101–110 of 235 posts
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For what it's worth, I'm in France and it's common knowledge here that China invented gunpowder. I don't think I've ever heard someone saying Europe did.
But Europe was the first to do CANNONS on a large scale...
I would love to see a huge effort towards fusion, on the same (or even greater) scale as the Manhattan project or the Apollo program. I had been disappointed in the way that fusion always seemed to be 30 years away no matter how many years went past, but I just assumed that that was because the science was hard and just the way it had to be. https://i.imgur.com/sjH5r.jpg https://www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/Article…
This might sound a bit like a buzz-kill, but I don't think fusion power is necessarily competitively cheap. I think it will be comparable to nuclear power with a ~ 10 times higher capital investment to build a fusion-plant. Already now solar is said to be cheaper then nuclear. But nevertheless humanity should explore fusion since it is more or less the only significant power source not (indrectly) depending on the su…
I would love to see a huge effort towards fusion, on the same (or even greater) scale as the Manhattan project or the Apollo program. I had been disappointed in the way that fusion always seemed to be 30 years away no matter how many years went past, but I just assumed that that was because the science was hard and just the way it had to be. https://i.imgur.com/sjH5r.jpg https://www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/Article…
My Physics of Electrical Power Generation lecturer told us pretty flatly that we should not expect or bank on fusion power in our lifetimes. He said we should concentrate on renewables (which seems to be the way most countries are going in Europe at least).
Compared to the stellerator, tokamak is an older design. Germans have sucessfully built and tested the second generation stellerator, Wendelstein 7-X[1]. Now it will run for 32 minutes, where the Tokamak design is targeted for 1000 seconds, or 16 minutes. (Yes, a stellerator is much harder to build, but it's easier to control the plasma with; building one became feasible only after doing finite element analysis optim…
This is a big improvement compared to the microseconds once was. So maybe we're getting there.
Edit: removed some stuff that turned out to be fluff once I'd actually read the article. Whoops...
Anyone remember that really old game Outpost? It ran on Windows 3.1; used a CD recording of The Planets as its soundtrack. That's the first time I've heard of Tokamak reactors. What these are trying to achieve is pretty amazing. I hope one day, one of these reactors will be able to sustain a greater output than input. It has the potential to move the planet into a completely different energy age. Imagine if we could…
Funny, the picture instantly reminded me of the Shinra and its reactors in Final Fantaisy VII :) [1] Regarding Mars, I would love someone who knows to tell us how this would compare to raw sun energy exploitation. Each time I think of solar energy, I can't help but think it's a waste to try to collect it under the atmosphere, given one of its useful properties is precisely to protect us from the sun. My thinking usua…
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Funny, the picture instantly reminded me of the Shinra and its reactors in Final Fantaisy VII :) [1] Regarding Mars, I would love someone who knows to tell us how this would compare to raw sun energy exploitation. Each time I think of solar energy, I can't help but think it's a waste to try to collect it under the atmosphere, given one of its useful properties is precisely to protect us from the sun. My thinking usua…
The biggest problem with setting a solar farm in space is efficient energy transfer [1]. Bezos proposes to build also industrial zones in space, but then the problem is raw material transfer [2]. The easiest thing to do is to reap what you can here on surface of the Earth. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space-based_solar_power [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_manufacturing
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But Europe was the first to do CANNONS on a large scale...
Oh, yeah. Now you're mentioning it, "China invented gunpowder" is often followed by "but they used it only for fireworks".
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We do tend to diminish achievements from Asia historically. They discovered America first (the whole notion of "discovering" first a place where there already are people is absurd), they got printing first, they mastered gunpowder first... and yet most westerners will name Columbus, Gutenberg, and Europe.
For what it's worth, I'm in France and it's common knowledge here that China invented gunpowder. I don't think I've ever heard someone saying Europe did.
Though I wouldn't be surprised if gunpowder was discovered independently in Europe, or at least partly so because nobody walked out of China with a recipe for it.
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I'm a bit confused by this comment. Are you implying that "an academic culture of scientific honesty" is something the non-Chinese world has but China doesn't? I'll concede it's probably a matter of degree.
Especially on the front of medical trials, a recent Chinese government probe found 80% of data used was falsified [0] [0] http://www.rfa.org/english/news/china/clinical-fakes-0927201...
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This might sound a bit like a buzz-kill, but I don't think fusion power is necessarily competitively cheap. I think it will be comparable to nuclear power with a ~ 10 times higher capital investment to build a fusion-plant. Already now solar is said to be cheaper then nuclear. But nevertheless humanity should explore fusion since it is more or less the only significant power source not (indrectly) depending on the su…
The very high cost of fission has a lot to do with how nasty, awkward, long-lasting and expensive the fuel and waste are. We really won't know until we try building a power plant.
The only up side is that the decay products have a shorter half life. So the waste will only be a problem for a century or so, instead of for millennia.
This may be better than fission, but it's definitely not clean by any realistic definition of the word.