[Vo]: Re: x-rays from TC capacitors?!!!
Interesting, but surely if the vacuum thus created was significant your Al foil would be sucked in until no space remains between it and the glass? Michel - Original Message - From: William Beaty [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: vortex-l@eskimo.com Sent: Monday, November 27, 2006 7:39 AM Subject: [Vo]: x-rays from TC capacitors?!!! I stumbled across an odd idea. If a home-built stacked-plate capacitor is operated with high-volt pulses, then the thin air-film trapped between the foils and the dielectric sheets will glow violet. (I verified this idea using a quickie test device made from a thin glass bowl, foil on the bottom, and salt-water on the top. Sure enough, under pulsed HV drive there's a purple glow shining from the foil surface under the glass.) Ah, but we know that plasma leads to pumping: both from ion pump effects where gas molecules embed into metal surfaces, and also from N2 turning into metal nitrides, and O2 turning into metal oxides. (Plasma does chemistry.) So I seal up the edges of the foil on the glass/saltwater cap, then run it for awhile. Sure enough, the purple glow from between the foil and glass changes color after a few minutes. Becomes greyish. Maybe even greenish. I place it on the large ion chamber of a GM counter, but don't detect any rise above background count. I could keep running it for lots more minutes, but I'd burn down the contacts of my little vacuum tester TC. So... any high-voltage pulse capacitor which is sealed but which isn't vacuum-impregnated with oil is going to have plasma-filled air films, and the internal pressure is going to drop over time. And in theory, over time these air layers might pump down to just below non-glowing vacuum threshold, and then start emitting soft x-rays! What to do? The whole problem might be a crackpot idea, eh? It's all speculation (except for my glass/saltwater test.) Suggestion: paint the outside of your home-built well-sealed Tesla coil stacked-plate capacitors with ZnS glow-in-dark paint. Run them in a darkened room separate from the bright streamers and spark gap. Or instead make an xray alarm: a solar cell as sensor, painted with fluorescent paint and embedded in black epoxy or silicone. First one to detect a dim green glow wins a prize: slightly irradiated gonads! :) If the effect ever proves real, then does it mean we can replace the vacuum tube in the dentist office with a bunch of aluminum foil layers with spontaneously-appearing vacuum inside? (And would a cylindrically wrapped capacitor act as a line-source of x-rays?) More pure speculation: if capacitors ever do emit x-rays, then it's one more source of x-rays that Nikola with his fluorescent screens and glass photographers plates might have stumbled upon. Yes, he probably did find x-rays when operating his carbon button lamps. But what if he hadn't? Imagine how confusing it might have been if he'd tracked down the capacitor as the source of a new kind of radiation, only to later hear from Roentgen that vacuum tubes also produce it. ((( ( ((o)) ) ))) William J. Beaty Research Engineer beaty chem.washington.edu UW Chem Dept, Bagley Hall RM74 billb eskimo.com Box 351700, Seattle, WA 98195-1700 ph425-222-5066http//staff.washington.edu/wbeaty/
Re: [Vo]: [OT] Google Maps Easter Eggs
You could be right Stephen but don't you agree the outline of the blimp looks quite unnatural? Much worse than ordinary image compression artefacts I would say. Congratulations for your web site BTW! Michel - Original Message - From: Stephen A. Lawrence [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: vortex-l@eskimo.com Sent: Tuesday, November 28, 2006 2:20 AM Subject: Re: [Vo]: [OT] Google Maps Easter Eggs Terry Blanton wrote: Vorts, While spying on my neighbors about a mile away, Tournament Players Club, aka Sugarloaf Country Club, I came across this image: http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8z=17ll=34.010799,-84.115362spn=0.004562,0. 007231t=kom=1 http://tinyurl.com/wclkj Now, if that is a dirigible, where's the shadow? Does Google do this for fun? Or is it a UFO? I don't think it's faked. It looks like an ad blimp, and I see what looks like a definite shadow. First, look at the tree line along the highway, and look at the shadows from the trees. They're falling diagonally, to the upper left of each tree; you can see them like tooth marks on the highway. Now, at max zoom, draw a line from the _tail_ of the blimp in the same direction. Look at the embankment by the side of the highway, just above and to the left of the blimp. There's a dark area there, which has a bulge at the end, just like the blimp's tail, just about where the shadow might fall if the blimp is flying low. That dark area has no business being there, unless it's a shadow -- but note that its edges are fuzzier than the tree shadows, both because the blimp is a lot higher than the trees (and the edges spread at about a 1/2 degree angle, of course), and because it's falling on rough ground with lots of vegetation. Now, trace the body of the blimp in the shadow, which goes down and to the left. First, the shadow climbs the embankment, faster than you might expect, because the embankment is sloped. Second, it gets lost in the line of trees next to the highway, which are somewhat dark. Finally, the nose of the shadow apparently just barely misses getting onto the pavement -- or perhaps it runs over a bit, but is superimposed on one of the tree shadows. I've outlined the area in which I think the shadow has fallen, here (I drew the outline a bit outside the area of the shadow): http://www.physicsinsights.org/images/blimp-shadow-1.png Again, since the shadow is falling on a hillside, it's not parallel to the (horizontal) blimp. Terry
