Re: [Vo]:Room-temperature superconductors a step closer with silane
Vo, I am always amazed at how few scientists interested in a room temperature superconductor bother to check out the refereed journal articles relating to our Ultraconductors. With additional development, they will perform identically to superconductors in virtually all applications, without refrigeration. The RTS program is in the process of reviving, after the major gap in funding for high-tech firms without revenues, following the dot.com crash. Ironically, it is the progress realized with our MPI energy work which has reawakened interest. We formed RTS as a subsidiary firm when a few of the investors, who have supplied a total of $5 million in Angel capital for Ultraconductors, insisted that their funds not be used to explore magnetic energy conversion systems. Given the flip-flop, RTS will be reabsorbed into MPI in the future. There is a recent RTS Short Summary on the MPI website: magneticpowerinc.com - as well as recent updates re our energy conversion efforts. Mark OrionWorks [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: It's difficult to say whether the following line of research could eventually challenge Mark Goldes' RTS work. Sounds like these silane folks have a lot of work ahead of them. It's still an interesting read. Enjoy! http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080319-room-temperature-superconductors-a-step-closer-with-silane.html http://tinyurl.com/223bch ** SUBJECT: Room-temperature superconductors a step closer with silane By Chris Lee | Published: March 19, 2008 - 07:41PM CT Superconductivity was first observed when Onnes used liquid helium to cool mercury. It was soon found that quite a few metals would superconduct when cooled to within a few degrees of absolute zero. However, the dream of superconductivity at higher temperaturesperhaps even room temperaturehas kept researchers pursuing superconductivity. Now, new research on a class of chemicals has yielded some interesting results that may point superconductor research in a different direction: hydrogen-based compounds. Despite the attraction of low-loss superconductors, the cooling demands have limited the application of superconductivity to very high field magnets, such as those used in magnetic resonance imaging devices. In the 1980s, a new form of superconductivity that operated at liquid nitrogen temperatures got everyone pretty excited. Unfortunately, these ceramics are hard to make, harder to handle, and don't carry much current, making them even less useful than their lower-temperature brethren. What we need is a substance that has the more robust superconductivity and handling properties of metallic superconductors while retaining the high transition temperature of the ceramics. In short, a different kind of metal. The ultimate choice would be hydrogen, which, under sufficient pressure, is thought to become metallic. Calculations suggest that the structure and properties of metallic hydrogen would support superconductivity at quite a high temperature. On the other hand, this is just so much mental masturbation, because hydrogen isn't expected to become metallic until pressures of 400GPaa bit of a squeeze for current lab equipment. Nevertheless, there are several hydrogen-like alternatives, where a compound with lots of hydrogen in it is put under sufficient pressure to become a metal. This works because the presence of the heavier atomic cores act to compress the electrons surrounding the hydrogen nucleus, meaning that it is, in effect, already under a significant amount of pressure. This brings down the metallic transition pressure, putting it within the reach of lab equipment. This is exactly why researchers at Max Planck Institute for Chemistry have been putting the squeeze on silane. Silane is a silicon atom surrounded by four hydrogen atoms, making it one of two perfect candidates for hydrogen-based metals (the other is methane). They found that silane became metallic at around 50GPa, which is still a pretty substantial pressure. On cooling, the metallic silane begins to superconduct. However, the temperature at which superconductivity occurs exhibits some interesting behavior. It hangs around 5-10K for most of the pressure range (50-200GPa), but in a small range between 100-125GPa, it increases quite sharply. Although the researchers only have five data points in the range and never observed a critical temperature higher than 20K, the shape of the curve indicates that, for some small range of pressures, a very high critical temperature might be achieved. A note of caution should be injected at this point: DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME. Silane is a gas at room temperature and pressure. It is a gas that you will not find naturally occurring because it spontaneously combusts in air. In fact, one can imagine that wires and magnets based on a silane superconductor would also make wonderful pipe bombsnot something that you want in the same room as a
