Re: [Vo]:Grabowski thinks the effect the NRL is seeing is chemical
From http://www.newenergytimes.com/v2/conferences/2010/ARL/Pres/10Grabowski-NRL-Efforts-Spanning-Tthe-Last-8-Years.pdfhttp://www.newenergytimes.com/v2/conferences/2010/ARL/Pres/10Grabowski-NRL-Efforts-Spanning-Tthe-Last-8-Years.pdf Results: * Highly reproducible, over long periods of time. * Some of irreversible heat caused by H*D exchange, but apparently not all. Is there other chemistry too? I think Grabowski might be suspecting ashless chemistry but is afraid to be lumped with Mills. I Still maintain that confined catalytic action (or change in Casimir force) can repeatedly disassociate gas molecules -pitting nature against itself until the action drives the atoms out of the cavity or destroys the geometry. He indicates the present ash does not account for all the excess heat. Fran
[Vo]:U.S. intelligence is an appalling mess
I have a low regard for U.S. intelligence, but it turns out the situation is worse than I imagined it might be. The whole system is out of control, ineffective, and it is costing fantastic sums of money. WaPost just published the results of a monumental two-year study: http://projects.washingtonpost.com/top-secret-america/articles/a-hidden-world-growing-beyond-control http://projects.washingtonpost.com/top-secret-america/ Some findings QUOTE: * Some 1,271 government organizations and 1,931 private companies work on programs related to counterterrorism, homeland security and intelligence in about 10,000 locations across the United States. * An estimated 854,000 people, nearly 1.5 times as many people as live in Washington, D.C., hold top-secret security clearances. . . . * Many security and intelligence agencies do the same work, creating redundancy and waste. For example, 51 federal organizations and military commands, operating in 15 U.S. cities, track the flow of money to and from terrorist networks. * Analysts who make sense of documents and conversations obtained by foreign and domestic spying share their judgment by publishing 50,000 intelligence reports each year - a volume so large that many are routinely ignored. This is sorta off topic I realize, but bear with me for a moment. It is sorta on-topic too because: 1. I firmly believe that if cold fusion could be developed, most of our enemies in the Middle East would lose their funding and vanish. Terrorists living in abject poverty thousands of miles away from the U.S. and Europe cannot hurt us. They may hate us but they do not have the means or the time to hurt us. 2. So much money has been wasted! Just a tiny fraction of it might have been enough to develop cold fusion and solve 99% of the problem. 3. Seldom in modern history has the government and its independent contractors screwed up as badly as this. Post-Pearl Harbor, the invasion of Iraq is the only other example I can think of. I know a good many horror stories about federal and corporate incompetence but the scale of this mess is breathtaking. It is most regrettable that we must depend upon the Federal Government to do what's right by cold fusion, since corporations are demonstrably even more hopeless than the government when it comes to this field. - Jed
RE: [Vo]:Grabowski thinks the effect the NRL is seeing is chemical
From: Roarty, Francis X I think Grabowski might be suspecting ashless chemistry but is afraid to be lumped with Mills. I Still maintain that confined catalytic action (or change in Casimir force) can repeatedly disassociate gas molecules -pitting nature against itself until the action drives the atoms out of the cavity or destroys the geometry. He indicates the present ash does not account for all the excess heat. Fran Looks like he goes back long before Mills. In trying to gather more information on this, it turns out that K.S. Grabowski has followed in the footsteps of J.J Grabowski in the field of hydrogen deuterium exchange” reactions, going back quite a long time. Father - son? Also there is a new book on Amazon, which I would have ordered, were it not for the exorbitant price: http://www.amazon.com/Hydrogen-bonding-Challenges-Computational- Chemistry/dp/1402048521/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8 http://www.amazon.com/Hydrogen- bonding-Challenges-Computational- Chemistry/dp/1402048521/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8s=booksqid=1279570538sr=8-1 s=booksqid=1279570538sr=8-1 I still cannot find the expected heating value of the exchange; however, this paper indicates that “The activation energy for the H+ ↔ D+ exchange was determined to be 2.4 eV, less than half the value obtained by pure thermal means, suggesting that under the application of an electric field the deuteron (proton) diffusion mechanism is different.” http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~db=all~content=a755768593 Which value sounds rather high. No wonder there is some interest in this as an alternative to LENR. For that, it must be both reversible and asymmetric. + IF + … there was asymmetry in the exchange, due perhaps to the Casimir cavity, then this could be the kind of chemical modality that fits the circumstances of thermal gain well, without recourse to LERN or fractional hydrogen. And exchange-chemistry is not always symmetrical, so this cannot be ruled out. The ultimate source of gainful chemical energy then becomes something more like phase-change; and if there is net gain due to some asymmetry, then it must be due to ZPE, no? Jones
