Re: [Vo]:Video of every known nuclear explosion conducted on the planet
On Mon, Aug 2, 2010 at 8:43 PM, Harry Veeder hlvee...@yahoo.com wrote: ooops...I must have gone to the washroom and missed the end of the movie. Yeah, it got kinda slow. The end frame is at the top of the web page showing the totals. T
[Vo]:Article on concentrating solar power (solar thermal)
See: http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/article/2010/07/concentrating-solar-power-builds-up-heat The table has an interesting comparison of the land use for solar thermal versus PV, comparing two systems both in Riverside, CA: 350 MW PV, 2844 ha 986 MW trough solar thermal, 2091 ha - Jed
RE: EXTERNAL: [Vo]:Article on concentrating solar power (solar thermal)
Science Daily (Aug. 2, 2010) - A new process that simultaneously combines the light and heat of solar radiation to generate electricity could offer more than double the efficiency of existing solar cell technology http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/08/100802101813.htm
Re: [Vo]:Article on concentrating solar power (solar thermal)
Along these lines this looks very promising: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/08/100802101813.htm Ron --On Tuesday, August 03, 2010 9:56 AM -0400 Jed Rothwell jedrothw...@gmail.com wrote: See: http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/article/2010/07/concentrating-solar-power-builds-up- heat The table has an interesting comparison of the land use for solar thermal versus PV, comparing two systems both in Riverside, CA: 350 MW PV, 2844 ha 986 MW trough solar thermal, 2091 ha - Jed
RE: [Vo]:Solar EMP: the biggest threat to our way of life?
Solar alert. I sent the solar EMP post below two weeks ago, and already a large mass of solar plasma is due to hit earth tonight. The Northern Lights should be intense - and let's hope that this light-show is the limit of the effects of coronal mass ejection. It could be much worse. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/picture-galleries/7924559/Solar-flares-co ronal-mass-ejections-and-aurora-borealis-in-pictures.html I should mention - in giving Randy Mills credit for his theory - that if he is correct about the solar corona being fueled by below-ground-state hydrogen, and he could very well be correct IMO - then the debris which earth receives should be rich in this component. And it will be most evident at the poles. Is there a further prediction that could be made based on this flare ? Well, there could already be cause/effect connection of this solar cycle to the heat waves across Northern Europe - and it would be interesting to compare the UV signature to the Northern lights in a normal year. Wonder if the genius Mills has made any such prediction? Jones Original Post: The biggest threat facing the USA is probably NOT related to Al Qaeda, Islamic radicalism, Iranian nuclear weaponry, a second Banking meltdown, failure to stop oil spills in the Gulf, a comet on a collision course, our Earth crossing the hypothetical galactic plane, Tea-baggers in Congress, or the other dire warnings that have appeared in the News recently. However, there may be a true connection to the year 2012 - aside from most of the Mayan inspired nonsense (which is an almost guaranteed book-selling strategy). Solar cycle 24, due to peak around election time in November, or early in 2011 - looks like it's going to be one of the most intense cycles in modern times - at least since scientific solar record-keeping began almost 400 years ago . yet a few observers (and writers) are trying to stretch the exact date a little further out - till the end of 2012 - for reasons that probably relate to drama and commerce, more than to science. Here is NASA's take on the date: http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2006/21dec_cycle24/ OK the next part of the story relates to EMP. There is a periodic natural threat that has gone more or less unnoticed, and it has a fair statistical chance of arriving soon, but it could easily be sooner or later, depending on the accuracy of our information on solar cycles. EMP stands for electromagnetic pulse, and you may have thought that it only related to advanced military weaponry, which it does - but the larger threat may be both natural and imminent . http://www.energycentral.com/gridtandd/communicationsandsecurity/articles/21 06/EMP-A-Poorly-Understood-Threat/ HuffPo is running a piece about John Kappenman - an electrical engineer who is determined to save civilization from the mother of all blackouts. Over the past thirty years, Kappenman has accumulated a compelling body of evidence indicating that sooner or later a major blast of EMP (electromagnetic pulse) from the Sun, will knock out the electrical power grid and the secondary results can be surprisingly