super heroes' but rather mental retardation, crippling deformities, and nasty genetic diseases. Exposure to radiation is like playing 'russian roulette' with your genes, and almost all genetic damage is harmful.
It also includes HEAT, and as the thermal balance of this planet changes with buildup of atmospheric carbon dioxide, methane and other heat-trapping gasses, the problems of excess heat generated by nuclear waste are amplified.
Plutonium does not tidily decay into radioactively inert (but still chemically toxic)lead, but instead into a 'decay chain' of other - also radioactive - elements. It's a crumbling, poisonous mess that keeps generating more heat. Among the many possible decay chains:
Plutonium-239 - half-life: 24,110 years
alpha decay into Uranium-235 - half-life: 704,000,000 years
alpha decay into Thorium-231 - half-life: 25.2 hours
beta decay into Protactinium-231 - half-life: 32,700 years
alpha decay into Actinium - half-life: 21.8 years
beta decay into Thorium-227 - half-life: 18.72 days
alpha decay into Radium-233 - half-life: 11.43 days
alpha decay into Radon-219 - half-life: 3.96 seconds
alpha decay into Polonium-215 - half-life: 1.78 milliseconds
alpha decay into Lead-211 - half-life: 36.1 minutes
beta decay into Bismuth-211 - half-life: 2.15 minutes
alpha decay into Thallium-207 - half-life: 4.77 minutes
beta decay into Lead-207 -: stable
Every one of these 'decays' creates more heat, as well as more radiation... I don't know if anyone's ever calculated the impact of all that heat on the finely-tuned balances that make this planet inhabitable by human beings?
In my understanding, anyway, the most important questions of the present include 'how can we - while we still have time and resources - redesign and restructure our society so that we don't NEED nuclear power (or excess fossil fuel consumption) for high quality-of-life. It's a lot more than buying organic coffee and sometimes riding a bicycle.
To melt it, somewhere in the ballpart of 1515 C if it's 'mild' steel, the temperature depends on the mixture (alloy) of iron, carbon, chromium, the blood of sacrificial mice... whatever else. . Can you melt steel with a laser? Yes... . but melting it or vaporizing it [lots hotter - above the boiling point of iron], would, as a number of other people have noted here, involve huge amounts of energy, raise the temperature of the surrounding area and perhaps cook the laser-wielder, etc. . Probably the 'light' of a light-saber is something like ionic traces from the passage-through-air of some as-yet-unknown in the here-and-now power, as it vectors (y'know how things are in Hollywood) toward the steel... and then the power released from dematerializing the steel flows BACK to the light-saber (it would need to be a self-recharging subatomic-powered weapon: running a gaget like that on a battery pack would be unwieldy) . Some people have considered the 'telekinesis' question, including why a person would need a light saber at all, if a master of telekinesis. . Using telekinesis as a weapon against living beings draws a the user into dreadful depths of the dark side... it's not worth it.
Slashdot Mirror
Mentioned in the original article, a problematic, potentially fatal time-lag for transplants involving any but living donors:
"We took normal, healthy mice, injected them for three consecutive days with the complex, then transplanted insulin-producing cells on the fourth day..."
Vital organs like hearts are 'harvested' from the dying, often people who are terminally brain-injured in motor vehicle accidents. Medical policies and procedures involving keeping such traumatically injured people 'alive' on 'life support' for four days hold complex layers of ethical issues for doctors and excruciatingly painful emotional issues for families of those donors fatally injured.
That isn't a 'nay' to improving pancreatic islet transplantation (which, in my understanding, does not generally kill the donor), but rather an urgent 'caution' and plea to biomedical researchers: proceed honestly, transparently, and with as much public awareness as humanly possible of unintended consequences.
Seems to me that, in general, re-envisioning our lifestyles, diets, and relationships with our planet, seeking healthier ways of being, is a far more viable long-term cure for many degenerative diseases, than heroic and often inaccessibly expensive treatments.
Faced with a big project that my XP system (built in 2004) wouldn't handle, I bought a new HP machine that came with Vista, factory-installed. I cursed it vigorously for two weeks, and then returned it.
I'm self-employed: research and writing, digital photography, audio production, website design.
Seemed to me that the user interface in Vista manifested something like arrogant, paranoid corporate culture at Microsoft. I spent a lot of time figuring out how to work around the idiot-proofing built into Vista, reinventing things that had worked seamlessly in XP. Also spent a lot of time pondering the bloated CPU and Memory usage in the "processes" window, as Vista chugged oh-so-VERY-slowly through some big graphics files (using Adobe Photoshop CS3).