[Vo]:Re: Call for new Ozone process
Howdy Richard, what makes you think the classical glass tube dielectric barrier discharge ozone production process (which you are using IIRC) can be improved upon, and what's troubling about it? Michel - Original Message - From: R C Macaulay To: vortex-l@eskimo.com Sent: Thursday, March 20, 2008 3:11 PM Subject: Re: [VO]: Call for new Ozone process Thanks Esa, Obviously Tesla never built one like the patent drawing or he would have wound up with clean breath and a nitric acid bath. Richard Esa posted. DC PULSES. Nikola Tesla. Apparatus for Production of Ozone http://rpmgt.org/588177.html Howdy Vorts, As some are aware, one of our companies build water treating and wastewater disinfection chem feed inductors. We have depended on our industry to produce the remainder of the systems including the chemicals for this purpose. We are not chemists or physicists. We need systems that can produce quantities of in situozone gas at a lower cost and safer methods. There are new exotics entering the nation's water supply that we believe can be destroyed via ozone treatment but the existing processes for making ozone are both expensive and troubling. There are Vorts here that have an idea on the subject that may help our industry. Richard
Re: [Vo]:Re: Call for new Ozone process
Howdy Richard, what makes you think the classical glass tube dielectric barrier discharge ozone production process (which you are using IIRC) can be improved upon, and what's troubling about it? Michel Several things Michel. The demand is increasing, ozone gas is expensive, ozone doesn't store like chlorine so it's made on the job, it's not a universal like liquid bleach. The process is tricky so locating a ozone generator in a wastewater plant using unskilled labor can take years off your life. Richard's solution ?? ask the Vorts, of course. The collection of wisdom in VortexL exceeds even the accumulated brainpower of the Dime Box saloon's scientific advisory panel which includes several ex politicians and busted bankers. The suggestion for using a parabolic reflector for directing the UV lamp output was an example of how this group operates.. good idea. This has led to thinking of why not consider a UV lamp does not have to be shaped like a tube. hmm Our task in this grand scheme is to build a mixer that will mix ozone. We decided the solution was to take a bubble of ozone, place it on a sledge hammer and hit it with another sledge hammer.. shazzaam! instant dissolved ozone. Translated... slice water under presssure at above 125 f/s velocity and the collapse behind will sledgehammer the bubble.. velocity shear. Howdy to you too! Michal. darn if we don't have you talking like a Texan.. what will Germany and France think of you ? Richard
[Vo]:Re: Call for new Ozone process
Producing ozone using UV, why not, that's indeed what the sun does in the upper atmosphere and what makes the sky blue, how does it compare with the DBD method in terms of efficiency and cost? Is ozone a requirement, if not maybe you could produce bleach on the spot. Michel P.S. If I talked like a Texan I wouldn't understand a word of what I say ;-) Germany wouldn't think much of me, haven't been there a lot, nice green place and lots of beer though. - Original Message - From: R C Macaulay To: vortex-l@eskimo.com Sent: Friday, March 21, 2008 1:55 PM Subject: Re: [Vo]:Re: Call for new Ozone process Howdy Richard, what makes you think the classical glass tube dielectric barrier discharge ozone production process (which you are using IIRC) can be improved upon, and what's troubling about it? Michel Several things Michel. The demand is increasing, ozone gas is expensive, ozone doesn't store like chlorine so it's made on the job, it's not a universal like liquid bleach. The process is tricky so locating a ozone generator in a wastewater plant using unskilled labor can take years off your life. Richard's solution ?? ask the Vorts, of course. The collection of wisdom in VortexL exceeds even the accumulated brainpower of the Dime Box saloon's scientific advisory panel which includes several ex politicians and busted bankers. The suggestion for using a parabolic reflector for directing the UV lamp output was an example of how this group operates.. good idea. This has led to thinking of why not consider a UV lamp does not have to be shaped like a tube. hmm Our task in this grand scheme is to build a mixer that will mix ozone. We decided the solution was to take a bubble of ozone, place it on a sledge hammer and hit it with another sledge hammer.. shazzaam! instant dissolved ozone. Translated... slice water under presssure at above 125 f/s velocity and the collapse behind will sledgehammer the bubble.. velocity shear. Howdy to you too! Michal. darn if we don't have you talking like a Texan.. what will Germany and France think of you ? Richard
