nik

While slightly off topic, I have been fortunate enough to catch a glimpse of someone who bore a more than uncanny resemblance to myself. I was in the Phoenix airport

wandering around, and I saw this person who could have easily been mistaken for me. I tried to follow, but ended up loosing him. An extroardinary find!

I don't know too much, but I can say what I know. "Proton energy cells" is a term sometimes used in place of fuel cells. These are essentially batteries in which the anion (negative charge carriers) are electrons that

provide the potential to make them work. Diatomic hydrogen is "catalyzed" (split) (usually on a platinum surface) while oxygen on the opposite side of a "proton conducting membrane" reacts with the hydrogen. The net result per reaction is

about 3*10^-19 Coulombs of charge and a water molecule - not a tremendously bad

waste product. I believe fuel cells are used on the space shuttle, but I might be wrong. Typical energy efficiencies for fuel cell driven automobiles are about 24 percent. For gasoline vehicles, this is about 20 percent, and is about 70 percent for battery powered cars. Fuel cells are clean, producing almost only warm water as the waste product. They typically run on pressurized hydrogen (and sometimes pressurized oxygen), a safety consideration becuase of the volatile nature of hydrogen, flammability of oxygen, and high pressures. (However, these safety issues are usually very easy to address.)

Fuel cells are becoming practical for use in cars, and in in a few cases, fuel cells as large as several hundred kW have been used. These are about the size of a van, but produce the electricity of a small power plant - enough to power a small village. Fuel cell technology is definitely worth pursuing as a viable power source on planet earth.

I can't think of an objection to that. If humans ever decide to take that step, we would probably start off with some sort of reaction that produces positrons (antiprotons maybe? I don't know.) If you can make enough antimatter, getting energy out of it

would be a piece of cake. (By "enough" I mean something on the order of a gram.)

This device is for nuclear physics research purposes only, so the energy produced in reactions is either measured or lost (ignored). The amount of energy produced

is really tiny and impractical. Since we deal with (sometimes near-relativistic) particles, the distinction between matter and energy is blurred. If we could build an

accelerator powerful enough to produce practical amounts of energy, we would have to

learn how to harvest energy in MANY forms - gamma rays mostly. In most cases here, we use our accelerated particles immediately, and the time from production to

use is around 500 ns. In other facilities, people store these particles in what are

called (what else!) storage rings - essentially large racetracks that the particles

go around. Here, we have a small ring and other ways of confinement, but usually, we are just interested in production and measurement.

Please understand that the particle accelerator as an energy source via direct conversion of matter to energy is not yet practical. If you refer to the direct conversion of matter to energy, that's very difficult by today's standards, and impractical. Devices around the world known sometimes as tokomaks

are used as "hot fusion" devices or antimatter storage bottles, but the energy produced is also tiny. Give it another 100 years.

Ahh, I watched that.  Shoemaker-Levy.  That WAS something, huh nik? That was actually meteor, or comet with 21 or 22 pieces and when they slammed into what was it Jupiter, one by one, it was quite a show. By the way it was discovered by a WOMAN, You DO know that, 'Mr.Man', don't you Just kidding with ya nik.    { sure wish there were some planets in our emoticons} HINT, HINT.

Yes I do! If I remember correctly, her name was Carolyn Shoemaker. A fine astronomer!

It actually depends on the types of planets colliding. In a sense, hamanity saw

something very similar about 10 years ago when comet Shoemaker-Levy

hit Jupiter. It was a nice light show, but Jupiter was really undamaged. In many

cases, the laws of celestial mechanics dictate that in a system, while planets MAY

collide, they generally don't for a few related reasons. In short, the central star and planets form by matter "coagulating" into clumps. These generally remain separate. That's not to say that they don't, but if you see an "evolved" solar system, any collisions are more likely to occur near the beginning of its lifetime. We have to keep in mind that planets just don't run into each other because we have this big mass in the center of our system called the sun.