Re: [Vo]:Grabowski thinks the effect the NRL is seeing is chemical
In reply to Jones Beene's message of Mon, 19 Jul 2010 13:27:04 -0700: Hi, [snip] Most CF experiments use pure D, so there is very little if any H to exchange. I also think 2.4 eV is ridiculous. The difference in ionization energy between H and D is just a few meV (small m). From: Roarty, Francis X I think Grabowski might be suspecting ashless chemistry but is afraid to be lumped with Mills. I Still maintain that confined catalytic action (or change in Casimir force) can repeatedly disassociate gas molecules -pitting nature against itself until the action drives the atoms out of the cavity or destroys the geometry. He indicates the present ash does not account for all the excess heat. Fran Looks like he goes back long before Mills. In trying to gather more information on this, it turns out that K.S. Grabowski has followed in the footsteps of J.J Grabowski in the field of hydrogen deuterium exchange¡± reactions, going back quite a long time. Father - son? Also there is a new book on Amazon, which I would have ordered, were it not for the exorbitant price: http://www.amazon.com/Hydrogen-bonding-Challenges-Computational- Chemistry/dp/1402048521/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8 http://www.amazon.com/Hydrogen- bonding-Challenges-Computational- Chemistry/dp/1402048521/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8s=booksqid=1279570538sr=8-1 s=booksqid=1279570538sr=8-1 I still cannot find the expected heating value of the exchange; however, this paper indicates that ¡°The activation energy for the H+ ¡ê D+ exchange was determined to be 2.4 eV, less than half the value obtained by pure thermal means, suggesting that under the application of an electric field the deuteron (proton) diffusion mechanism is different.¡± http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~db=all~content=a755768593 Which value sounds rather high. No wonder there is some interest in this as an alternative to LENR. For that, it must be both reversible and asymmetric. + IF + ¡¦ there was asymmetry in the exchange, due perhaps to the Casimir cavity, then this could be the kind of chemical modality that fits the circumstances of thermal gain well, without recourse to LERN or fractional hydrogen. And exchange-chemistry is not always symmetrical, so this cannot be ruled out. The ultimate source of gainful chemical energy then becomes something more like phase-change; and if there is net gain due to some asymmetry, then it must be due to ZPE, no? Jones Regards, Robin van Spaandonk http://rvanspaa.freehostia.com/Project.html
[Vo]:Molding the Gyre
If life gives you lemons: http://news.discovery.com/earth/a-giant-plastic-island-to-cure-the-garbage-patch.html A group of architects have a radical new idea for cleaning up the Great Pacific Garbage Patch: turn it all into a giant island of recycled plastic complete with farmland, beaches -- even a city made of plastic buildings with a plastic subway system. The project, dubbed Recycled Island by its creators, Dutch group WHIM Architecture, certainly doesn't lack for ambition. It calls for a massive cleanup of plastic in the North Pacific Gyre, the area of swirling ocean water infamous for collecting vast amounts of plastic trash. Once collected the plastic is to be separated, melted down, and then used as building stock to create a floating island the size of the island of Hawaii. That's 10,000 square kilometers, or 3,861 square miles of plastic. All the processing can take place at sea, within the gyre, the WHIM folks write. Sand, compost, solar panels, undersea turbines will be brought in to create a self-sufficient, plastic utopia. more
Re: [Vo]:Somewhat OFF TOPIC Merchants of Doubt
On Sun, Jul 18, 2010 at 10:23 PM, mix...@bigpond.com wrote: ...two modern myths. ;) Spiraling into control: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20727694.100-quantum-entanglement-holds-together-lifes-blueprint.html http://snipurl.com/zlv2y snip When the researchers analysed the DNA without its helical structure, they found that the electron clouds were not entangled. But when they incorporated DNA's helical structure into the model, they saw that the electron clouds of each base pair became entangled with those of its neighbours (arxiv.org/abs/1006.4053v1). If you didn't have entanglement, then DNA would have a simple flat structure, and you would never get the twist that seems to be important to the functioning of DNA, says team member Vlatko Vedral of the University of Oxford. more T
[Vo]:A Cold, Dark Heart
