Category: Science

Room Temperature Super Conductivity?

photog 10 Comments Current Events, Fake Science, Science ,

Maybe.  We’ll have to see.  But if it’s true that’s a lot of power not being turned into useless heat.  So what do you folks think, reality or hoax?

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1684044616528453633.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LK-99

 

Fifteen Years to Proxima Centauri

photog 6 Comments Current Events, Science, Science Fiction / Fantasy , ,

How’s that for a cool title!

H/T to Hans G. Schantz for the retweet on this that brought it to my attention.

This guy is researching a propulsion system based on “quatised inertia” that he says would allow a probe to reach the Oort Cloud in a year and Proxima Centauri in 15 years.

That’s a pretty bold statement.  Watch his video if you’re interested.  He says he was given a million dollar grant from DARPA  to study it.

I wonder if they’ll give me ten million to do my research on cold fusion.  My data looks pretty good.

Seriously, he says there’s company putting an experiment into space to test this thing out.  I guess we’ll know if it works.

 

Do You Just Put Quantum in Front of Everything?

photog 1 Comment Current Events, Science , ,

H/T to Hans G. Schantz.

Is the Universe really all just one thing?  Huh?

“If we do find evidence to support this idea, it would dramatically alter the way we conceive of the cosmos. It would mean we could not only see a world in a grain of sand, as the poet William Blake once said, but we could also quite literally see the entire universe in its tiniest pieces and particles. While this might sound like just a different way of going about physics, it is much more than that. I believe that we are on the way to a completely new understanding of how the universe is put together.”

What will this do to Ant Man?

 

 

 

Guest Contributor – ArthurinCali – 15JUN2023 – Energy Haves and Have-NotsXYZ

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A side story on California’s stupidity on renewable energy:

Last fall the state energy commissioner, or whatever the “very important state official” who is in position to announce proclamations from on high to us peasants had dire news. The problem? Energy consumption between the hours of 4pm-10pm needed to be drastically reduced due to the whole sun going down effect. No sunlight, no solar charging-easy concept. The call was put out with advice on appropriate temperature settings for A/C, and the avoidance of activities that might strain the electric grid across the state.

Imagine the surprise that night to see So-Fi Stadium in Los Angeles fully lit up in anticipation for the NFL game being played. The irony was not missed on what the state considered their priorities to be during this alleged crisis. And yes, it was put out with an attitude that this could result in blackouts (brownouts?) across the state.

Those unfamiliar with Los Angeles weather should know that it is quite mild for most of the year. If this was such a desperate situation surely a football game should not have been that important to warrant the amount of wasted energy to light up a small village. The game could have been rescheduled to be during the daylight hours. But no. Priorities you see.

If This Goes On … Then What? – Part 3

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So, after the rainbow crusade the next most important article of the woke faith is the climate change crusade.  And the real-world consequence that this delusion engenders is the energy crisis that we are currently suffering under.

Starting in Europe but now picking up steam here in America, the Left is attempting to criminalize the use of hydrocarbon fuels.  And especially they’re trying to take them away from private citizens.  So even though the bulk of electrical generation is powered by natural gas in this country, the federal government and states like California are legislating against the use of gasoline powered cars and other equipment like lawn mowers and at the same time, against the use of natural gas for cooking and eventually home heating.

And indicating to the oil companies that they are going to be phased out has had the predictable effect of curtailing their efforts to keep the price of gas and oil stable.  Instead, this plan has unleashed the OPEC cartel’s efforts to maximize their profits in the short term and ignore Washington’s pleas to help it along with making the transition quiet so that it becomes a fait accompli.  And even though the adoption of electric vehicles is already becoming a nightmare for the power grid in California, the feds have doubled down on making this all happen by 2030.

First a word on the technical aspects of this plan.  As a chemical engineer I can say categorically this is a stupid and wrong-headed plan.  Charging electric cars from a grid that is basically powered using fossil fuels is incredibly wasteful.  Over a third of the energy that even reaches the grid is wasted as heat during transmission.  That’s not even taking into consideration the difference in efficiency between the internal combustion engine versus the combination of the turbine electric generators and the battery charging and discharging efficiency.  It’s absurd.  And they call it “green.”

