Like some posters to vortex, NASA nowadays likes to spice-up (or
'sex-up' as the Brits like to say) its press-headlines for mass
consumption... and why not?
One assumes that the added touch of PR has a positive impact on
funding levels from congress. Here is a recent one, but this story
is actually both mesmerizing AND with alternative energy
potential. Notice, however, that NASA never admits why it took
them 33 years to get to this stage of R&D !
Mesmerized by Moondust November 21, 2005
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2005/21nov_abbas.htm
"Each morning, Mian Abbas enters his laboratory and sits down to
examine--a single mote of dust. Zen-like, he studies the same
speck suspended inside a basketball-sized vacuum chamber for as
long as 10 to 12 days.... The microscopic object of his rapt
attention is not just any old dust particle. It's moondust...
Many researchers believe that moondust has a severe case of static
cling: it's electrically charged. In the lunar daytime, intense
ultraviolet (UV) light from the sun knocks electrons out of the
powdery grit. Dust grains on the moon's daylit surface thus become
positively charged.
Eventually, the repulsive charges become so strong that grains are
launched off the surface "like cannonballs," says Abbas, arcing
kilometers above the moon until gravity makes them fall back again
to the ground. The moon may have a virtual atmosphere of this
flying dust, sticking to astronauts from above and below.
Grains of lunar dust become positively charged by ultraviolet
light... The ultraviolet light charges moondust 10 times more than
theory predicts... Bigger grains (1 to 2 micrometers across)
charge up more than smaller grains (0.5 micrometer), just the
opposite of what theory predicts. END.
OK given these findings - is there anything useful to vortexians
and other alternative energy researchers here?
A following post may include a more detailed moon-beam type of
'take' on some of the alternative-energy potentials of this kind
of easily charged dust... but for now, two possible uses jump out
like... well... like NASA's moon grains launched off the surface
'like cannonballs':
1) Capturing the UV component of solar energy, which most solar
cells do poorly
2) Converting the energy of a nuclear reactor to electricity using
fuel composed of circulating "dust" grains.
As you might have surmised, I was onto this second idea for some
time before this new NASA item of news came across the
science-wire, but it does provide a nice segue... More to come...
Jones
Side note - and a related biographical good-read: Is there
something to the myth which associates the Moon with Madness? as
in ... "The men who fell to Earth"
"Nine astronauts who walked on the Moon are still alive, but their
clouds of glory have gone dark". Andrew Smith tracks them down in
his book "Moondust"
Only 27 men have ever left Earth orbit to see the moon from the
perspective of Deep Space - all American between the Christmas of
1968 and 1972. They did not become the celebrities that one would
have expected, nor did they live normal lives for the most part.
From the "Guardian" (Robin KcKie) "In those four wonderful Apollo
years, it seemed that the post-war sci-fi visions of Arthur C
Clarke and Isaac Asimov would be realized overnight. Then came the
Vietnam war's final throes and Watergate. America's mood darkened,
its public got bored with the Moon and the final missions were
cancelled. 'The best of times for America was also the worst of
times,' as NASA flight director Chris Kraft noted."
Worse still, of the 12 men who actually landed, three are dead and
many of them suffered psychological problems, despite having
chosen as the crème-de-la-crème of American males (i.e. "the right
stuff") ... Buzz Aldrin plunged into alcoholism - Charlie Duke
(Apollo 16) became a drunken, rage-filled bully who persecuted his
children wife, before eventually "getting saved". etc. etc.....
Which leads us to another Apollo theme: the epiphanies. While Ed
Mitchell returned in his Apollo 14 capsule, he glimpsed 'an
intelligence in the Universe and felt connected to it'. He then
set up the Institute of Noetic Sciences ... which only goes to
show that the 'left coast' is really a state of mind...
Anyway this an interesting biographical tale ...