[Vo]:A memory of March 1989 and Arthur C. Clarke
On March 24, 1989, I picked up the Wall Street Journal and had one of the biggest shocks in my life. I read about cold fusion. I distinctly remember thinking: * If this is real, it changes everything. As a scientist remarked a few weeks later, if true it is the most important discovery since fire. * It may be a mistake, but senior professors do not usually hold a press conference to announce such extraordinary findings unless they have checked carefully and they are pretty sure they are right. I believe I understood even then that they must be talking about some sort of aneutronic fusion, which is even more astounding than fusion, and far more useful. I learned a good deal about nuclear fusion in college, informally, because my roommate was a grad student who was working on a small plasma fusion reactor. I do not have the original Wall Street Journal article handy now, and I do not recall if it mentioned the dead graduate student problem, but it was clear that this was a test tube experiment that produced heat. I knew that meant there should have been massive radiation. What ran through my mind then were the words from the prologue of Clarke's Childhood's End describing the invasion of Earth by a fleet of extraterrestrial spacecraft: This was the moment when history held its breath, and the present sheared asunder from the past as an iceberg splits from its frozen, parent cliffs, and go sailing out to sea in lonely pride. - Jed
Re: [Vo]:Re: Call for new Ozone process
For pure kill power, ozone has the right stuff, no residual and good reduction properties. Bleach must be destructed after doing it's job.The task is getting ozone in the right place immediately on generation. Like Chlorine gas.. the first 3 seconds holds the kill power. We are looking at shapes of the UV lamp for a method of surrounding the target area in creating the initial gas phase. Everybody in Germany moved to Texas in the 1820's and are still here and speak German like a native. I live in Walhalla.. that's betrween Nechanitz and Rutersville. nearby is Waldeck and Weimar.. across to road from New Ulm and Dubina , which is down the road from Praha ( oops a Czech slipped in) Not to worry, Shiner Texas has the beer plant...The first German settlement in Texas was Industry Texas.near Blieberville and Cat Spring.. Dime Box was a late bloomer town. Richard Michal sez, Producing ozone using UV, why not, that's indeed what the sun does in the upper atmosphere and what makes the sky blue, how does it compare with the DBD method in terms of efficiency and cost? Is ozone a requirement, if not maybe you could produce bleach on the spot. Michel P.S. If I talked like a Texan I wouldn't understand a word of what I say ;-) Germany wouldn't think much of me, haven't been there a lot, nice green place and lots of beer though.
[Vo]:Re: Call for new Ozone process
Jones answered, with ample supporting arguments and evidence, my question about efficiency of UV tube based methods: not efficient at all, as I had suspected. Going back to gas discharge (DBD, the classical process), it occurred to me that the best way to do it in situ was to use the water itself as a discharge surface, a quick Googling showed this has indeed been done with what seems to be good results, see http://www.center.bg.ac.yu/plasma/plasmapic/DBD.pdf , how's that Richard? Michel - Original Message - From: R C Macaulay To: vortex-l@eskimo.com Sent: Friday, March 21, 2008 3:43 PM Subject: Re: [Vo]:Re: Call for new Ozone process For pure kill power, ozone has the right stuff, no residual and good reduction properties. Bleach must be destructed after doing it's job.The task is getting ozone in the right place immediately on generation. Like Chlorine gas.. the first 3 seconds holds the kill power. We are looking at shapes of the UV lamp for a method of surrounding the target area in creating the initial gas phase. Everybody in Germany moved to Texas in the 1820's and are still here and speak German like a native. I live in Walhalla.. that's betrween Nechanitz and Rutersville. nearby is Waldeck and Weimar.. across to road from New Ulm and Dubina , which is down the road from Praha ( oops a Czech slipped in) Not to worry, Shiner Texas has the beer plant...The first German settlement in Texas was Industry Texas.near Blieberville and Cat Spring.. Dime Box was a late bloomer town. Richard Michal sez, Producing ozone using UV, why not, that's indeed what the sun does in the upper atmosphere and what makes the sky blue, how does it compare with the DBD method in terms of efficiency and cost? Is ozone a requirement, if not maybe you could produce bleach on the spot. Michel P.S. If I talked like a Texan I wouldn't understand a word of what I say ;-) Germany wouldn't think much of me, haven't been there a lot, nice green place and lots of beer though.