Consider a smaller system: Saturn. There are moon's right in the middle of Saturn's rings in the plane of the rings, which are in turn made of smaller particles comparable to planets. Why don't these collide all the time and scatter matter into the interplanetary medium? They are locked in an orbit with what the astronomers call "negative" energy (that's just a term - nothing cosmic or special about it). Each position in the ring moves with it's own orbit. The moons in the rings (referred to as "shepherd moons") actually tend to sweep matter out of their orbits without necessary colliding with this matter.

Do planets collide? Sure. How often? Maybe..... once per billion years (rough

guess). What happens? It depends on the planets. Two "minor planets" (asteroids) would probably shatter. Two planets like earth would probably undergo a transformation like what WEAREBORG described (I'm left wondering how two planets like the earth would come into close proximity). Perhaps the most spectacular would be two gas giants (like Jupiter) colliding. (Again, I'm wondering how they would get close enough at such a late stage in solar system development).

It's possible. We do it today. (Here I go talking about my work again.) The place I work IS a linked particle accelerator. Not to difficult. We do sometimes throw around "Star Trekish" terms like "phase invariance" and other. It's not only

possible, but feasible, and worthwhile.

What you're describing Jeanway sounds a lot like what the computer world calls "genetic algorithms." We use them a little bit where I work. Some of the

experiments we do can be pretty elaborate and in some cases very difficult to compile the data into useful structures. For that, we use a program which essentially takes "program fragments" and compiles them into an analysis package. It keeps doing that until it gets something useful (based on minimization routines). Is it intelligent? Yes. Compared to humans? No. In this case, we have rudimentary (on a biological scale) pattern recognition routines, but bad compared to those of humans, and we trade speed for that. One drawback is that the

algorithm may never "converge" on a solution, giving erratic results. (We always joke about a Nobel Prize experiment being botched because the software keeps giving us video games.)

Other applications that I've used are neural networks. Back in the days when we

were strugging to find the top-quark, we had huge amounts of data (actually small

by today's standards), and we needed a fast way to filter through this data and characterize particle decay jets, rank them based on their appropriateness,

eliminate the bad ones, and suggest good ones. The neural network, which is

a multi-level weighted parameter feedback algorithm, is what we used. We

used a "hardwired" network - that is, we burned a chip about four times the size of your Pentium IV rather than process data in software. The result is that we

effectively had a dedicated "program" operating about 10-100 times the speed of a

normal computer.

Today, we still use neural networks, and hardwired genetic algorithsm, but we also

use things like Application Specific Integrated Circuits (ASICs) and Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs). All this stuff is really just tools to us

scientists, but we have to virtually have engineering educations as well as our

education to be scientists.

Quick note of caution:

One should not look directly at the inferior conjunction/transit of Venus, especially with a telescope or binoculars. A good way to

view this is to project a small telescope or binocular image onto a piece of white paper.

If humans used current technology to build the Orion rocket, I don't think it would

ever get near to the speed of light. It might get to 1% of the speed of light if it ran

for a long time. I've never done the calculation, but it would be interesting to find out how much energy it takes to propel a rocket (of average size) to the 1%, 10%, 50%+ of the speed of light, and see if the planet has that much energy stored in

thermonuclear warheads.

If we had the capabilities, what events could we change? And how? For instance, a meteor heading for Earth.  How would we change it's course? Cloud of radiation, an anomaly, affecting orbits of planets. Xindi type weapon threat. Wormholes sucking planets in? Disturbances in Time. Space junk getting sucked into intake manifolds. Too much plasma venting, pollution of space, just areas not all of space, encapsulize. Space pirates. Mid space collision Insurance who'd collect? :P

For over 99% of meteors heading towards the Earth, we really don't need to worry; our atmosphere does a good job of protecting us from those. However, I bet you're talking about the big ones such as the speculated meteor that causes the pre-Camrian extinction. This has been the subject of some (very poorly thought out) movies. Are we currently capable of changing the course of a meteor? Probably not. Are we capable of developing that technology? Probably. Space junk is actually very real problem for the astronauts - in fact, it may be what caused the latest space shuttle accident (a tiny piece of junk destroying heat shielding while in orbit).