Re: [Vo]: Re: Interesting News About Steorn
Indeed it does. Hi Terry, for another opinion Stephen could have a look at the controversy you and I had about this some time ago, I had found what looked very much like a large error in input current measurement by analysing the Mosfet's voltage waveform and applying Ohm's low to it knowing it's ON resistance (search for Sprain in the list archive). Michel - Original Message - From: Terry Blanton [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: vortex-l@eskimo.com Sent: Tuesday, November 28, 2006 1:21 AM Subject: Re: [Vo]: Re: Interesting News About Steorn On 11/27/06, Stephen A. Lawrence [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: An example might be an electric motor which produced more mechanical energy than the electrical energy it consumed -- to close the loop you need to convert the mechanical energy back into electrical energy, which introduces losses which may eat up your OU. The result would be something that was in reality an amazing breakthrough, but which still wouldn't convince Bob Parks. (Does this describe the Sprain motor? I haven't been following that one.) Indeed it does. The Sprain Magmo uses a spiral magnetic gradient to produce torque. An electromagnet is used to kick the rotor past the sticky spot. The energy consumed by the electromagnet is less than the mechanical energy produced by the gradient. The problem with self running has been the waveform of the energy produced by the PM generator. The voltage from the permanent mag gen ramps from 13 V to 28 V. 20 V is required to fire the EM. The min V is produced after the firing (when the torque is at a minimum). I have tried trigger circuits which don't draw from the magmo torque until the V exceeds 20 V; but, we have had no success since this eliminates a large part of the energy produced. The gradient of the field of the present configuration is 0.8 G per degree. We have a new magnet which will produce a gradient of 20 G per degree. We lack the enthusiasm to pursue a self-runner when you know that the new mag will ship soon. Now our limiting factor seems to be the inductance of the EM. The new EM weighs 45 lbs but only doubles the inductance. We will not achieve the theorized 4500 RPM; but, we will far exceed the current 90 RPM. I have no doubts this new mag will let us self-run. Stay tuned. Terry
Re: [Vo]: [OT] Google Maps Easter Eggs
Michel Jullian wrote: You could be right Stephen but don't you agree the outline of the blimp looks quite unnatural? Much worse than ordinary image compression artefacts I would say. Oh man. I really looked at the blimp this time, and you're right -- at high mag, it looks like the lower edge of the blimp is stuck to a jagged strip of background that doesn't match what it's flying over. Somebody at Google must have been bored. Looks like they cut it out of someplace else and weren't too careful about getting the cut line right up against the blimp. Brother... Come to think of it, maybe we should check the length. If this is a satellite photo then the blimp and the ground can be taken to be in the same plane, and the length of the blimp should be measurable by comparison with stuff on the ground. If the blimp was snipped from a different photo, OTOH, it may look too big or too small. With good old Gimp, I measure the blimp as 196 pixels, and one side of the divided highway as 29 pixels. If the lanes are 12 feet wide, so one pair of lanes is 24 feet wide, then the blimp is 162 feet long. A common Goodyear blimp, according to one website, is 130 feet long. According to another site, the largest blimp flying in the U.S. today is over 200 feet long. So, 162 feet is plausible for the length, and that test is inconclusive... Congratulations for your web site BTW! Michel
[Vo]: BioMimicry, the old way