[Vo]:OT Germany, Texas and Paris (was Re: Call for new Ozone process)
Thanks for the historical enlightenment, I had no idea, ignorant me! Inspired by this I just googled up Paris, Texas, but it doesn't seem to have been founded by French people, in spite of their mockup Eiffel tower, too bad :) Michel - Original Message - From: R C Macaulay To: vortex-l@eskimo.com Sent: Friday, March 21, 2008 3:43 PM Subject: Re: [Vo]:Re: Call for new Ozone process ... Everybody in Germany moved to Texas in the 1820's and are still here and speak German like a native. I live in Walhalla.. that's betrween Nechanitz and Rutersville. nearby is Waldeck and Weimar.. across to road from New Ulm and Dubina , which is down the road from Praha ( oops a Czech slipped in) Not to worry, Shiner Texas has the beer plant...The first German settlement in Texas was Industry Texas.near Blieberville and Cat Spring.. Dime Box was a late bloomer town. Richard
[Vo]:Re: Call for new Ozone process
- Original Message From: Michel Jullian it occurred to me that the best way to do it in situ was to use the water itself as a discharge surface, a quick Googling showed this has indeed been done with what seems to be good results, see http://www.center.bg.ac.yu/plasma/plasmapic/DBD.pdf Merci, or mercy-me. OK- now we are getting somewhere with this international brainstorm... (i.e. lightning in a barrel ;-) What happens when you combine the above with the Kanzius/Heffner salt water and peroxide idea and the BLP-lite unstable hydrino possibility ? IOW - in looking for synergy in a hybrid design - and given that a simple cylindrical barrel or reactor, which is partly filled with salt water, and continually evacuated, so that there is a partial vacuum above the water -- ... and a cathode above the water is pulsed to provide an HV arc through the water vapor, with the water surface being the anode. ...and with an RF antenna underwater - providing some H2 (the Kanzius approach) ... ...which H2 and nascent hydrogen, as it is formed and when it gets to the surface, immediately interacts with the pulsed arc discharge, forming hydrinos with the emission of EUV ... ...and the EUV then interacts with the O2 in the water and in the vapor near the surface (as any HOOH has been forced to decay) ... ... but the whole thing is kept relatively cool (the arc is HV and low current) so that the O3 is stable with a lifetime of 10-15 minutes ... ...$64 question - will the gas being drawn off by the vacuum pump contain significant amounts of ozone? Jones
[Vo]:OT: UV and US (was: Call for new Ozone process)
Speaking of having one's head in the ozone... not that anyone has ever accused this writer of that problem ;-) In one of the great ironies of biology - the same deadly UV radiation from the sun, which causes cancer and/or creates an ozone layer and other toxicity - is also responsible for US (all humanity) in several different ways. Without the challenge of overcoming the grave threat of UV, back before an ozone layer even existed, life on earth might have have stagnated into a blob of underwater slime. And furthermore, without the slight genetic alteration provided by some smaller amount of UV getting through the ozone layer in more modern times, there would be less predictable and constant mutation in DNA, which can lead to beneficial changes over time. It is a huge balancing act, and UV is the fulcrum and hinge which makes it all oscillate in an anti-entropic way. The evolutionary significance of UV is not well-appreciated, but will be emphasized in the following version of time-compressed events (with help from Wiki). BTW to the extent that there is ID (intelligent design) and to the extent that change itself is stochastic (rather than truly random), that MO (modus operandi) IS itself evidence of one basic form of intelligence... ergo, such an intelligence seems to be strongly rooted in the UV spectrum. Life-and-death, dualities teetering on the knife's edge sharpened to 185 nm. Evolution of life depends first on reproduction, and second on stochastic change, and third on the occasional advancement (aka 'survival of the fittest') which depends on that small level of constant change being there (which 99% of the time is not advantageous). The early reproductive proteins of single cell life can be attributed - in modern models of evolutionary theory- to the necessity of having to deal with the intensity of ultraviolet light which was far greater than we experience it now - since we are protected by the ozone layer. For billions of years there was