bleak. Historically large storms have a potential to cause power grid blackouts and transformer damage of unprecedented proportions. An event that could incapacitate the network for a long time could be one of the largest natural disasters we could face. Kappenman insists that solar EMP blasts the size of those that occurred in 1859 (before society was electrified) and 1921 (before the power grid had developed to the point where it played any significant role) would today result in large-scale blackouts lasting for months or years. Apparently, there appears to be a marked similarity between the 1859 and 2012 solar cycles, which is kind of unrelated to the Mayan prophecy . or is it? One might imagine, with or without the help of pre-Columbian archaeology - that if a culture's religion and politics is built around Temples of the Sun . that this society might have understood a few things about solar cycles that we are just now coming to understand more fully. Or else one can try to conflate two unrelated stories in order to sell more books. Lawrence E. Joseph is the author of Apocalypse 2012 and he will tell you about EMPs and much more, if you are into doom and gloom . but he probably wants you to trust the Mayan prophecy a little more than the version NASA has given us . http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lawrence-e-joseph/the-solar-katrina-storm-t_b_ 641354.html
Re: [Vo]:Article on concentrating solar power (solar thermal)
Ron Wormus wrote: Along these lines this looks very promising: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/08/100802101813.htm Ha. A combination photovoltaic and thermoelectric chip. Clever. Similar methods of converting heat at different power levels or states have been developed. Some advanced thermoelectric chips have three layers, for hot, medium and cold. The hot side faces the heat source. This is conceptually similar to a triple expansion steam engine, and somewhat similar to a combined cycle turbine, wherein exhaust heat from the gas turbine is used to produce steam for the generation of additional electricity by a steam turbine (Siemens). - Jed
RE: EXTERNAL: RE: [Vo]:Solar EMP: the biggest threat to our way of life?
Jones, If Naudts is correct about the hydrino being relativistic hydrogen then wouldn't the hydrinos ejected from the sun be based on classic spatial acceleration as opposed to equivalent acceleration due to suppression inside a cavity? I would expect relativistic hydrogen to quickly decelerate to normal hydrogen in our atmosphere. I know Mills mentions that hydrogen can catalyze even with itself but I don't think this would be on the same order as a rigid Casimir geometry - at least not in the free space between the sun and earth. Without the velocity or the corona environment to maintain the hydrino state could a covalent bond be enough to hold a dihydrino from translating back to hydrogen? Regards Fran From: Jones Beene [mailto:jone...@pacbell.net] Sent: Tuesday, August 03, 2010 12:54 PM To: vortex-l@eskimo.com Subject: EXTERNAL: RE: [Vo]:Solar EMP: the biggest threat to our way of life? Solar alert. I sent the solar EMP post below two weeks ago, and already a large mass of solar plasma is due to hit earth tonight. The Northern Lights should be intense - and let's hope that this light-show is the limit of the effects of coronal mass ejection. It could be much worse. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/picture-galleries/7924559/Solar-flares-coronal-mass-ejections-and-aurora-borealis-in-pictures.html I should mention - in giving Randy Mills credit for his theory - that if he is correct about the solar corona being fueled by below-ground-state hydrogen, and he could very well be correct IMO - then the debris which earth receives should be rich in this component. And it will be most evident at the poles. Is there a further prediction that could be made based on this flare ? Well, there could already be cause/effect connection of this solar cycle to the heat waves across Northern Europe - and it would be interesting to compare the UV signature to the Northern lights in a normal year. Wonder if the genius Mills has made any such prediction? Jones Original Post: The biggest threat facing the USA is probably NOT related to Al Qaeda, Islamic radicalism, Iranian nuclear weaponry, a second Banking meltdown, failure to stop oil spills in the Gulf, a comet on a collision course, our Earth crossing the hypothetical galactic plane, Tea-baggers in Congress, or the other dire warnings that have appeared in the News recently. However, there may be a true connection to the year 2012 - aside from most of the Mayan inspired nonsense (which is an almost guaranteed book-selling strategy). Solar cycle 24, due to peak around election time in November, or early in 2011 - looks like it's going