Nuclear Propulsion? Do you mean the steam turbines currently used in nuclear naval vessels? I bet the good Ensign Jim Phaserman knows about that. He actually has a really nice thread going on right now you can ask him.

If you are referring to the hypothetical Orion project, that involves essentially

using nothing more than nuclear weapons to propel a rocket.

Sounds like fun! I'm in!

I'm ashamed of all of you. It has to be William Shatner! 

You beat me to it, edmcgon!

One occasion that I can think of right now. Four lives.

I think O'Brian summed it up best.

 

"I hate temporal mechanics."

 

So little is ever described on any Trek.  It is hard and confusing to follow.  It is even harder to agree on something.  I have never liked episodes involving time travel.  If First Contact could have been done without the time travel, it would have been my favourite Trek movie but it is second to The Undiscovered Country.

 

Why can't they leave time travel to the Q?

I can really see your point. The idea is fascinating, but it seems like producers

are always falling back on the time travel thread for an easy story.

I used to work on a project to build a huge underground neutrino detector, and we needed lots of iron, so we ended up buying old battleship parts from the U.S. government.

I'm not sure it's the strenght (proof) that makes it illegal as much as what else is in

it that makes is illegal. There are plenty of human liquors that are near

200 proof which are not illegal. Perhaps the ale has some sort of mild poison in it.

I'm not sure, maybe it's methanol.

Hey, Jim and Sarge, this is cool.

I have more submarine questions. When I was in college, I remember doing a problem about the attenuation of radio waves in water, and found that they don't go too far. Do subs have to surface to communicate with the outside world, or can they do it

just below the surface? How about with other subs while submerged? Is there a way...

without just pinging away Morse code on the active sonar?

I'm pretty much an embecile when it comes to things military, so I hope these questions don't sound like they are coming from a little kid.

Hey! This is cool! I'll have to think of some good ones!

Here's a few that have been killing me:

What's the top speed of an aircraft carrier? Is it true that they sometimes have to change their orientations for takeoffs and landings based on the wind?

Also, what's the top speed of a submarine (any sub, I guess)?

Is it true that battleships pitch wildly when they fire their biggest guns? (Do you guys

call them "guns" or something more intimidating?)

Someone would probably find a way to make a movie out of it staring Charleton

Heston, and then someone else would do a remake of the movie.

Telling the truth is pretty effective.

(Hey, this is sort of cool.)

Referred to as: Doc, The Fam

Favorite Beverage: Water (4degrees C)

Favorite Color: Green

Favorite Flower: What lt_van_roy said

Favorite Food: Pasta

Favorite Cheesecake Flavor: Don't like cheesecake

Favorite Junk Food: Coffee

Favorite Animal: Armadillo

Favorite Smiley: B) (Sorry, I'm from the "old school").

Some one told me once that it's not hygienic to take a bath.. That sitting in the water with all those bacteria, microbes, and what ever else decides to join you, just floating around in there with you, isin't really being clean. But I figure if you put enough soap in the water it will kill everything.  But then also you could just shower right afterwards and wash all those little things off you. :wacko: nik, what do you think?

I think you're exactly right. Besides, it's really no different from a hot tub, and people don't worry about that. In Japan, they take public baths. Many locker rooms have public baths. The idea, however, is to relax, not get clean. In fact, it's expected that one washes off thoroughly before entering (and RINSE thoroughly). I've noticed that many of the Japanese baths now contain small amounts of chlorine, which pretty much kills any germs anyway. That's a society with some interesting bath customs.

In the morning after I run, I usually fill the bathtub with cold water, dump in

two or three trays of ice cubes, and sit in that for 5 or 10 minutes.  Then I let

the water out, dry off and take a hot shower.  Good for reduction of lactate buildup in the muscles.

 

 

 

 

 

Do you actually get in there with it? :wacko:

Oh yes! It's great for sore muscles. After long runs (16+ miles) I can cut my

recovery time in half.

I read the leaked script as well. It was pretty good.