phoenix_ca

Then as I said, cite clearly. I admit I was wrong; I didn't know they were still being funded by the DoD. In fact I'm amazed because Bussard's talk (which I had already watched) went into detail about how the DoE wouldn't fund them and the project would get killed quickly if the Navy funded them so much that it appeared in Congress, and how they had stopped being funded by the Navy entirely. Like these people?

I was pointing out just how stupid and non-productive censorship is. Especially since I still can't get any idea what you're talking about in that post. If I start from the premise that the censorship is for a good reason (vulgar language, which frankly isn't much of a reason), then I have to conclude that since your post was censored, it was censored because you did something against the rules that the censorship is there to enforce. ... Is the problem of having to paint your lines anyway not self-evident? If you paint over the lines, you block the LEDs, so they won't work at all. If you don't they aren't visible in the day. The only solution would be to move all the lines around entirely at night-fall, and then you have the absurdity of having two sets of lines, offset from each other, and drivers will see both because we put headlights on cars. I explained why these won't work in daylight already, citing how actual LED road studs work, and your solution is to paint over them; it's entirely nonsensical.

Then one should cite sources that actually support the statement instead of just asserting it.

Why is a moderator getting censored? Why would you devolve to vulgar language (because that's the only stuff that gets censored, right)? I find that very ironic. This is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of how light works. For those lights to be visible, they need to simultaneously prevent sunlight from hitting the background they are mounted to (so there is enough contrast for the lights to be visible), and transmit as much of their light as possible toward the viewer. The design of those solar roadway tiles is fundamentally flawed, as they do neither. The LEDs are bare, so their light gets transmitted in all directions away from and toward the tiles. Those LED road signs and studs you see are on black backgrounds for contrast, have shades (similar to a photographic grid) to prevent sunlight from falling on them and reflecting, and transmit most of their light toward the viewer. Remove those and they would be far less visible. Here's what it takes to actually over-power the sun with a bare xenon bulb for a few milliseconds in quick succession: http://profoto.com/int/products/pro-system-generators-heads-accessories/pro-studio-generators/item/pro-8a-1200 Here's a company that actually makes the things. Pretty much none of those are just a bare LED bulb slapped on a surface. They're designed to reflect that light in a particular direction.

Funny, I searched that entire paper for "department", "funding", and "defence", and nadda. I must conclude you are making that up and citing an irrelevant document to lend superficial support to your statement. In fact their own website states clearly that they are a "charitable research and development organization". DoD contracts don't fall under "charity" by any stretch of the imagination. "Everyone thinks" isn't an argument for anything. In fact, Focus Fusion openly admits their project may fail. That's why they can't give shares in their company to just anyone. And a scientific review concluded exactly the opposite of what you are saying.

Reasoned argument isn't a baseball game. You didn't refute the points about heating water on roads, LEDs during daylight conditions, or the issue of using tiles instead of a flat surface. If even one of the latter two or correct, this is a bad idea.

Meh. Polywells and DPF are getting enough funding to press on. If you're referring to ITER, the researchers behind EMC2 and Focus Fusion are all well aware of the political climate and are instead working around it entirely, getting funding elsewhere.

I don't know what cooking shows you're watching. O.o I'm a fan of Stefano Faita, and he uses measurements. And if the doesn't say how much of something he's using, the recipe is on the CBC's website.

The main point is that it doesn't make your reactor radioactive, full stop. In a polywell, those alpha particles will bump into other matter and thus transmit thermal energy.

Motto of the story...don't trust the theoreticians with the experiments (and the chemicals).

With these polywells from EMC2 the goal is to use p+B11 fuel which means minimal radiation that's easy to deal with (don't stand next to it while it's on and about eight hours after turning it off). The goal with polywells is also to use them primarily as a heat source to heat water and run a turbine, which is actually a really good thing, as it gives a relatively easy path to retrofitting fossil-fuel burning power plants into fusion power plants. Dense plasma focus can harness the charged particles effectively because they are better controlled and go in a straight line (mostly; the x-rays get captured by metal films) which can be used to induce a current. Polywells make more of a soupy plasma of awesome, but it's a very big soup by comparison (target of 100MW with polywells versus 5MW from the Focus Fusion guys).