There is a lot of memory-hogging *&#@!%! running in the background in Vista. It crashed repeatedly. It changed itself around when it was supposed to be 'sleeping,' doing bizarre things like switching my dual monitors (and trapping the mouse cursor on the second monitor, so I couldn't even access the controls without turning off the second monitor and rebooting). The drivers for my NEW scanner and NEW monitor wouldn't work with Vista, nor would other software that I use frequently and like.
Vista spent LOTS of time sending data - what??? - to Microsoft.
I spent an inordinate amount of time uninstalling factory-installed resource-hogging JUNK.
Because of the limitations of my old computer, I had been using several other computers; when I tried to consolidate the several copies of my working files, it indexed everything, including the files I had deleted as I consolidated, so finding the actual files was tortuous.
Etc., etc., etc.
Some people probably want to look at resource-hogging pretty OS details, like those cutesy semi-transparent window frames. Some people might even like a computer that sends all sorts of info to Microsoft, and reconfigures itself while you sleep. Some people might like buying all-new software (and some new hardware) whenever they get a new computer.
Me, I would just like a smart, fast, SANE OS: one that works cleanly, efficiently, and with a 'good working relationship' in human-machine interface.
If Adobe and ProTools worked with Linux, I would abandon Windows.
The more 'compact' a data storage format, the more likely that just a little bit of 'aging' will degrade it beyond intelligibility.
If it's REALLY important, rewrite it so that it's interesting to more than 'just you,' and publish it on archival-quality paper. If there are several thousand copies around, the odds are that a few will survive for a couple of centuries. Decay that would render any digital media format unreadable, just makes archival paper smell a bit musty.
Beyond the 'clay tablets' mentioned above, the most enduring long-term storage I've found is 'oral tradition' in a cultural context that values both integrity and history. Assuming that whatever you want to save long-term is interesting and important to anyone besides you, tell it in a memorable format to your grandchildren's generation.
A couple of decades ago, I worked on a history project involving both oral tradition and archival material: the elders' memories of events retold through the generations were, in some instances, MORE accurate than archival documents. But, of course, most of the younger generations in that community are paying more attention to TV and the Internet than to their elders.
My dad was a maniac about data preservation: made multiple copies of everything, indexed it meticulously, etc., etc. My sister threw it all away after he died.
Seems to me that part of the problem is that Newton's basic axioms about space, time, etc., are flawed; and that although Einstein resolved some of the problems, he did not address the basic structure of Newton's one-dimensional notion of time, etc.
If the axioms are different, then the theory is inevitably different. Some of you yonger SlashDotters may not have read Thomas Kuhn's "Structure of Scientific Revolutions." At the time it was written, Kuhn did a trenchant job of describing how axiomatic changes influence the entire epistemological infrastructure of scientific theory.
Aboriginal Indigenous understanding of time, for example, is nonlinear (and not just in the sense of being curved as a part of the space-time continuum in relationship with gravity).
A lot of people dismiss Indigenous knowledge - there are quite a few negative stereotypes about us - but at least some of our science / ways-of-being are very thoroughly grounded in the astute observation, mindful / brilliantly aware interaction with the world (i.e. a parallel of scientific experimentation), and wisdom of countless millennia.
FFI, the current draft of Chapter 2 of my (in process) Ph.D. dissertation has a discussion of some of the axiomatic limitations of contemporary scientific world-views (linked to http://www.maquah.blogspot.com/ ).
I'm still working on it; and am interested in discussing it.
Looking at Google's three-layered Mars map: dunno how they determined their 'zero' with the elevations, but it looks like there are significantly more meteor craters on the 'above zero elevation' parts of the map (Surface water = insulation from meteor impact).
A few thoughts:
(1) Arsia Mons - the enormous volcanic mountain - is almost exactly on the other side of the planet from the -9 km near-circular depression, Hellas Planitia (there's a map with geographic names linked to the the USGS astrogeology image gallery). I wonder if Hellas Planitia is the scar of a meteor that penetrated the planet's crust, and the volcanoes on the other side of the planet from the shock of the impact?
(2) Please correct me if I'm wrong, but the Odyssey Mars radiation environment experiment seems to have focused on the impact of solar and other cosmic radiation, rather than scanning Mars for any naturally 'hot' spots? It seems as though Argyre Planitia might be a place to 'look' for higher-than-average radiation of planetary origin: according to Google's Map - the 'infrared' scans - it's thermally "hotter" than surrounding areas, could that be from radioactive decay? Was there a thermonuclear 'event' on Mars, millions of years ago???
(3) It seems that most ecologists do not think all that deeply about the overall and very powerful influences of 'life' on the ecosystem: moderating temperature, plant roots bringing water back to the surface and then transpiring water vapor into the atmosphere, etc., etc. The living ecosystem has a bigger role than most people realize, in maintaining an life-sustaining environment... but if was stressed beyond certain bounds, it would collapse.