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20727693.800-heart-of-darkness-could-explain-sun-mysteries.html http://tinyurl.com/3784o3h IS DARK matter lurking at the centre of our bright sun? Yes, say two research groups who believe the elusive stuff is cooling the solar core. The insight doesn't significantly affect the sun's overall temperature. Rather, a core chilled by dark matter would help explain the way heat is distributed and transported within the sun, a process that is poorly understood. Dark matter doesn't interact with light and so is invisible. The only evidence for its existence is its gravitational effects on other objects, including galaxies. These effects suggest dark matter makes up about 80 per cent of the total mass of the universe. The idea that it might lurk at the heart of the sun goes back to the 1980s, when astronomers found that the number of ghostly subatomic neutrinos leaving the sun was only about a third of what computer simulations suggested it should be. Dark matter could have explained the low yield because it would absorb energy, reducing the rate of the fusion reactions that produce neutrinos. more The missing neutrinos was one of Fred Sparber's (GRHS) favorite mysteries. T
Re: [Vo]:Somewhat OFF TOPIC Merchants of Doubt
--- On Sat, 7/17/10, mix...@bigpond.com mix...@bigpond.com wrote: At a distance of 1 light year, a dish with a radius of 100 m would pick up grand total of 3E-22 W from a 10 MW transmitter on Earth. I don't think there are any 10 MW transmitters, and even if there were, a signal that small would be completely and utterly lost in the background noise. From this page, http://www.faqs.org/faqs/astronomy/faq/part6/section-12.html it is suggested a UHF carrier could be detected at a range of 0.3 ly. If that is true, a passing probe, eavesdropping on nearby solar-type stars could get an idea that there's something near the Sun. I read a paper some time ago, by Jill Tarter I think, that suggested that radar broadcasts (Arecibo transmissions, ICBM early warning radar) could be detected out to a distance of some light-years. The fact that no intelligible broadcast could be detected from a distance of more than ~1/3 light-year is interesting; there could be something as close as Alpha Centauri, and we might never know about it. --Kyle
RE: [Vo]:Grabowski thinks the effect the NRL is seeing is chemical
On Mon, 19 Jul 2010 13:29 Jones Beene said The ultimate source of gainful chemical energy then becomes something more like phase-change; and if there is net gain due to some asymmetry, then it must be due to ZPE, no? from wiki : Hydrogen deuterium exchange (also called H-D or H/D exchange) is a chemical reaction in which a covalently bonded hydrogen atom is replaced by a deuterium atom, or vice versa. Jones, I didn't have a subscription for the second link and the first was only an Amazon book ad which was exorbitant - $259 but it did highlight something in the bullets for the ad Differences between H-bond and van der Waals interactions from one side and covalent bonds from the other This is similar to my own Theory that a concentrated change in casimir force/ catalytic action can disassociate a covalent bond. The Van der Walls force is a lesser cousin to Casimir force and is being depicted as an opposing force to a covalent bonding. I assume the double arrow between the H and D indicates this becomes a reversible reaction and the exchanges of h2 for d1 continue back and forth depending on the catalytic value. This is similar to my fractional ( h2 - h1 +h1) where changes in fractional value /casimir force perform the same as Grabowski proposes for Van der Walls force. His may be an easier chemical path but I suspect any of these ashless / reversible / oscillating paths will require insulation from lesser one-way paths such as oxygen or the catalytic material itself forming hydrides. If you could provide a synopsis of the Grabowski theory it would be appreciated. Best Regards Fran
Re: [Vo]:Somewhat OFF TOPIC Merchants of Doubt
Kyle Mcallister wrote: it is suggested a UHF carrier could be detected at a range of 0.3 ly. If that is true, a passing probe, eavesdropping on nearby solar-type stars could get an idea that there's something near the Sun. I read a paper some time ago, by Jill Tarter I think, that suggested that radar broadcasts (Arecibo transmissions, ICBM early warning radar) could be detected out to a distance of some light-years. Hmmm . . . What about up-links to geosynchronous TV and telcom satellites. Or, if a civilization expands beyond one planet (but not interstellar), what about interplanetary communications? I think the best prospect would be to eavesdrop on an interstellar civilization. The fact that no intelligible broadcast could be detected from a distance of more than ~1/3 light-year is interesting; there could be something as close as Alpha Centauri, and we might never know about it. Goodness! That's sobering. That's assuming they have approximately the same technology as we do. It puts CETI in perspective; we have not checked much yet. - Jed
Re: [Vo]:Somewhat OFF TOPIC Merchants of Doubt