Subject: Biomimicry, the old way... Older than the hills, awkshally ... as in billion-year old. We may owe the present green Earth and abundant fresh air to an ancient global deep-freeze ... for which [previously unlikely] scenario, snowball earth, there is now accumulating evidence - i.e. that the entire planet was once covered in thick sheets of ice, billions of years ago. There was so-called anaerobic life prior to this, but that is all. The air contained little or no oxygen. That is the premise of expanding to the limit - a prescient article in NewScientist [28 Nov '06] the magazine which SciAm ought-to-be trying to mimic. Real science based on 'taking a risk' with some degree of educated-speculation, instead of real-fluff based on total mainstream obeisance. End of the obligatory SciAm mini-rant. OK, the evolution of oxygen-based photosynthesis has been hard to explain in the past, without speculative thinking - since oxygen is deadly to the very primitive life which would first want to use it ... and Mother nature knows very well that you don't piss in the same pot you eat out of ... ...whereas we had formerly suspected that using sunlight to free electrons from sulfur, calcium and iron compounds in a terrestrial but oxygen-free environment is possible. But not if the whole earth is totally glaciated. That terrestrial kind of oxy-genesis could not have happened first IF the entire planet had been ice-covered, as it now seems that it was. Consequently, we need to add another layer of complication. See ... until fairly recently ... we were totally unaware of this snow-ball earth situation and like most new findings - it raised more problems than it solved. But oxygen somehow appeared anyway, from putative snowball-earth, as it melted. How did this transpire and how did organisms evolve oxygen tolerance? Short answer: HOOH. Ultraviolet light from the Sun produces hydrogen peroxide when it hits water molecules. Always - even nowadays. So how come the oceans aren't full of peroxide? Turns out, sunlight at the same time destroys almost all the peroxide as it forms, so that very little accumulates - ergo, substantial O2 cannot be released from water this way. The situation is similar with a peroxide catalyst. It is a constant see-saw recycling process of: H2O -- HOOH ... in the unfrozen ocean [or the lab] and H2O is far more stable to UV and everything else, but HOOH is always there, especially if some extra O2 is available. However, when UV light penetrates through a few meters of semi-transparent glacier, small amounts of peroxide will form a certain depth and can be shielded by the glacial ice for a long enough time to disperse into the layers below and then the oceans below, without being immediately destroyed, if that glacier is in the process of melting. Then ... as the glacier thaws, any trapped hydronium/hydrogen, left in it after the peroxide formed, is dispersed, while at the same time, the HOOH in the ocean also gets destroyed, releasing oxygen but too late to recombine with the H2 and we have ... Voila: instant breathable atmosphere. Ok it might take snow-ball earth a few tens of million years to pull this off, but fresh air is worth every second. HOOH has been spotted on Jupiter's icy moon Europa, and that may be one of the reasons that this new theory is taking hold. The surface of Europa is shielded by a terrestrial ice sheet and would have been very similar on a primitive Earth which lacked an oxygen-rich atmosphere, and a protective ozone layer - which layer, BTW, has all but disappeared over the polar regions. BTW, this moon is the best candidate in the solar system for life (unless Mars really has a remnant) OK enough speculation on ancient history: snowball earth and a breath of fresh air. What Vortexians want to know: is there a free-energy angle in all of this? Yup, or at least there could be if only in the fertile imagination of terraforming futurists. Antarctica. Will it be a powerhouse of future energy resources? Maybe. Here is how it could happen: once we get to the level of robotics and primitive AI (since it is pretty hard to entice many humans to work down there, digging out a glacier). Look for this level of robotic sophistication, at mass-produced cost - within a decade. Imagine a workforce of 100,000 small mass-produced crawler robots, kinda like the ones which were used to investigate the shafts in the Egyptian Pyramids - yet each equipped with a laser, solar cells and a Son-of-X-box brain. You start out with a big tunnel dug into a glacier near its flow-path into the ocean - where the factory ship is anchored ... which glacier is the size of Texas, and then you unleash the robots. They are programmed like little moles to begin forming an intricate web of tunnels and shafts, using the laser to cut out cylinders of ice at just the correct depth below the icy surface - maybe
[VO]:Re: BioMimicry, the old way
BlankJones wrote.. Real science based on 'taking a risk' with some degree of educated-speculation, instead of real-fluff based on total mainstream obeisance. Consequently, we need to add another layer of complication. See ... until fairly recently ... we were totally unaware of this snow-ball earth situation and like most new findings - it raised more problems than it solved. But oxygen somehow appeared anyway, from putative snowball-earth, as it melted. How did this transpire and how did organisms evolve oxygen tolerance? Short answer: HOOH. Howdy Jones, Where would we be without a after thankgiving portion of delicious grits as served by the Jones???Obeisance is right out of his vocabulary grin. My ole pal, the geologist and I could never agree on anything including the earth was round or flat. I considered the premise the earth was once completely sheathed in an ice cover so massive that the pressure increased the heat of the core. Why so? Assuming it is now in a near fluid state... would it have to been rather non-elastic in order for the mass to form the ball ?? Hmmm. Are earthquakes recent events in time and are they evidence of this massive release of weight represented by melting of the ice sheath? Mix hydrogen peroxide and oxone... what is the reaction from these two oxidants? Richard Blank Bkgrd.gif Description: GIF image