no ozone layer over earth. Ultraviolet light causes thymine base pairs next to each other in genetic sequences to bond together into thymine dimers, a disruption in the strand which reproductive enzymes cannot copy. This leads to huge problems during genetic replication, usually killing the organism. As early prokaryotes (billions of years ago) began to approach the surface of the ancient oceans, long before the protective ozone layer had formed, they would almost invariably have died out. The few that survived quickly developed enzymes which verified the genetic material and broke up thymine dimer bonds, known as excision repair enzymes. In terms of evolutionary advance- this was almost as large a step as the appearance of reproductive proteins. Many of the enzymes and proteins involved in modern mitosis, which is the kind of cell replication which is found in mammals, are extremely similar to these ancient excision repair enzymes yet there have long lost their original benefit ! IOW the most essential biological constituents and mechanisms which we have today are believed to be slight modifications of the enzymes originally used to overcome the deadly effects of UV light. This curious fact might lead to the conclusion that the appearance of advanced life (as we know it) is more unlikely and fragile than we think elsewhere in the universe ... in that any earth-like planet which was not bombarded, early-on, with unimpeded UV radiation, would not have presented the inherent challenges which were involved in creating those enzymes and proteins, which became involved in mitosis millions of years later. Of course there could be other routes to advanced life which might be available if life evolved elsewhere (a planet which always had an zone layer) - but all of which serves to reinforce the notion that if extraterrestrial life ever does reach us, it will probably look nothing like us, nor even like little green men (in the alien autopsy hoax) who are, after all fairly similar to us -- this is because the challenges faced would have been so different at a fundamental stage (with an early ozone layer, as compared to none). Confused ? I know I am ;-) ... but that is a characteristic of living in a constant ozone layer, as they say.
[Vo]:Re: Call for new Ozone process
Forgot to add - we also require some extra O2 to be bubbled through the barrel, otherwise the end product is all steam. Not sure the pressure-swing device enrichment device is efficient enough for very cheap O2. Maybe Robin knows? - Original Message From: Michel Jullian it occurred to me that the best way to do it in situ was to use the water itself as a discharge surface, a quick Googling showed this has indeed been done with what seems to be good results, see http://www.center.bg.ac.yu/plasma/plasmapic/DBD.pdf Merci, or mercy-me. OK- now we are getting somewhere with this international brainstorm... (i.e. lightning in a barrel ;-) What happens when you combine the above with the Kanzius/Heffner salt water and peroxide idea and the BLP-lite unstable hydrino possibility ? IOW - in looking for synergy in a hybrid design - and given that a simple cylindrical barrel or reactor, which is partly filled with salt water, and continually evacuated, so that there is a partial vacuum above the water -- ... and a cathode above the water is pulsed to provide an HV arc through the water vapor, with the water surface being the anode. ...and with an RF antenna underwater - providing some H2 (the Kanzius approach) ... ...which H2 and nascent hydrogen, as it is formed and when it gets to the surface, immediately interacts with the pulsed arc discharge, forming hydrinos with the emission of EUV ... ...and the EUV then interacts with the O2 in the water and in the vapor near the surface (as any HOOH has been forced to decay) ... ... but the whole thing is kept relatively cool (the arc is HV and low current) so that the O3 is stable with a lifetime of 10-15 minutes ... ...$64 question - will the gas being drawn off by the vacuum pump contain significant amounts of ozone? Jones
Re: [Vo]:A memory of March 1989 and Arthur C. Clarke
On Fri, Mar 21, 2008 at 9:00 AM, Jed Rothwell [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: What ran through my mind then were the words from the prologue of Clarke's Childhood's End describing the invasion of Earth by a fleet of extraterrestrial spacecraft: This was the moment when history held its breath, and the present sheared asunder from the past as an iceberg splits from its frozen, parent cliffs, and go sailing out to sea in lonely pride. I never did understand what inspired Sir Clarke to write this novel. Terry