Reminds me oddly of the ever-so-popular "bubble tea" imported from Asia here in Vancouver. Never really took a liking to it... Do similarly crazy ideas like using liquid nitrogen to make ice cream count? (I've always wanted to do that, but Dewar flasks are expensive.) I approve of science in the kitchen. Science plus food = the best two things on earth in one.

Uhhhh...okay.

You'll get a 50/50 split eventually, you just need a large enough sample size.

Been done (sorta). The Tollan from Stargate explained their refusal to give technology to Earth because of what happened in their own history. They developed space flight, found that another planet in their solar system was inhabited by humans, but at a far lesser stage of development. They uplifted them, giving their technology freely, and the humans on that planet obliterated themselves.

*yoinks the PDF* Glad to see that polywell fusion is still alive and kicking, somewhere. These are experimental results, not theory, which is even more promising. Also...that image of the plasma is beautiful. ... I'm tempted to ask them for a full-res image so I can print a poster of it.

I like trains (too). Here in Vancouver we have a modest metro system for public transport. The best part about it though is that the whole thing is completely automated; there are no drivers. Delays are caused almost entirely by passengers holding the doors open, and the time-to-arrival is calculated and displayed automatically at all stations ahead of a train. These times are really accurate; like, set-your-watch-by-them accurate. Even in peak times its pretty efficient, and it's also a nice way to do a little sight-seeing depending on which lines you take. Trams are great for cities that already have the rails down in the first place. Toronto is a fine enough Canadian example of that. They've got them, they might as well use them. Personally though I'm more partial to Vancouver's electric buses/trolleys: They have the same benefits of a tram like using electricity instead of gas, but they can also disconnect from the lines and run on battery power to get around traffic accidents, construction, road closures, or the like. The only really annoying bit is that those connector thingamajigs do get derailed sometimes. It's infrequent, and the driver can fix it pretty easily, but it happens enough that if you use public transport to get around, you'll likely be on a bus where it happens at least once or twice a year.

Man...it'd REALLY have sucked to evolve on a planet with that much gravity. Just think of the extra bone structure...to say nothing of space flight.

More like they are replacing the need to remember information and replacing it with the need for the ability to process vast quantities of information.

Titan actually has rain. Methane and ethane rain so it's friggin cold but rain none-the-less. Who knows. Maybe you could nab some of those hydrocarbons. I doubt it'd make any sense other than for in-situ use though. Maybe use in and around Saturn.

Except that many, many philosophers recognized the utility of such instincts.

We can survive with a lot less than computers: http://www.chapters.indigo.ca/books/product/9780007274932-item.html?s_campaign=goo-PLATest&gclid=CjkKEQjwqsCcBRDt7_Gts5a91YYBEiQAm-wYER-MgmCboNTZGgmENJjmq2VO19Mht_3h_nIKLBGLarjw_wcB The only difference between a human who can survive in the wilderness without the aid of any industrial technology and one who can't is knowledge (excluding the obvious like physical or mental disability, disease, and so on).

You argued against hasty generalization in your opening argument and then made your own hasty generalization based on the same premises. In effect, you argued against your own argument. If it is a hasty generalization to say that life is common in the universe, on the basis that we do not yet understand how life came about on this planet, it is also a hasty generalization to conclude that this lack of evidence means that the formation of life is uncommon. In fact you're making an argument from silence here: "We do not know how life was formed, therefore it must be..."

It does, but the concentration is about half as much as an LWR. Every fission reactor poses some proliferation risk, some more than others. If you want to make nuclear weapons, CANDU isn't a very bright choice. There are research reactors that would be better.

Aliens are real, and I have the grapefruits to prove it.