Re: [Vo]: BioMimicry, the old way
first off, i first heard the theory that earth spent time as an iceball after the molten slagball before the dirt ball stage AGES ago. its an accepted geologic theory that said icing over is what broke down early rock into the first sand and dirt to provide a base for life as the ice melted. also, on the piss in its own pot bit. umm, yeast, when working anerobically, make alchohol. a poison to them. animals make co2, something they cant use. mammals produce large amounts of nitrogen and iron compounds. (ammonia, urea, and bile) why WOULDNT have early aneaorbic life had oxygen as a waste product? chlorophyl based plants do, and the compounds involved in photosynthesis have been shown to occur naturally under certain conditions. On 11/28/06, Jones Beene [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Subject: Biomimicry, the old way... Older than the hills, awkshally ... as in billion-year old. We may owe the present green Earth and abundant fresh air to an ancient global deep-freeze ... for which [previously unlikely] scenario, snowball earth, there is now accumulating evidence - i.e. that the entire planet was once covered in thick sheets of ice, billions of years ago. There was so-called anaerobic life prior to this, but that is all. The air contained little or no oxygen. That is the premise of expanding to the limit - a prescient article in NewScientist [28 Nov '06] the magazine which SciAm ought-to-be trying to mimic. Real science based on 'taking a risk' with some degree of educated-speculation, instead of real-fluff based on total mainstream obeisance. End of the obligatory SciAm mini-rant. OK, the evolution of oxygen-based photosynthesis has been hard to explain in the past, without speculative thinking - since oxygen is deadly to the very primitive life which would first want to use it ... and Mother nature knows very well that you don't piss in the same pot you eat out of ... ...whereas we had formerly suspected that using sunlight to free electrons from sulfur, calcium and iron compounds in a terrestrial but oxygen-free environment is possible. But not if the whole earth is totally glaciated. That terrestrial kind of oxy-genesis could not have happened first IF the entire planet had been ice-covered, as it now seems that it was. Consequently, we need to add another layer of complication. See ... until fairly recently ... we were totally unaware of this snow-ball earth situation and like most new findings - it raised more problems than it solved. But oxygen somehow appeared anyway, from putative snowball-earth, as it melted. How did this transpire and how did organisms evolve oxygen tolerance? Short answer: HOOH. Ultraviolet light from the Sun produces hydrogen peroxide when it hits water molecules. Always - even nowadays. So how come the oceans aren't full of peroxide? Turns out, sunlight at the same time destroys almost all the peroxide as it forms, so that very little accumulates - ergo, substantial O2 cannot be released from water this way. The situation is similar with a peroxide catalyst. It is a constant see-saw recycling process of: H2O -- HOOH ... in the unfrozen ocean [or the lab] and H2O is far more stable to UV and everything else, but HOOH is always there, especially if some extra O2 is available. However, when UV light penetrates through a few meters of semi-transparent glacier, small amounts of peroxide will form a certain depth and can be shielded by the glacial ice for a long enough time to disperse into the layers below and then the oceans below, without being immediately destroyed, if that glacier is in the process of melting. Then ... as the glacier thaws, any trapped hydronium/hydrogen, left in it after the peroxide formed, is dispersed, while at the same time, the HOOH in the ocean also gets destroyed, releasing oxygen but too late to recombine with the H2 and we have ... Voila: instant breathable atmosphere. Ok it might take snow-ball earth a few tens of million years to pull this off, but fresh air is worth every second. HOOH has been spotted on Jupiter's icy moon Europa, and that may be one of the reasons that this new theory is taking hold. The surface of Europa is shielded by a terrestrial ice sheet and would have been very similar on a primitive Earth which lacked an oxygen-rich atmosphere, and a protective ozone layer - which layer, BTW, has all but disappeared over the polar regions. BTW, this moon is the best candidate in the solar system for life (unless Mars really has a remnant) OK enough speculation on ancient history: snowball earth and a breath of fresh air. What Vortexians want to know: is there a free-energy angle in all of this? Yup, or at least there could be if only in the fertile imagination of terraforming futurists. Antarctica. Will it be a powerhouse of future energy resources? Maybe. Here is how it could happen: once we get to the level of robotics and primitive AI (since it is pretty hard to entice many humans to work down there, digging out
