Are all of our problems solved?

donheff

donheff

Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
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I'm surprised we haven't been hearing about the Italian cold fusion demonstration I just read about on SLashdot. Yeah, I know, we've been here before. Nevertheless, if the Italians actually deliver on their "claims to fuse hydrogen and nickel into copper, with no radioactive by-products, to produce copious amounts of heat, inexpensively, with a 1 megawatt plant scheduled to come on line later this month" well -- wow!

Is it different this time?
 
donheff said:
Is it different this time?
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Who was it posting a comment a couple of days ago that a sudden and dramatic technological discovery comes along once in a while that completely changes the game?

However...before I start celebrating I'm going to wait and see if this guy's claim he's developed a means that "could provide for all of the world's energy needs reliably, cheaply, cleanly, and safely" can be demonstrated to actually work.
 
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They laughed at Pons and Fleischmann too.


Oh wait. They were right to do so.
 
REWahoo said:
Who was it posting a comment a couple of days ago that a sudden and dramatic technological discovery comes along once in a while that completely changes the game?.
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P.T. Barnum? :angel:

However...before I start celebrating I'm going to wait and see if this guy's claim he's developed a means that "could provide for all of the world's energy needs reliably, cheaply, cleanly, and safely" can be demonstrated to actually work.
Click to expand...

No, no! The time to invest is NOW, before everyone see's it work ;)
 
Beam me up Scotty!
 
REWahoo said:
Who was it posting a comment a couple of days ago that a sudden and dramatic technological discovery comes along once in a while that completely changes the game?
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True, but then Steve Jobs died.

I think someone in Italy needs to focus on a dramatic financial discovery so it doesn't follow Greece....
 
As long as we are wondering about impossible things

In the "bigger than cold fusion" category, Charles Krauthammer (who usually POs me on political topics) has a very good piece in today's Washington Post on CERN's faster than light nuetrinos that have the entire scientific community quaking in their boots. He really captures the earth shaking dimensions of the findings (if true). They are highlighted by his opening joke and concluding lines:

“We don’t allow faster-than-light neutrinos in here,” says the bartender.
A neutrino walks into a bar.

- Joke circulating on the Internet...


...But there must be some error. Because otherwise everything changes. We shall need a new physics. A new cosmology. New understandings of past and future, of cause and effect. Then shortly and surely, new theologies.


Why? Because we can’t have neutrinos getting kicked out of taverns they have not yet entered."
 
donheff said:
In the "bigger than cold fusion" category, Charles Krauthammer (who usually POs me on political topics) has a very good piece in today's Washington Post on CERN's faster than light nuetrinos that have the entire scientific community quaking in their boots. He really captures the earth shaking dimensions of the findings (if true). They are highlighted by his opening joke and concluding lines:

“We don’t allow faster-than-light neutrinos in here,” says the bartender.
A neutrino walks into a bar.

- Joke circulating on the Internet ...

...But there must be some error. Because otherwise everything changes. We shall need a new physics. A new cosmology. New understandings of past and future, of cause and effect. Then shortly and surely, new theologies.


Why? Because we can’t have neutrinos getting kicked out of taverns they have not yet entered."
Click to expand...

Circulating here on 9/23/11 at 4:38 PM. http://www.early-retirement.org/forums/f27/its-funny-joke-thursday-20756-28.html post 2779

Nords said:
Geek humor I wish I'd thought of first:

"We don't allow faster-than-light neutrinos in here," said the bartender. A neutrino walks into a bar.

Particles Found to Travel Faster than Speed of Light: Scientific American
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REWahoo said:
Now the big question: Did it arrive here before it left HI? :)
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By "here" do you mean Texas? Not sure it's reached there yet. Can't comment further (political joke opportunity)

samclem said:
See? The ER Forum has it's own portal into tomorrow. I wonder if my ISP will charge extra for our use of faster-than-light neutrinos.
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Well, if your ISP is anything like mine they'll charge even before the faster-than-light neutrinos arrive...
 
MichaelB said:
Circulating here on 9/23/11 at 4:38 PM. http://www.early-retirement.org/forums/f27/its-funny-joke-thursday-20756-28.html post 2779

Originally Posted by Nords
Geek humor I wish I'd thought of first:

"We don't allow faster-than-light neutrinos in here," said the bartender. A neutrino walks into a bar.
Click to expand...
Click to expand...

I laughed when I saw that first posted. But when I went to repeat it, I realized it doesn't 'work'.

If the neutrino traveled faster than light, than he/it would be at the bar ahead of the light. So the bartender could not see the neutrino until after he/it got there. So it doesn't make sense, but it isn't funny the other way either.

OK, I know, it's a joke. But geek jokes have to stand up to geek analysis, because that is what we do. ;)

Anyhow, the cold fusion links I read were shockingly un-scientific 'it got very hot'? My skepticism is ratcheted up a notch, and the air is getting pretty thin up here.


-ERD50
 
ERD50 said:
OK, I know, it's a joke. But geek jokes have to stand up to geek analysis, because that is what we do. ;)

-ERD50
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That was my reaction also, sorta huhn? But maybe the neutrino drifted into the future so the bartender saw it before it arrived?
 
Ed_The_Gypsy said:
True. Where would we be today without his broadcast energy system?:cool:
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Shhhhhhh.

For years, I've been powering my house with it, for free.

The trick is in the receiver.
 
travelover said:
Shhhhhhh.

For years, I've been powering my house with it, for free.

The trick is in the receiver.
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Hey, it's been done. I remember reading about a guy who was getting a lot of "free" energy through inductive coupling to nearby high tension lines via a fairly complex setup. He wound up being prosecuted despite the fact that all his equipment was on his own property and he never touched the power company's equipment.
 
samclem said:
Hey, it's been done...........
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I think that was Nords. I have heard that he has some weird panel thingy on his roof that sucks power from outer space.
 
samclem said:
Hey, it's been done. I remember reading about a guy who was getting a lot of "free" energy through inductive coupling to nearby high tension lines via a fairly complex setup. He wound up being prosecuted despite the fact that all his equipment was on his own property and he never touched the power company's equipment.
Click to expand...
Of course the first problem is that he had to live close enough to a transmission tower to be able to exploit the inductive coupling. My Dad (a Westinghouse electrical engineer) used to tell the horror stories about routing high-voltage power lines to avoid just those types of situations.

Considering what the power company could have done to sabotage his equipment, I'd say prosecution was a pretty tame approach.

travelover said:
I think that was Nords. I have heard that he has some weird panel thingy on his roof that sucks power from outer space.
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Shhhh-- if you tell people how the secret photon interceptor works then everyone will want to have one!!
 
Here is a new development in quantum computing. Some scientists have constructed a solid state 2 qubit QC that can output computations to a separate register for memory and readout. Looks to potentially be scaleable. And the qubits last a whole 400 nanoseconds :) (but luckily it only takes 30n to make a computation). They will be cracking our bank accounts in no time.
 
A faster-than-light particle is a tachyon, which means that the muon neutrino could arrive before it was sent. :)
 
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