So how does this end up?  Well, you know the drill.  Let me throw out some scenarios and I’ll make my guess and then you follow up on the poll.  Here goes.

The worst-case scenario is that this whole thing is accomplished.  The people of the United States act like good little sheep and just acquiesce in this whole stupid plan.  And in order to compensate for all the inefficiencies and fallacies in the plan we all end up losing a whole lot of freedom and affluence.  With much more expensive electricity and with the supply insufficient to allow everyone to recharge their cars every day, trains and busses will become the mandated form of transportation for ordinary people.  So, forget about auto trips and vacations.  Probably car ownership will become too expensive for anybody not in the upper middle class.  Even home heating will become a real problem.  Expect that people will walk around their homes in coats and hats in the winter and insulation will become a matter of life and death.  And enjoy living in the desert southwest without air-conditioning.  And the cost of food will also increase drastically and the variety of foods will go away.  No more fresh fruits in the winter except for the very well off.  The peasants will make do with whatever can last from the fall.  No more meat.  Unless you consider crickets meat.

The middle scenario is a much slower rollout and the realization that nuclear power plants can be sold to the climate zealots as “green energy.”  Having a reliable and economical high density power source could ameliorate some of the sins that battery cars create and leaves open the scenario where hydrogen fuel for cars is affordable.  And likewise, affordable energy could prevent the other problems like expensive food and home heating

The best-case scenario would be the American people revolting against the stupidity of the green agenda and voting for a combination of fossil fuels in the here and now and research into long term energy solutions like nuclear and other more exotic sources like geothermal.

For once I’m not guessing that the middle scenario will occur.  I think the American people are sheep that will be led to the slaughter.  I’m guessing we’ll get the whole green agenda and we’ll be eating bugs and taking the train in the future.  The ultimate humiliation for a once free people.

Leave your guess below.

We’ve Found ET?

photog Current Events, Fake Science, Science, Science Fiction / Fantasy , ,

So, some former military guy says the government has UFO’s and dead aliens.  Sure, why not?  It’s no stranger than all the other lies the feds tell us.  So, is this the distraction that’s supposed to get us through the Silly Season this summer while we learn how much gasoline will cost and how much cricket dust will be added to the hamburger we’ll be eating?

Personally I don’t believe it at all.  Let me know what you think of all this, below.

Have extraterrestrial ships and creatures been found by the feds?

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Intelligence Officials Say U.S. Has Retrieved Craft of Non-Human Origin

 

The Borg is Becoming Reality as We Speak

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Neuralink describes their mission thus:

“Creating a general-purpose, high-bandwidth interface to the brain.”

This is the beginning of the cyborg as something other than science fiction.  This is what Zuckerberg pretends he’s doing with that joke Metaverse.  I guess there’s no way to stop this.  But I don’t see it as a harmless thing.  Some good things will come out of it like restoring motion and sight to people who have been injured.  But we’ll see plenty of harmful consequences too.

What’s Worse, Dark Energy or Non-Metric Gravity?

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Regular readers are aware of my disdain for Dark Energy and Dark Matter.  These are hypothetical entities that apparently can’t be detected but which allow astrophysicists to pretend they understand why physical measurements of the universe don’t correlate with the estimates they make about things like the mass of the galaxies and the expansion of the universe.

Well I’m happy to report they’ve come up with another theory that at least allows them to get rid of dark energy.  It’s called non-metric gravity.  Of course I’m glad they’re getting rid of dark energy.  Getting rid of something that doesn’t exist is a helpful idea.  But I can’t say that the exercise they’ve gone through to “measure” the parameters in their new model is all that inspiring.  They take the gravitational constant and make it a function of the form:

F(Q) = α + βQn

And all three parameters are determined by curve fitting, using the available data from astrophysical observations like the red shift and microwave radiation densities.  And unsurprisingly they are able to make the hypothesis fit the data.

Now does this prove anything?  Certainly not.  But at least it doesn’t require inventing ubiquitous non-existent particles that are indetectable and inexplicable.  And to my way of looking at things it’s the beginning of an approach that may start to unravel the baffling problems that astrophysicists are confronted with when they look at the universe on the grand scale.

Now if only they can man up and admit there’s no such thing as dark matter they might start to gain my respect back again.  Sir Isaac forgive them.  They’re not very bright.