Re: [Vo]:Re: Call for new Ozone process
In reply to Jones Beene's message of Fri, 21 Mar 2008 09:49:58 -0700 (PDT): Hi, [snip] Forgot to add - we also require some extra O2 to be bubbled through the barrel, otherwise the end product is all steam. Not sure the pressure-swing device enrichment device is efficient enough for very cheap O2. Maybe Robin knows? Unfortunately I don't, however I'm guessing that the energies involved are small compared to electrolysis, so I would expect it to be cheaper than that, and I suspect that electrolysis would be cheaper than buying bottled oxygen (based on anecdotal reports of Wiseman technology Brown's gas generators). Regards, Robin van Spaandonk The shrub is a plant.
Re: [Vo]:A memory of March 1989 and Arthur C. Clarke
Terry Blanton wrote: I never did understand what inspired Sir Clarke to write this novel. That should be Sir Arthur. That's an interesting question. Yesterday a reviewer wrote: In Childhood's End, Clarke revealed himself as a fatalist and a mystic. I told him I disagree. He referred me to: . . . the entry for Clarke in The Science Fiction Encyclopedia, edited by John Clute and Peter Nicholls, revised edition (London: Orbit, 1999). I would like to see that. If anyone has a copy, please send it to me. I will check the Chamblee library. Anyway, I told the reviewer: I think it would be more accurate to say he revealed a taste for mystical fiction. He was not actually mystical. This is analogous to saying that a murder mystery writer reveals a fascination with violence and death even though he himself would not think of committing a crime. Clarke was often asked if he seriously believed in something like the mass mind and the mystical aspects of the book. He said no; it was just fiction. I suppose he had deep seated yearning toward the mystical. But he was an atheist to the core, as you probably know. I don't have any mystical religious inclinations either, but I greatly enjoy reading novels and fantasies about them, and listening to Handel's Messiah. Clarke expressed admiration for the Buddhist and Muslim religions. I can dig the former but I did not see why he liked the latter. They seem like opposites to me. Clarke expressed many different views about all kinds of things. He was one of those people who could see all sides to an issue, and who contained multitudes within -- a regular Walt Whitman. He was a complicated person. More complicated that his detractors realized, and more than he himself let on. He was certainly no Dr. Pangloss or a naive technophile, as some people thought. For details, see N. McAleer, Arthur C. Clarke: The Authorized Biography (1992), 430 pages. - Jed
Re: [Vo]:A memory of March 1989 and Arthur C. Clarke
- Original Message From: Jed Rothwell I would like to see that. If anyone has a copy, please send it to me. I will check the Chamblee library. Looks like there is CD ROM version from Grolier which is only available to libraries: http://www.grolier.com/gi/products/reference/esf/docs/esfmain.html
Re: [Vo]:A memory of March 1989 and Arthur C. Clarke
Terry sez: I never did understand what inspired Sir Clarke to write this novel. Terry Like Jed, I'll take a stab at answering this conundrum. I'll also be the first to admit that my comments are highly eccentric, personally opinionated, and filled with a kind of new age mystic drivel that would have likely irked Sir Arthur, being the atheist that he was, to no end, so my apologies up front. I'd like to think that Clarke being the playful and inquisitive old soul that I suspect he was, was likely beginning to sense his own personal connections with the vast collective unconsciousness, or super-consciousness. I gather such recognitions, particularly in the beginning old soul stages of the recognition process, is not necessarily perceived as a welcomed experience since there is the initial fear that one's personal identity, all that one thinks one is, will be completely absorbed or obliterated by something incomprehensibly larger than themselves. Perhaps one of the major lessons old souls like Sir Arthur must negotiate through is the fear of holding onto our isolated identities when perhaps it's time to let go of it. Perhaps when one finally recognizes the fact that one's identity is just another illusion that consciousness has been playing with for eons, perhaps it makes it a little easier to move on - to become curious as to what might be just around the