--- On Sat, 7/17/10, mix...@bigpond.com mix...@bigpond.com wrote: To put this in perspective, in order to pick up 1 micro-Watt in total from our 10 MW transmitter, the dish would have to have a radius of 6 million km. BTW the *closest* star to Sol is 4 ly away, not one. 1uW is a lot of power, at least to a radio receiver. I'm pretty sure my homebrew regen set will beat this. My flame radio would probably detect it as well, even as badly received as that project was. If Wikipedia is to be believed, and several other places, including NASA themselves confirm it, the Galileo probe's 20W transmitter produced a signal which, upon reaching the DSN dish, had a power of about 1x10^-21W. The dynamics are far different from broadcast TV, of course, but the situation isn't so terribly bad for listening. Really, I wouldn't expect to find intelligent life around Alpha Centauri. The dynamics of the system are somewhat of a mess. I think we need to look a little further away. Beta CVn is probably one of the most interesting, and not too far away by cosmic standards. Zeta Tucanae, 18 Scorpii could be candidates. I don't know if any of these were recently determined to be spectroscopic binaries. Of course this could be narrowing things too much. M-type stars are the most common, and if we assume a life system using ammonia or some other cryofluid as a thalassogen, things are more interesting. Going a little more off topic, Stephen Gillett's book World Building gives some alternative possible biosystems. He's a little too pessimistic as far as technology goes. For instance, the world he calls Clorox has an atmosphere loaded with free chlorine gas. The suggestion that a lack of fire, and rapid corrosion of steel (the steel would rapidly corrode, and you couldn't smelt it in the first place) would stymie technological development seems sort of short sighted given intelligence. Intelligence finds a way, I believe. Hell, simply coating the transformer steel in rubber or plastic (maybe on a chlorine world they have PVC trees) would stop the corrosion. The challenges presented to the inhabitants of that world might actually spur development and innovation. --Kyle
Re: [Vo]:Somewhat OFF TOPIC Merchants of Doubt
--- On Sun, 7/18/10, mix...@bigpond.com mix...@bigpond.com wrote: I seem to recall that measurements on some supernova indicated that the neutrino burst and the x-rays arrived at the same time. IOW neutrinos don't travel faster than light. (Only tachyons do that ;^) On the one hand... In my defense, I was just suggesting neutrinos as an alternative, mainly that they could penetrate just about anything without being significantly attenuated. I didn't mean to sound as if I was suggesting that they go FTL. On the other hand... the electron-neutrino does some silly things. http://www.npl.washington.edu/AV/altvw54.html Yeah, it's old. It's still possible. Forward had some things to say about the electron neutrino as well. On the tail... there's a funny kink in the cosmic ray spectrum. http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/9904290 http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-ph/0009040 Might be that this will all come to nothing. But if the particle zookeepers can keep screaming that the Higgs is the messiah, I reckon I can have some fun too. ;- --Kyle
Re: [Vo]:Somewhat OFF TOPIC Merchants of Doubt
--- On Mon, 7/19/10, Jed Rothwell jedrothw...@gmail.com wrote: Hmmm . . . What about up-links to geosynchronous TV and telcom satellites. Or, if a civilization expands beyond one planet (but not interstellar), what about interplanetary communications? I don't have any data on hand about those systems, but it'd be interesting to look into. The satellite broadcasts themselves are going to be aimed down here, so those originating in space (minus something which might bounce off the atmosphere) wouldn't likely factor in. Whatever we send up to them, might be a different matter. The Voyager probes with 22W transmitters can reach here from 40 AU. I wonder how much further the Earth transmissions TO them can reach out to? I think the best prospect would be to eavesdrop on an interstellar civilization. Might be, but given that our communications technologies are becoming more compressed and efficient, we might not know what we're listening to. For instance, I recently constructed a vacuum tube radio from scratch. Coils let it cover everything from LW to SW. There are plenty of data transmissions on the SW bands which are barely understandable. In the higher frequencies, where even neater tricks can be done, the situation gets more interesting. If we eavesdrop, the best me might get is a brief flash of 'some noise' which looks tantalizingly like an artificial broadcast, but never repeats. There have been hundreds of these, the most famous being the '77 WOW signal that the Big Ear picked up. I think it would be fascinating if it turned out that the '77 signal was something artificial, maybe a burst transmission of planetary data that a probe had gathered. Maybe it was their version of Neil Armstrong, setting foot on a new world. (I still can't get over the fact that they bulldozed the Big Ear to make a golf course. Apologies to Bluto