Einstein for ever?

[Eric The Viking]

If I was king I'd pump money into all areas of science and engineering left, right and centre. My personal favourite big science program is ITER http://www.iter.org/. I'm at a loss to understand why it doesn't get more funding, if they can make it work we have free power forever (forever in this context means longer than we care about ).

Yup, beats me too.

Is ITER a replacement for/improvement on Culham (JET)? [later] OK I see that it is!

 

[Digit]

http://news.sky.com/home/technology/article/16082802

See some of the comments below, some people still seem to believe, 'that on the eighth day the Lord created the motor car,' it seems.

Roy.

 

[RogerS]

http://news.sky.com/home/technology/article/16082802

See some of the comments below, some people still seem to believe, 'that on the eighth day the Lord created the motor car,' it seems.

Roy.

This one made me smile

To stop the risk of the space thing melting, perhaps they should fly there during the night when the suns not out.

 

[Eric The Viking]

To stop the risk of the space thing melting, perhaps they should fly there during the night when the suns not out.

When I was a child (and everyone had thicker skins, evidently), I was told the Irish* had already tried that, but there was a nasty accident when the giant milk bottle fell over seconds before launch.

E.

*if you're reading this in Ireland, that word is actually "Kerryman", and if you're reading it in America, it's "Alaskan", and so on. And because I'm actually Scottish, I'm obviously much too mean to tell you the far better Irish joke told me by a Belfast lass, years ago...

 

[wobblycogs]

Just read the comments on that article, truly, we are doomed.

 

[Digit]

All life is there cogs.

Roy.

 

[Digit]

Anyone got a tin hat spare?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/ ... e-re-entry

Roy.

 

[Eric The Viking]

Anyone got a tin hat spare?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/ ... e-re-entry

Roy.

Sorry, I only keep the foil ones now, but THEY won't want you to know that! #-o

 

[Digit]

That's let the cat out of the bag Eric, you're marked now. :lol:

Roy.

 

[Digit]

Cogs, on the energy front, have you followed the Thames turbine trials at all? Know how they are proceeding?

Roy.

 

[wobblycogs]

I've not been following them.

Rant alert...

While I think it's great that we are now trying to generate energy in ways that don't (greatly) harm the environment the amount of energy a scheme like that will produce is such a drop in the ocean compared to the total energy we use (e.g. including coal, oil and gas burnt directly). I'm mostly interested in projects that actually stand a chance of meeting our energy demand like fission, fusion, geothermal, maybe geoengineering scale wave power, solar thermal generation (when installed in the correct places), PV (also when installed in the correct places).

Projects like this get me a bit frustrated because they cause the general public to pat themselves on the back and think the job is done when in actual fact we have a massive energy supply problem lurking just around the corner. Even if global warming turns out to be wrong (I don't think it is) once China and India get fully up to speed the price of oil will be astronomical and on top of that it's going to run out sooner rather than later. We need some serious joined up thinking about where this country will be getting it's power from 50 years from now and I don't see it happening.

Sorry, rant over.

 

[Digit]

There's a bit more to it than usual cogs, this is simply a trial, later this year there is trial near the Orkneys as well. The Uni suggests that we could achieve 25% of our energy requirement this way, and as they point out, tides are reliable.
I first spotted the report, which was quite extensive and detailed earlier this year, but as it was in a newspaper we don't mention on here :mrgreen: and not knowing of your interest, I left it lying.
I'll see if I can locate the original.

Roy.

Here...

http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/248 ... f-new-wave

 

[Digit]

And more on the science front cogs...

http://news.sky.com/home/technology/article/16083250

Roy.

 

[Digit]

Anyone watch the BBC2 programme on this last night?

Roy.

 

[wobblycogs]

Not yet, grabbed it on iPlayer for tomorrow night. Nothing like a bit of science to wind down after a hard days work.

Glad to see they have got du Sautoy on this one. I find his calm discussion of the subject a relief after the more "modern" presentation of Cox and Al-Kahalili.

If anyone else is interested.... http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b016bys2/Faster_Than_the_Speed_of_Light/

 

[Digit]

Yep cogs. Entertaning presenter, good explanations and qualified to comment.
Watch out for the woman who states that in a 1987 nova the light and the neutrinoa arrived almost the same time.
Almost?

Roy.

 

[wobblycogs]

I know the light was slightly later than the neutrinos (about 3 minutes I think it was) but that it was explained by the light being scattered off the outer shell of the supernova and so not getting free immediately. The neutrinos, since they don't interact with anything, were able to get out straight away. Even if the explanation of the difference in the arrival time from the supernova is wrong it's far to small to explain the measurements in the Cern experiment (the light would have to have arrived something like 3.5 years late)

 

[Digit]

Some of the explanations on that programme for the CERN results are very exotic.

Roy.

 

[Good Surname or what ?]

On a different tack.

Erwin Schrödinger, one of the greatest physicists ever, wrote this about biology http://whatislife.stanford.edu/LoCo_files/What-is-Life.pdf.

or if you don't have time to read that try this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_Is_Life?

Remember this is 1944; way before Crick and Watson.