to be one of the most intense cycles in modern times - at least since scientific solar record-keeping began almost 400 years ago ... yet a few observers (and writers) are trying to stretch the exact date a little further out - till the end of 2012 - for reasons that probably relate to drama and commerce, more than to science. Here is NASA's take on the date: http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2006/21dec_cycle24/ OK the next part of the story relates to EMP. There is a periodic natural threat that has gone more or less unnoticed, and it has a fair statistical chance of arriving soon, but it could easily be sooner or later, depending on the accuracy of our information on solar cycles. EMP stands for electromagnetic pulse, and you may have thought that it only related to advanced military weaponry, which it does - but the larger threat may be both natural and imminent ... http://www.energycentral.com/gridtandd/communicationsandsecurity/articles/2106/EMP-A-Poorly-Understood-Threat/ HuffPo is running a piece about John Kappenman - an electrical engineer who is determined to save civilization from the mother of all blackouts. Over the past thirty years, Kappenman has accumulated a compelling body of evidence indicating that sooner or later a major blast of EMP (electromagnetic pulse) from the Sun, will knock out the electrical power grid and the secondary results can be surprisingly bleak. Historically large storms have a potential to cause power grid blackouts and transformer damage of unprecedented proportions. An event that could incapacitate the network for a long time could be one of the largest natural disasters we could face. Kappenman insists that solar EMP blasts the size of those that occurred in 1859 (before society was electrified) and 1921 (before the power grid had developed to the point where it played any significant role) would today result in large-scale blackouts lasting for months or years. Apparently, there appears to be a marked similarity between the 1859 and 2012 solar cycles, which is kind of unrelated to the Mayan prophecy ... or is it? One might imagine, with or without the help of pre-Columbian archaeology - that if a culture's religion and politics is built around Temples of the Sun ... that this society might
Re: [Vo]:Solar EMP: the biggest threat to our way of life?
Images of the flare: http://spaceweather.com/ T On Tue, Aug 3, 2010 at 3:11 PM, Terry Blanton hohlr...@gmail.com wrote: On Tue, Aug 3, 2010 at 12:54 PM, Jones Beene jone...@pacbell.net wrote: Solar alert. More information than you want: http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/alerts/index.html T
[Vo]:Solar thermal and the book The Long Emergency
I read part of a book recently (a free sample on Kindle!) titled The Long Emergency by James Kunstler. Based on the first chapter and the reviews, I gather the author thinks that alternative energy such as wind or solar will not suffice to maintain modern, high-tech, high energy civilization in North America. He thinks that declining oil production from resource exhaustion will cause widespread social trauma and that existing technology cannot fix the problem. These numbers for solar thermal plants from RenewableEnergyWorld give the lie to that assertion. These are actual numbers for existing plants, and engineering projection numbers for upcoming plants. Not pie-in-the-sky extrapolations for future technology. Anyway, very roughly: The Riverside Solar Millennium 986 MW trough solar thermal takes up 2091 ha U.S. summer peak generation capacity in 2008 was 752,470 MW http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epa/epa_sum.htmlhttp://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epa/epa_sum.html ~20% of U.S. capacity is met with ~100,000 MW of nuclear power. (100,000 MW*5 equals only 500,000 MW instead of 752,470 MW because nukes are turned on 24/7 for baseline generation). Anyway, you wouldn't do this, but if you wanted 752,470 MW of capacity in broad daylight, and 0 MW capacity at night, you could supply it with 763 solar thermal plants like the Solar Millennium. This would take up 1.6 million ha. That's 15,958 square kilometers, or 6,161 square miles. Again, it would not make sense to do this, but you could fit the whole kit-and-caboodle into a square 126 km to a side (square root of 15,958) or 78 miles in the middle of the Mojave desert. The Mojave Desert is 25,000 square miles, so this would take up about a quarter of it. There are many other places in the U.S. and of course North Africa where you can drive 78 miles and see only unpopulated land which could be used for this purpose. Of course it would have an effect on the wildlife, but that effect would not necessary be deleterious. Burning coal or building dams is pretty much 100% deleterious. 