Re: [VO]:Re: BioMimicry, the old way
actually, the more elastic something is, the more it forms a ball under its own gravity as well as surface tension. (ie, fluids, even if small enough to not have gravity of their own, will still pull into a sphere in zero g from surface tension. its the smallest volume to surface area ratio, smallest amount of energy required to keep the shape. something thats too too solid wont spherize. (its why certain orbiting bodies are shphereoid that shoundt be for their mass, they are actually collections of small rocks and dust, not solid rock. On 11/28/06, RC Macaulay [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Jones wrote.. Real science based on 'taking a risk' with some degree of educated-speculation, instead of real-fluff based on total mainstream obeisance. Consequently, we need to add another layer of complication. See ... until fairly recently ... we were totally unaware of this snow-ball earth situation and like most new findings - it raised more problems than it solved. But oxygen somehow appeared anyway, from putative snowball-earth, as it melted. How did this transpire and how did organisms evolve oxygen tolerance? Short answer: HOOH. Howdy Jones, Where would we be without a after thankgiving portion of delicious grits as served by the Jones???Obeisance is right out of his vocabulary grin. My ole pal, the geologist and I could never agree on anything including the earth was round or flat. I considered the premise the earth was once completely sheathed in an ice cover so massive that the pressure increased the heat of the core. Why so? Assuming it is now in a near fluid state... would it have to been rather non-elastic in order for the mass to form the ball ?? Hmmm. Are earthquakes recent events in time and are they evidence of this massive release of weight represented by melting of the ice sheath? Mix hydrogen peroxide and oxone... what is the reaction from these two oxidants? Richard -- That which yields isn't always weak.
Re: [Vo]: BioMimicry, the old way
- Original Message - From: leaking pen why WOULDNT have early aneaorbic life had oxygen as a waste product? pretty simple really -- they cannot live on the surface of ice. The ice surface, then as now, is inhospitable to chlorophyl based plants or algae and the ice was so thick that the tiny amounds of O2 which they did make was 'de minimis.' chlorophyl based plants do, and the compounds involved in photosynthesis have been shown to occur naturally under certain conditions. Again, on an ice covered planet there is simply no place for chlorophyll based plants or single celled organisms to flourish, so the O2 content of air was small until the glaciers started to melt and the HOOH process ensued. Once there was open ocean, then chlorophyll based life could thrive, but not before that time - nada. Perhaps Richard is correct that the reason the ice began to melt at all was related the thermodynamics of a hot core. That core could have been heated-up by several possible methods - including the possibility that earth had a small second moon ... at one time.
Re: [Vo]: BioMimicry, the old way
ohh, and also, at such low temps, with a low atmosphere pressure, two of the main items released from volcanoes, hs gas and solid so, small amounts of hs gas would melt snow and become aqueous. HS (aq) and so tends to seperate out the so, which releases oxygen. On 11/28/06, Jones Beene [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: - Original Message - From: leaking pen why WOULDNT have early aneaorbic life had oxygen as a waste product? pretty simple really -- they cannot live on the surface of ice. The ice surface, then as now, is inhospitable to chlorophyl based plants or algae and the ice was so thick that the tiny amounds of O2 which they did make was 'de minimis.' chlorophyl based plants do, and the compounds involved in photosynthesis have been shown to occur naturally under certain conditions. Again, on an ice covered planet there is simply no place for chlorophyll based plants or single celled organisms to flourish, so the O2 content of air was small until the glaciers started to melt and the HOOH process ensued. Once there was open ocean, then chlorophyll based life could thrive, but not before that time - nada. Perhaps Richard is correct that the reason the ice began to melt at all was related the thermodynamics of a hot core. That core could have been heated-up by several possible methods - including the possibility that earth had a small second moon ... at one time. -- That which yields isn't always weak.