Thermonuclear event??? Ecosystem stressed beyond life-sustaining limits??? Like the drifting dunes of what was once the Sahara Forest, perhaps we are looking at the consequences of a planetary ecological disaster, millions of years ago... and, how many 'signs of life' might a Rover find, randomly looking, on the arid drifting sand of Earth's deserts?
The Tasmanian plant has been cloning itself for at least 43,600 years, so its genetic code hasn't changed. A part of the point of sexual reproduction is 'swapping' our genes so that our descendants are more readily adaptable to new or changed environments: in a sense, 'editing' our genetic code for each new generation. Although some single-celled organisms do reproduce sexually - in bacteria that's called conjugation - many (usually) don't. So... in the sense that each of us humans is the "same" organism even though we have new cells / some of our cells have died, some blue-green algae are at least a billion years old, some amoeba are more than a million years old, etc. If "continuously existing community of genetically identical cells" is how you define "individual," then some algae mats are awesomely ancient beings!
Seems to me that the oldest living single organism (on this planet, anyway) is probably some virus or single-celled creature. Critters who have been fissioning almost forever, there are Ur-Amoebas and suchlike who are millions of years old, giant (albeit thinly distributed) creatures encompassing large geographical areas. Although - if a person really stops to think about it, probably the oldest being (ecosystem is a complex networked system, but nonetheless almost wholly integrated) on / of this planet is the Earth herself. Unlike amoebas, there have been a few 'upgrades' over the millennia, though.
Thank you for the insightful information :-)
Some European peoples, including the Scots, also had Clans that were similar to our Dodems, although not quite the same. I've known some Scots whose Clan and name were a VERY valued part of their identity!
Also, I think that most of those sacred names are courteously respected. So, for example, if George Washington's long-lost relative was found and identified using DNA analysis, that news might not be received with the same kind of jokes about his name as... well, some of the postings here.
If you were really "sorry" you would have canceled your comment, rather than posting it. But: I'm curious as to how someone like you thinks. What is it that you think is funny - or whatever it is that motivated you - in making obscene comments about other people's names?
For a great many Aboriginal peoples, Clans or, in my language, Dodems [the source of the English word "Totemic"], are a very important part of family relationships and identity. I am Bear Dodem - that's what my screen name here at SlashDot means, "Bear." I can understand how people who don't know very much about Indigenous traditions - and the beauty which we have with the enduring wisdom of our ancient legacy - might think that our sacred relationships with wolves and bears and eagles... and lots of other animals... are HaHaHa funny. To us, they are sacred. If you'd like to read more, several years ago my (now-deceased) husband, Wub-e-ke-niew, wrote an article explaining some of our culture and its value for us. It's online at http://www.maquah.net/AhnishinahbaeotjibwayReflections/1996/1996-02-11_Ahnishinahaeotjibway_Dodems.html
I'm not a christian, but (at least for the sake of argument) it seems there's a peculiar sort of logic to 'seven days'... since 'days' are a meaningful measurement of time only relative to the rotation of the Earth, well... who knows how long the first six 'days' were: before She started spinning the Earth?
http://maquah.net/
Okay, I'll admit that I'm old enough that I remember when - in Americans' collective guilt over the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, or something like that - development of nuclear energy was being touted as "atoms for peace" and was presented to the general public as 'clean, limitless energy' that was going to create some sort of Utopia where the main problem confronting humanity was 'excess leisure time' [really].
And also, that most of my education in physics was back when there were a lot fewer subatomic particles than there are now.
But, it seems that the main problem with 'waste' heat from nuclear power plants (and radioactive waste) has to do with that old E=mc[squared] conversion of mass to energy.
Naturally radioactive isotopes - whether residue from the formation of the Earth, isotopes stable under the intense pressure at the Earth's core and decaying as they flow toward the surface, or created by bombardment by 'cosmic radiation' - create a certain amount of heat as they decay: some of it released by the breaking of subatomic bonds, and some of it by the conversion of mass to energy.
That heat, like - as Dunbal rightly points out - the energy bombarding this planet from the sun, is a factor in the complex and biologically integrated systems that have, over countless millennia, maintained a range of temperatures on the surface of the planet that are hospitable, even paradisical, to life-as-we-know-it.
The 'potential energy' in various fissionable isotopes of plutonium and other artificially-created and concentrated isotopes is not like some sort of 'battery': energy put into the uranium by bombardment, that 'comes out' as heat from fission. Instead, much of it is mass-to-energy conversion 'created' as part of the physical matter of the fissioning atom is transformed into energy. (The Earth loses mass as radioactive isotopes decay, and gains mass from cosmic debris... there's a net gain in weight.)