corner. Metaphorically speaking, that's what Childhood's End was all about for me, personally. I gather there are not very many old souls on the planet these days. Carl Jung obviously comes to mind as another likely old soul candidate, considering his writings on the collective unconsciousness. Incidentally, I was about 14 years old when I read Clarke's novel. The ending depressed me to no end. How horrible, I thought to have Earth just after it entered into its golden age abruptly evaporate, to transform into something else that I could no longer comprehend. What a painful loss, I lamented! Guess I ain't no old soul. ;-) PS: Good comments, Jed. Regards Steven Vincent Johnson www.OrionWorks.com www.zazzle.com/orionworks
[Vo]:Environmental space
Could Vorts look over the paragraph below and give me their opinion on it (also please check the maths). It is part of an article I am writing for our newspaper on sustainability. Perhaps people do not realise how little environmental space we all share because there is a rather strange belief around which often comes out in anti-Green propaganda articles, particularly in relation to global warming, where the protagonists try to lead us to believe that we cannot possibly affect the environment of Earth because we're so puny and the earth is so large. These people must be mathematically illiterate. In the late 1960's people raised concerns about the growing population and scoffers at the time claimed that the entire world's population could squeeze onto the Isle of Wight (although this assumes just over one square foot each!), thus making the world then appear a pretty roomy place. I did the complementary calculation and discovered that if the global population then (3.6 billion) was evenly distributed over of the land surface of earth, then each person would only have an area of land 220 yards square as their personal environmental space! Obviously some of the land would be hostile desert, ice fields, mountains, rainforest etc. The world suddenly looked rather cramped. I recently did similar calculations again, using the current world population figure of 6.6 billion, and our current personal environmental land space is now down to 150 metres square (164 yards square) per person. I then went on to calculate what size our personal spaceship is today within which we metaphorically have to live our lives, use energy, manufacture goods, dispose of waste, extract minerals, grow food, catch fish and dissipate pollution, pesticides etc within. Surprisingly, our personal spaceship works out to be a globe only about 1.18 kilometres in diameter within which we have a piece of Earth's surface about 277 metres square (of which 70% would be ocean). Perhaps this helps to make it clear why the total number of people multiplied by their individual impacts on the planet has now brought us to the point where we can put up a House full notice on planet Earth. The figures etc I used are easily findable. Radius of Earth = 3960 miles Surface area of sphere = 4pi x r squared Proportions of land compared to ocean 30%/70% Column of atmosphere above us, assuming pressure of one atmosphere to the top, 10.6km. (worked out using sea level pressure and density) Volume of personal spaceship's atmosphere = 10,600m x 277 x 277 cu metre Radius of personal spaceship = cube root of (Volume divided by pi x 3/4) I assumed that the spaceship should have constant atmospheric pressure throughout (as it would in space) to make things simpler to visualise because any gaseous pollutant introduced within the body of gas would reach roughly the same relative concentration to other gas molecules whatever the pressure; that is to say that one gallons worth of fossil fuel fumes would expand to a much greater volume high in Earth's atmosphere but the relative concentration would stay approximately the same. Nick Palmer
Re: [Vo]:A memory of March 1989 and Arthur C. Clarke