Re: [Vo]: BioMimicry, the old way
i take it youve never heard of watermellon snow? http://waynesword.palomar.edu/plaug98.htm On 11/28/06, Jones Beene [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: - Original Message - From: leaking pen why WOULDNT have early aneaorbic life had oxygen as a waste product? pretty simple really -- they cannot live on the surface of ice. The ice surface, then as now, is inhospitable to chlorophyl based plants or algae and the ice was so thick that the tiny amounds of O2 which they did make was 'de minimis.' chlorophyl based plants do, and the compounds involved in photosynthesis have been shown to occur naturally under certain conditions. Again, on an ice covered planet there is simply no place for chlorophyll based plants or single celled organisms to flourish, so the O2 content of air was small until the glaciers started to melt and the HOOH process ensued. Once there was open ocean, then chlorophyll based life could thrive, but not before that time - nada. Perhaps Richard is correct that the reason the ice began to melt at all was related the thermodynamics of a hot core. That core could have been heated-up by several possible methods - including the possibility that earth had a small second moon ... at one time. -- That which yields isn't always weak.
Re: [Vo]: BioMimicry, the old way
- Original Message - From: leaking pen [EMAIL PROTECTED] i take it youve never heard of watermellon snow? http://waynesword.palomar.edu/plaug98.htm Ha! Garth told me that the closest Mike Myers ever got to science was learning not to eat the yellow variety ...
[Vo]: Fw: [BOBPARKS-WHATSNEW] What's New Friday November 24, 2006
-Forwarded Message- From: What's New [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Nov 28, 2006 12:11 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [BOBPARKS-WHATSNEW] What's New Friday November 24, 2006 WHAT'S NEW Robert L. Park Friday, 24 Nov 06 Washington, DC 1. BEYOND BELIEF: SCIENCE, RELIGION, REASON AND SURVIVAL. Sponsored by The Science Network, the Beyond Belief forum was held earlier this month at the Salk Institute. As described by George Johnson in the Tuesday NY Times, the meeting came to resemble the founding convention for a political party built on a single plank: in a world dangerously charged with ideology, science needs to take on an evangelical role, vying with religion as teller of the greatest story ever told. And what a story it is turning out to be! Yet, while the world is quick to embrace the benefits of science, people the world over cling to medieval superstitions and defend such beliefs as a virtue. Scientists are inclined to meekly declare their respect for superstitions even while proving them to be utter nonsense. That may change. In his recent best-seller, The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins, a participant in Beyond Belief, observes that God is a scientific hypothesis, but there is no evidence to support the hypothesis. Beyond Belief can be viewed at http://beyondbelief2006.org . 2. SPACE STATION: MISSION ACCOMPLISHED, A BIT BEHIND SCHEDULE. Things are never easy on the ISS: first there was an overheating space suit, then an exterior hatch stuck and cosmonaut Mikhail Tyurin's tether got in the way. But finally he got in position to address the ball with American astronaut Michael Lopez-Alegria holding on to him. Meanwhile, Moscow mission control deliberated on how to position the ball. It's me that's supposed to be positioned properly, Tyurin snapped. At last, using a gold- plated 6-iron, Tyurin took his swing. He shanked it, according to The Moscow Times.com. No matter, I can see it moving away from us, Tyurin exulted. Element 21, a Toronto golf company, is paying the Russian Federal Space Agency an undisclosed amount for the golf stunt to promote its new golf club. That should silence the critics who complain that the ISS has no mission. 3. MARS: THE MARS GLOBAL EXPLORER HAS FINALLY FALLEN SILENT. Launched ten years ago, the durable space craft reached Mars orbit a year later. It has mapped the Martian surface, recorded seasonal changes, and gathered evidence of water in Mar's past. Today, the US has three orbiters and two surface rovers, and the European Space Agency has an orbiter, the Mars Express. Still, the Global Explorer was collecting valuable climate data. A disabled solar panel is thought to be the problem. Efforts to reestablish contact are given little chance. Construction, launch and operating costs over its long life totaled $242M, or about one-tenth the cost of a single shuttle mission to the ISS. It was, however, completely unable to hit a golf ball. 4. EMF: WIRELESS COMPUTER NETWORKS ARE THE LATEST CULPRIT. Health complaint? Could be wi-fi according to Wednesday's Evening Standard in the UK. Or you could just be neurotic. THE UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND. Opinions are the author's and not necessarily shared by the University of Maryland, but they should be. --- Archives of What's New can be found at http://www.bobpark.org What's New is moving to a different listserver and our subscription process has changed. To change your subscription status please visit this link: http://listserv.umd.edu/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=bobparks-whatsnewA=1
Re: [Vo]: Hidden Wealth
In reply to Jones Beene's message of Mon, 27 Nov 2006 16:11:28 -0800 (PST): Hi, --- Robin I think the explanation for the high concentration can in this case be found in the mundane... No, no - I should have been clearer - it is not that 'local' concentration which is the precise anomaly in question. But yes there is the mundane explanation for the salt lake also. The 18O/16O ratio in the interstellar region (and presumably the 'normal' ratio found at the time earth cooled) has been measured as 0.18, almost three times lower than the present ratio found in earth's oceans (~.5) and much lower than the total planetary ratio (.3)which includes CO2. (Wilson Rood 1994). The best explanation for this is that the ratio is altered in a planetary environment by some unknown mechanism vis-a-vis interstellar space. Same explanation. The 16O is produced preferentially during photosynthesis (a guess), and then when it becomes O under influence of solar radiation, it can more easily attain escape velocity and leave altogether (Boltzmann tail). Similar reasoning also applies to stars where O forms. Regards, Robin van Spaandonk http://users.bigpond.net.au/rvanspaa/ Competition provides the motivation, Cooperation provides the means.