Both nuclear power plants and uranium/plutonium bombs work because of 'chain reactions': if fissionable materials are sufficiently concentrated then some of the debris from the decay of one atom will collide with other atoms, either to 'transform' them into some other unstable isotope/element (like Americium, etc., etc.), or to destabilize it to the point that it, too, fissions, creating more decay particles and more mass transformed into energy. The difference between a functioning power plant and an uncontrolled explosion is basically the rate of fission - both are self-sustaining chain reactions that generate lots more energy than was ever 'put into' them.
From an atomic standpoint, 'spent' fuel rods from nuclear power plants are a dirty mess, laden with all kinds of unstable isotopes and other byproducts of fission and bombardment, not just unspent plutonium and uranium. The point here is that the heat they generate wasn't there before: some of it is the energy that was holding the atom together, and some of it is that incredibly efficient mass-to-energy conversion, 'creating' energy that has been 'bound' as matter since before the beginning of geological time on this planet.
Nuclear waste affects the complex thermal balances of the planet in at least two ways:
1) creating quite a bit of heat that wasn't there before: just the 'waste' heat from nuclear power plants has been enough to have a significant effect salmon populations (and other aspects of the ecosystem) downriver, for example,
and
2) further degrading the ecosystem - and the thermal balances that are, in part, maintained by the interactive fabric of life - through radiation and other forms of toxicity (heavy metals and biological concentration of radioactive isotopes like Strontium-90, Technetium, etc.)
It seems to me that the crucial questions about 'heat' and 'nuclear waste' involve the ways additional heat that wasn't there before, might further shift an already precarious balance, rather than in comparison with the (at least until recently) stable balance between heat from the sun/earth's core and heat radiating away from the planet.
That's what I was wondering if anyone had researched, anyway.
The problems with storage of 'spent' fuel from nuclear reactors go beyond inadequate technology for 'containment' and the likelihood of highly radioactive material (and heavy metals) getting into the environment. Radioactivity is both carcinogenic and mutagenic - not usually creating 'super heroes' but rather mental retardation, crippling deformities, and nasty genetic diseases. Exposure to radiation is like playing 'russian roulette' with your genes, and almost all genetic damage is harmful.
It also includes HEAT, and as the thermal balance of this planet changes with buildup of atmospheric carbon dioxide, methane and other heat-trapping gasses, the problems of excess heat generated by nuclear waste are amplified.
Plutonium does not tidily decay into radioactively inert (but still chemically toxic)lead, but instead into a 'decay chain' of other - also radioactive - elements. It's a crumbling, poisonous mess that keeps generating more heat. Among the many possible decay chains:
Plutonium-239 - half-life: 24,110 years
alpha decay into Uranium-235 - half-life: 704,000,000 years
alpha decay into Thorium-231 - half-life: 25.2 hours
beta decay into Protactinium-231 - half-life: 32,700 years
alpha decay into Actinium - half-life: 21.8 years
beta decay into Thorium-227 - half-life: 18.72 days
alpha decay into Radium-233 - half-life: 11.43 days
alpha decay into Radon-219 - half-life: 3.96 seconds
alpha decay into Polonium-215 - half-life: 1.78 milliseconds
alpha decay into Lead-211 - half-life: 36.1 minutes
beta decay into Bismuth-211 - half-life: 2.15 minutes
alpha decay into Thallium-207 - half-life: 4.77 minutes
beta decay into Lead-207 -: stable
Every one of these 'decays' creates more heat, as well as more radiation... I don't know if anyone's ever calculated the impact of all that heat on the finely-tuned balances that make this planet inhabitable by human beings?
In my understanding, anyway, the most important questions of the present include 'how can we - while we still have time and resources - redesign and restructure our society so that we don't NEED nuclear power (or excess fossil fuel consumption) for high quality-of-life. It's a lot more than buying organic coffee and sometimes riding a bicycle.
To melt it, somewhere in the ballpart of 1515 C if it's 'mild' steel, the temperature depends on the mixture (alloy) of iron, carbon, chromium, the blood of sacrificial mice ... whatever else. ... ... and then the power released from dematerializing the steel flows BACK to the light-saber (it would need to be a self-recharging subatomic-powered weapon: running a gaget like that on a battery pack would be unwieldy) ... it's not worth it.
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Can you melt steel with a laser? Yes
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but melting it or vaporizing it [lots hotter - above the boiling point of iron], would, as a number of other people have noted here, involve huge amounts of energy, raise the temperature of the surrounding area and perhaps cook the laser-wielder, etc.
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Probably the 'light' of a light-saber is something like ionic traces from the passage-through-air of some as-yet-unknown in the here-and-now power, as it vectors (y'know how things are in Hollywood) toward the steel
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Some people have considered the 'telekinesis' question, including why a person would need a light saber at all, if a master of telekinesis.
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Using telekinesis as a weapon against living beings draws a the user into dreadful depths of the dark side