Blutarsky, but... They took the scope! The whole f*g scope!!!) ... And again, this all assumes 'they' are using radio. The fact that no intelligible broadcast could be detected from a distance of more than ~1/3 light-year is interesting; there could be something as close as Alpha Centauri, and we might never know about it. Goodness! That's sobering. That's assuming they have approximately the same technology as we do. It puts CETI in perspective; we have not checked much yet. - Jed I'm working out some simple, 'crunchy' calculations on how they might fare with a bigger receiver aperture. It does make one think. The galaxy has 400 billion suns, and we can't even detect technology around the nearest one, even if it is there. In some ways, it seems a little scary. In other ways, it's sort of comforting to be able to go outside, look up, and know that there are still plenty of places for the stellar cartographers to write, Here be dragons. What can I say, I love the unknown. --Kyle
Re: [Vo]:Somewhat OFF TOPIC Merchants of Doubt
V, From http://www.faqs.org/faqs/astronomy/faq/part6/section-12.html I did some calculations (assumes I did the arithmetic right) for a dish with an aperture of 10,000 meters. Such a structure could be conceivably constructed in space, using either one massive construct, or arrays of smaller ones linked together. I don't know if there would be a detriment in using multiple ones or not, so lets just assume our aliens are using a single, huge dish with an efficiency of 50%, as per the paper, and we'll leave the SNR at 25 as well. FM radio reaches out to about 0.008 ly. No one's listening to Canned Heat or Johnny Cash. UHF picture reaches 0.001 ly. I Love Lucy and Welcome Back Kotter are out. UHF carrier reaches 10.06 ly. Oh sh Assuming technology has progressed farther than our own (not an unlikely assumption if our aliens have the space program necessary to build a 10km diameter radiotelescope in deep space), someone could easily be listening to us from Tau Ceti. They might not know what we're saying, or who we are, but they could get the hint that there is a technological civilization somewhere around that dim yellow star in their sky. If they are curious enough, maybe they would come by and see us some time. --Kyle
Re: [Vo]:Somewhat OFF TOPIC Merchants of Doubt
In reply to Terry Blanton's message of Mon, 19 Jul 2010 19:53:30 -0400: Hi, From further down in the same article:- However, Aleksei Aksimentiev of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is sceptical that quantum effects are the sole reason for the helical structure. He points out that the way the helical structure shields the hydrophobic bases from water inside a cell is already considered a viable explanation for DNA's shape. ...as I said, modern myths. On Sun, Jul 18, 2010 at 10:23 PM, mix...@bigpond.com wrote: ...two modern myths. ;) Spiraling into control: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20727694.100-quantum-entanglement-holds-together-lifes-blueprint.html http://snipurl.com/zlv2y snip When the researchers analysed the DNA without its helical structure, they found that the electron clouds were not entangled. But when they incorporated DNA's helical structure into the model, they saw that the electron clouds of each base pair became entangled with those of its neighbours (arxiv.org/abs/1006.4053v1). If you didn't have entanglement, then DNA would have a simple flat structure, and you would never get the twist that seems to be important to the functioning of DNA, says team member Vlatko Vedral of the University of Oxford. more T Regards, Robin van Spaandonk http://rvanspaa.freehostia.com/Project.html
Re: [Vo]:Somewhat OFF TOPIC Merchants of Doubt
In reply to Kyle Mcallister's message of Mon, 19 Jul 2010 17:07:03 -0700 (PDT): Hi, [snip] it is suggested a UHF carrier could be detected at a range of 0.3 ly. 0.3 ly is effectively next door. In order to be that close, it would have to have been deliberately sent to our solar system. If they are going to send one here deliberately, then they might as well go all the way, and come into the solar system, In which case they will pick up quite a bit more. However:- 1) They have to know to come to this system in the first place. 2) If such a probe were not capable of FTL travel, then there is a good chance that it would break down before it got here, depending on travel time. 3) If they have FTL travel capability, then they have no need of intercepting radio/tv anyway. If that is true, a passing probe, eavesdropping on nearby solar-type stars could get an idea that there's something near the Sun. I read a paper some time ago, by Jill Tarter I think, that suggested that radar broadcasts (Arecibo transmissions, ICBM early warning radar) could be detected out to a distance of some light-years. The fact that no intelligible broadcast could be detected from a distance of more than ~1/3 light-year is interesting; there could be something as close as Alpha Centauri, and we might never know about it. Indeed. Regards, Robin van Spaandonk http://rvanspaa.freehostia.com/Project.html