6,161 square miles is 0.2% of U.S. land area. This would be a tremendous project, but spread over 20 or 30 years the cost would not be all that high. It would be far cheaper than building 752,470 MW of nukes. The point is, you could generate nearly as much electricity as we presently generate with a relatively modest use of land, using existing technology. Of course this would not actually suffice to supply all electricity, since it goes off at night. I only used these number to show a ballpark estimate of what could be done. In real life, to end the use of fossil fuel, you would use some of this solar-thermal capacity to produce liquid fuel for plug-in hybrid vehicles. These require far less gasoline than conventional cars. GM estimates that for the average driver, the upcoming Volt will get 230 MPG for the average city driver over time assuming nightly full recharges. http://gm-volt.com/chevy-volt-faqs/http://gm-volt.com/chevy-volt-faqs/ Since the average U.S. car now gets 22 MPG, this would reduce our oil consumption by a factor of 5 or 10. It is not a factor of 10 after you take into account fuel used in aviation and by truck which would not benefit as much from plug-in hybrid designs, but anyway, it is more than enough to bankrupt OPEC and bring the fossil fuel era to a quick end. I do not think it would cost a huge amount to synthesize 10% or 20% of our present petroleum. Bear in mind that in this scenario all of the other advanced countries in the world, plus China, would also be adapting plug-in hybrid technology, as well as solar thermal, wind and so on. China is a technologically advanced country, fully capable of doing projects like this, even though per capita income is still low. In other words, the whole world would soon reduce oil consumption by a large factor, stretching out supplies and reducing the threat of global warming. Needless to say, improved batteries, HTSC transmission, and other not-yet-invented technology would make it easier to implement massive solar thermal plants of this nature. Also needless to say, you would not actually throw away the existing stock of nuclear, natural gas or even coal plants, and in many northern states you would build wind turbine farms instead. So we would not actually need 0.2% of the land. Getting back to the book The Long Emergency the author makes some egregious mistakes, such as claiming that we could not have nuclear plants without fossil fuel to operate uranium mining equipment and the like. He does not seem to realize that a nuclear plant can be used to synthesize liquid fuel for uranium mining equipment. Even if that was substantially more expensive than naturally occurring gasoline, it could be done. The energy overhead would be modest. That is to say, the ratio of total energy output of the nuclear plant compared to the
RE: [Vo]:Solar EMP: the biggest threat to our way of life?
Fran, Within the realm of possibilities are: 1)Naudts may be incorrect, or only partially correct 2)Naudts may describe a broad formative process for a particle which becomes a stable particle, once it leaves a cavity - both on its own, or as a hydride, or in a bound form 3)There could be alternate ways of forming stable redundant ground states in both hydrogen and helium, and the solar version is one of many which includes a Casimir version and a Mills version, all of which have common properties but differing formative methods. 4)There is a partial overlap with the whole Rydberg matter phenomena. BTW - Wiki has an newer entry, but there RM is new and there could be RM from other sources with a longer half-life. 5)We have only scratched the surface on the possibilities and I would be surprised if this turns out to be simple - and an either/or situation with regard to Naudts/Mills/RM/pycno/BEC/etc Jones From: Roarty, Francis X [ Jones, If Naudts is correct about the hydrino being relativistic hydrogen then wouldn't the hydrinos ejected from the sun be based on classic spatial acceleration as opposed to equivalent acceleration due to suppression inside a cavity? I would expect relativistic hydrogen to quickly decelerate to normal hydrogen in our atmosphere. I know Mills mentions that hydrogen can catalyze even with itself but I don't think this would be on the same order as a rigid Casimir geometry - at least not in the free space between the sun and earth. Without the velocity or the corona environment to maintain the hydrino state could a covalent bond be enough to hold a dihydrino from translating back to hydrogen? Regards Fran
Re: [Vo]:Solar thermal and the book The Long Emergency