RE: [Vo]: 1.568 x 10 -25 Farads
Thank you again Keith. The 3 db point on the proton is about 1.2 Fermi's. The max extent is about 1.4 Fermi. http://www.citebase.org/fulltext?format=application%2Fpdfidentifier=oai%3AarX iv.org%3Aphysics%2F0405118 _http://www.infim.ro/rrp/2005_57_4/17-795-799.pdf_ (http://www.infim.ro/rrp/2005_57_4/17-795-799.pdf) I don't understand where the .8 Fermi radius come from. Is it a half amplitude point? My universe is 1/2 yours because I state that the energy of a capacitor is Energy=1/2 CVV You use, energy = CVV where did the 1/2 go? I am baffled. Frank z
Re: [Vo]: Hidden Wealth
--- Robin van Spaandonk wrote: Same explanation. The 16O is produced preferentially during photosynthesis ... it can more easily attain escape velocity Then the average ratio on earth should be the same as what has escaped (0.18 %) but it is NOT and in fact is far different - that is the whole point ! The 18O/16O ratio in the interstellar region is presumably what should have been the ratio found 4.5 billion years ago on earth, and that has been measured as 0.18%, however the actual planetary ratio is nearly twice that level (0.3 %) which indicates that somehow, in the earth environment, probably in the ionosphere, substantial 16O has been converted to 18O AFTER it got here from the sun !
Re: [Vo]: Oil shale research in Israel
Kyle R. Mcallister wrote: Interesting if accurate: http://www.upi.com/Energy/view.php?StoryID=20061107-070924-5161r And the CO2phobes begin to scream in 5...4...3...2 If indeed workable, we can begin 2 things almost immediately, if played right: 1. Rapidly shut down U.S. reliance on foreign oil imports, ideally ending them altogether. 2. If it is so cheap, use the excess profits (well, some anyways, got to give the companies some incentive) to begin constructing solar facilities in the desert. This will take some pretty serious regulation, but should be done. The oil shale, if this works as well as it seems, may be our last chance to get off our collective rear ends and set up permanently renewable energy sources, while having a nice buffer of cheap, profit-making energy during the time of transition. I can see the oil companies (if not involved in the oil shale conversion process) and the envirofascists Speaking as a CO2phobe and bonafide tree-hugger I object to being called an envirofascist. Personally, I do indeed worry about stuff like clathrate burps, and get a bad feeling about anything that will delay the day when we finally reduce CO2 emissions. On the other hand, wars are bad, too, and anything that helps reduce U.S. economic dependence on the Middle East mess must be a Good Thing -- and that surely includes oil shale development. Hitting the wall without any breathing space when the oil runs out seems like a recipe for a world catastrophe, and as you point out, oil shale could give the United States the breathing room it needs to get long-term solutions in place. One nit I would pick with your post is that, looking at overall process costs, including the strip-mining and subsequent enviro repair which is likely to be involved in getting the stuff out of the ground, I'm not sure it's really going to be cheap energy. But at this stage in the game, anything that qualifies as available energy is probably just fine -- after all, we've been living pretty well with $65/bbl oil (give or take a ten-spot), which doesn't exactly qualify as cheap energy, either. (this does not include all those who are environmentalists, just the whackjobs) being the two greatest threats to doing this. --Kyle
Re: [Vo]: Oil shale research in Israel
- Original Message - From: Stephen A. Lawrence [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: vortex-l@eskimo.com Sent: Tuesday, November 28, 2006 10:31 PM Subject: Re: [Vo]: Oil shale research in Israel Speaking as a CO2phobe and bonafide tree-hugger I object to being called an envirofascist. I notice you quoted but did not reply to or perhaps notice what I wrote towards the end. I will repeat it here. (this does not include all those who are environmentalists, just the whackjobs) If you would prefer me to explain that further, I will do so. Reading your response, I don't believe that you are what I would call an envirofascist, I was mainly referring to those who stand in the way of every single slab of concrete that someone tries to pour, etc. Incidentally, I have objected to being called many things on this list, and my complaints fell on deaf ears. Try to understand my hearing loss. I