@Jed Yes, Sir Arthur; but, it reminds me of the mythical king. Actually apropos! :-) @SVJ I, too, felt the pain of the demise of the earth in my teenage reading; but, as an adult I saw it as a metaphor for the ornithological egg or the cocoon of the butterfly. Extending the metaphor, the overlords were the snake in the garden leading mankind toward knowledge and the alienation from the womb. Sir Arthur pitied the overlords, forever the midwife but never the bride. Yes, he did not believe in a God; but, did he believe in a god in the overmind? And how would the caterpillar know the difference? Witness Rama. Eh, grasshopper? :-) Terry On Fri, Mar 21, 2008 at 7:26 PM, OrionWorks [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Terry sez: I never did understand what inspired Sir Clarke to write this novel. Terry Like Jed, I'll take a stab at answering this conundrum. I'll also be the first to admit that my comments are highly eccentric, personally opinionated, and filled with a kind of new age mystic drivel that would have likely irked Sir Arthur, being the atheist that he was, to no end, so my apologies up front. I'd like to think that Clarke being the playful and inquisitive old soul that I suspect he was, was likely beginning to sense his own personal connections with the vast collective unconsciousness, or super-consciousness. I gather such recognitions, particularly in the beginning old soul stages of the recognition process, is not necessarily perceived as a welcomed experience since there is the initial fear that one's personal identity, all that one thinks one is, will be completely absorbed or obliterated by something incomprehensibly larger than themselves. Perhaps one of the major lessons old souls like Sir Arthur must negotiate through is the fear of holding onto our isolated identities when perhaps it's time to let go of it. Perhaps when one finally recognizes the fact that one's identity is just another illusion that consciousness has been playing with for eons, perhaps it makes it a little easier to move on - to become curious as to what might be just around the corner. Metaphorically speaking, that's what Childhood's End was all about for me, personally. I gather there are not very many old souls on the planet these days. Carl Jung obviously comes to mind as another likely old soul candidate, considering his writings on the collective unconsciousness. Incidentally, I was about 14 years old when I read Clarke's novel. The ending depressed me to no end. How horrible, I thought to have Earth just after it entered into its golden age abruptly evaporate, to transform into something else that I could no longer comprehend. What a painful loss, I lamented! Guess I ain't no old soul. ;-) PS: Good comments, Jed. Regards Steven Vincent Johnson www.OrionWorks.com www.zazzle.com/orionworks
[Vo]:How bad is it?
I friend of mine rvargo has an IQ of 160. He has proven to have a vision of future events. He writes: snip It is worse than what is stated. The Chinese hold 1 trillion of out debt. They could put us in a depression in 24 hrs at any time they choose. A major attack on Saudi oil would spike oil to $200 a barrel per Goldman sacks. In the entire history of mankind the end result has always been debasement of the currency. Your new dollar has already been printed it is called the Amerio and will be the currency of the US , Mexico, and Canada. We are going to the North American Union modeled after Europe. The exchange rate will be 5 or 10 to one old to new. Precious metals will be outlawed like Roosevelt did in the 30's. History always repeats itself but never the same way. My quote of me. Oh, in 2009 for the first time in the history of the United States we will import food. snip Is it really going to get this bad? What about going to Mars? What about energy to cheep to meter? What about the 30 hour work week with robots doing the heavy work? I was promised these things in grade school. Don't tell me they are not going to happen. I hope Jed can fix it. Frank **Create a Home Theater Like the Pros. Watch the video on AOL Home. (http://home.aol.com/diy/home-improvement-eric-stromer?video=15?ncid=aolhom000301)
Re: [Vo]:A memory of March 1989 and Arthur C. Clarke
- Original Message - Like Jed, I'll take a stab at answering this conundrum. I'll also be the first to admit that my comments are highly eccentric, personally opinionated, and filled with a kind of new age mystic drivel that would have likely irked Sir Arthur, being the atheist that he was, to no end, so my apologies up front. I'd like to think that Clarke being the playful and inquisitive old soul that I suspect he was, was likely beginning to sense his own personal connections with the vast collective unconsciousness, or super-consciousness. I gather such recognitions, particularly in the beginning "old soul" stages of the recognition process, is not necessarily perceived as a welcomed experience since there is the initial fear that one's personal identity, all that o! ne thinks Hmmm IMO, identityand integrity are related but different. However, thereis a tendency in identity politics toregardidentity as prioror foundational to integrity. Harry