In reply to Jed Rothwell's message of Tue, 03 Aug 2010 15:40:38 -0400: Hi, [snip] I do not have the exact numbers handy but I have looked up the amount of energy it takes to mine and manufacture uranium fuel compared to the energy produced by the fuel, and the numbers are quite favorable compared to, say, gasoline, which has 10% to 20% energy overhead these days (depending on the grade of the oil, where it is extracted, where it is transported to, and other factors). I suspect that most of the energy involved in Uranium production goes into the enrichment process, so utilizing Candu reactors (which can use natural uranium) should make it even easier. Regards, Robin van Spaandonk http://rvanspaa.freehostia.com/Project.html
[Vo]:D/H ratio
Hi, In Nuclear Physics of stars by Christian Iliadis, the author calculates that the D/H equilibrium ratio is about 1E-18 to 1E-17 depending on temperature. He also quotes a figure of 3E-5 for the ratio in the primordial gasses of the universe. Both are much smaller than the ratio in water which is about 1.5E-4, so one is left wondering how water became so enriched in D. Is it possible that there is an unknown CF mechanism at work in the universe creating extra D? ;) (or perhaps lots of D is created during the collapse of giant stars prior to exploding as a super nova). Regards, Robin van Spaandonk http://rvanspaa.freehostia.com/Project.html
Re: [Vo]:Article on concentrating solar power (solar thermal)
The people who developed the Luz International trough solar thermal plant in California are now running a company called BrightSource Energy: http://www.brightsourceenergy.com/bsii/history They now believe that the tower design is better than the trough design. They give a number of reasons here: http://www.brightsourceenergy.com/technology/faqs This seems convincing to me. - Jed
RE: [Vo]:D/H ratio
-Original Message- From: mix...@bigpond.com Is it possible that there is an unknown CF mechanism at work in the universe creating extra D? ;) Such a mechanism would have to be unknown since according to Wiki there is no known ongoing mechanism to create deuterium, and the amount we see all comes from initial condition. What did you have in mind for this mechanism? In the unknown category there is speculation, and one mechanism for creation involves dark matter. I have a minority perspective on this too, which I will include at the end, but it is not exactly an ongoing mechanism. To paraphrase Wiki: Deuterium is unlike helium-4 which is very stable and constantly increasing, whereas deuterium is marginally stable and easy to destroy, so there should be net decrease over time One consequence of this is that unlike helium-4, the amount of deuterium is very sensitive to initial conditions. The denser the universe is, the more deuterium gets converted to helium-4 before time runs out, and the less deuterium remains. There are no known post-Big Bang processes which would produce significant amounts of deuterium. Hence observations about deuterium abundance suggest that the universe is not infinitely old, which is in accordance with the Big Bang theory. ... The problem is the concentration of deuterium is too high to be consistent with a model that presumes that most of the universe consists of protons and neutrons. If one assumes that all of the universe consists of protons and neutrons, the density of the universe is such that much of the currently observed deuterium would have already been burned into helium-4. After a decade of effort, the consensus is that processes to produce deuterium are unlikely, and the explanation now used for the abundance of deuterium is that the universe does not consist mostly of baryons, and that non-baryonic matter (also known as dark matter) makes up most of the matter mass of the universe. By implication some could be converted into deuterium. END of paraphrase. This being show-and-tell day, my minority perspective on this subject, which is borrowed from a number of sources, is that there was NO single big bang at all. Instead (while having a similar effect) there have been an ongoing succession of little bangs, in an infinite universe. The little bang is the lifetime feature of any supercluster complex, defined as all the galaxies and stars which are blue-shifted relative to the observer. There can be hundreds of local groups (clusters of 50-100 galaxies) in each supercluster complex (SCC) all blue-shifted, but each and every one of these SCC are red-shifted relative to every other one. In effect, each SCC is in its own fractal (fractional dimension) and is spatially independent of the other SCC. An adjoining (very old) SCC can collapse and re-expand without affecting neighbors since every fractal is dimensionally isolated. Each of these SCC has a shorter lifetime than the present age of the universe. This can explain why there can be lots of deuterium (comparatively) in some of the cooler local groups, like our Milky Way. A hotter or denser galaxy, even in our SCC, could have almost no deuterium since it was converted to helium early on.