just question the whole global warming business, as the way some environmentalists and groups thereof have handled the supposed problem makes it seem more a nice way to make a money and power grab than a real concern. In the 70's it was the impending ice age. Sorry, but I don't know what data to believe, who has doctored what to make it look the way they want it to look, etc. Case in point: last year, everyone screamed that we would have an even worse hurricane season this year because of global warming. This year, we had almost no hurricane season because ofglobal warming...triggering El Ninogotta love the unfalsifiable. Maybe it's real, maybe it isn't. Who can tell with the buffoons who are running the show, on both sides of the issue. Some concerns I do have are the destruction of rain forests. That is stupid, they are being sawed down for no good reason, losing who knows what new potential pharmaceuticals. Pointless destruction of a natural laboratory is ridiculous, but we never hear about that anymore, no, its all the great big evil CO2. To go a bit more out on a limb here, I have a big problem with destruction of other species which may very well be near our level of intelligence capacity. I would not mind watching a Coast Guard cutter open fire on a whaling ship. But we don't hear about these things anymore. The real environmental issues have been pushed aside by the bleeding hearts who really just want to make money and justify their existence. Hitting the wall without any breathing space when the oil runs out seems like a recipe for a world catastrophe, and as you point out, oil shale could give the United States the breathing room it needs to get long-term solutions in place. Look at it this way: if we burn oil shale derived fuels for a while longer, to give us the time and free resources to do the 'solar thing' (which I am strongly in support of, as it has almost limitless potential) we will of course add some more CO2 to the air. So fine. If we do not do this, and just let things run out and have a big crash, there will be a lot more CO2 than anyone can imagine. And NO2, various other NOx's, and a nice big cloud of radioactive iodine, polonium, uranium, plutonium, beryllium, ad nauseam ad tedium. If we have a worldwide energy collapse, it will not be a slide back into medieval times like so many scream. It will in all likelyhood be a nuclear war. But of course, we are all good enlightened 21st century people, and we've got the noble blue-helmets of the UN to keep us civilized. Take away those civilized people's lights, and see how quickly the barbarism returns. One nit I would pick with your post is that, looking at overall process costs, including the strip-mining and subsequent enviro repair which is likely to be involved in getting the stuff out of the ground, I'm not sure it's really going to be cheap energy. But at this stage in the game, anything that qualifies as available energy is probably just fine -- after all, we've been living pretty well with $65/bbl oil (give or take a ten-spot), which doesn't exactly qualify as cheap energy, either. It is also interesting, I think, that no one seems to have pointed out that there is a large available workforce for manual labor to construct solar power collectors in the desert, which we do not have to pay anything at all: convicts. That kind of paying debt to society I think is better than letting them lounge around all day doing nothing, watching TV, etc. Make them work it off. If they work extra hard, reduce their time. When they get out, give them certification in whatever they worked on during prison labor, job references, etc. Then they can get a decent job and not have to go back to a life of crime. But who would do this? The liberals won't, because you can't force those poor darlings to work! Nor will the republicans do it either, because they wouldn't make enough money off of it. Hmmm. This is becoming a vicious circle. If we have prices that are so outrageous for energy that
Re: [Vo]: BioMimicry, the old way
well, i first heard about the stuff in my dec 1987 volume of national geographics for kids, but hey On 11/28/06, Jones Beene [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: - Original Message - From: leaking pen [EMAIL PROTECTED] i take it youve never heard of watermellon snow? http://waynesword.palomar.edu/plaug98.htm Ha! Garth told me that the closest Mike Myers ever got to science was learning not to eat the yellow variety ... -- That which yields isn't always weak.
