Today is the 100th anniversary of the Tunguska blast, which is believed to have been the result of a comet fragment breaking up in the atmosphere with a <30 megaton yield. This impact is insignificant compared to the impact of an object several kilometers in diameter, which have a yield of tens millions of megatons of TNT.
With this in mind “saving the planet” is actually a misnomer, since it doesn’t matter how much CO2 we pump into the air, it isn’t going to destroy the planet. The Earth has been hit by a planet the size of Mars, and that didn’t destroy the planet. Humans as we are today cannot destroy the planet, the best we can do is kill ourselves off. The saying should be “save the people” since we are the ones that suffer, if the planet’s environment is damaged.
Monday, June 30, 2008
The return of the Victory Garden
During the first and second World Wars, the Allies had large scale campaigns to encourage people to have home gardens, in order to take the pressure off food supply. With food and fuel costs rising and pants sizes ever expanding, it is time to bring back the Victory Garden. I am not talking about people growing their own wheat and corn at home; I am talking about people growing a reasonable size garden with fruits and vegetables. The new Victory Garden will be about winning the battle of the bulge, and restoring some of America’s self sufficiency.
By growing some of their own food people could save significant amounts of money and fuel versus buying the same stuff at the store, and get a superior tasting product. Not to mention getting people outside and working in the garden will help shave a few pounds off, give them real vitamin D and fresh air. For people without land community gardens can give them the chance to grow there own food. (The owner of the land will need a nice tax break to make it worthwhile. I think that Exxon and other oil companies might want to consider sponsoring gardens. The good will and carbon credits would do them good. However, I think Starbucks or MacDonald’s is more likely to sponsor gardens.) Even people who can’t garden growing a few potted plants in their can help. The food contribution might be minimal, but the air purification, humidity and temperature control will make it worth while.
People always talk about the Green Revolution, but there is very little actual green in most plans. This plan is actually green, and the benefits are readily apparent. The best part is there is minimal political risk, for a congressman or woman to stand up in session and say they support home gardening as a way to help everyday people make ends meet and help the environment.
By growing some of their own food people could save significant amounts of money and fuel versus buying the same stuff at the store, and get a superior tasting product. Not to mention getting people outside and working in the garden will help shave a few pounds off, give them real vitamin D and fresh air. For people without land community gardens can give them the chance to grow there own food. (The owner of the land will need a nice tax break to make it worthwhile. I think that Exxon and other oil companies might want to consider sponsoring gardens. The good will and carbon credits would do them good. However, I think Starbucks or MacDonald’s is more likely to sponsor gardens.) Even people who can’t garden growing a few potted plants in their can help. The food contribution might be minimal, but the air purification, humidity and temperature control will make it worth while.
People always talk about the Green Revolution, but there is very little actual green in most plans. This plan is actually green, and the benefits are readily apparent. The best part is there is minimal political risk, for a congressman or woman to stand up in session and say they support home gardening as a way to help everyday people make ends meet and help the environment.
Monday, June 23, 2008
FedEx passenger service
The example set in the Tom Hank’s movie “Castaway” aside, cargo planes can carry people too, since the holds are pressurized and climate controlled. By creating people/seat modules for their planes similar to the cargo modules FedEx and the other cargo carriers could sell their extra capacity to travelers looking for bargains. People book passage on cargo ships why not planes? Getting NYC to LA for a couple hundred bucks would make some discomfort worth it.
Actually to make this work the best the plane should start as passenger service, since people are more likely to book well in advance. Then a day or two before the flight any extra seat modules would be electronically removed and the space sold as cargo space in an electronic auction type format. The whole thing could be done as an electronic auction. You bid for the space, and if you out bid a couple of boxes of T-shirts headed to a conference, you can get a seat. The plane would have a movable rear bulkhead wall, since you would have to keep the people and cargo separate. Seats would be fastened into the floor, and the bathroom shared with the pilots. Flight attendants really would largely be there for safety, since the food would have to be boxed.
Of course this all depends on the FAA, insurance companies, cargo companies, etc thinking this is a good idea. It also depends on people’s willingness to sit in seats in what would effectively be a cargo module, and be feed food from a carrier approved cafeteria since it would have to be picnic food in the sky.
The flip side of this would be super luxury carrier offering cargo service. The top deck of a 747 would be super luxury and the rest of the plane cargo. This configuration offers possible the best business model, since most 747 are used for cargo anyways, so selling 10-20 seats on the upper deck at $5K-$20K per seat for non-stop trans-oceanic flights could be gravy.
Actually to make this work the best the plane should start as passenger service, since people are more likely to book well in advance. Then a day or two before the flight any extra seat modules would be electronically removed and the space sold as cargo space in an electronic auction type format. The whole thing could be done as an electronic auction. You bid for the space, and if you out bid a couple of boxes of T-shirts headed to a conference, you can get a seat. The plane would have a movable rear bulkhead wall, since you would have to keep the people and cargo separate. Seats would be fastened into the floor, and the bathroom shared with the pilots. Flight attendants really would largely be there for safety, since the food would have to be boxed.
Of course this all depends on the FAA, insurance companies, cargo companies, etc thinking this is a good idea. It also depends on people’s willingness to sit in seats in what would effectively be a cargo module, and be feed food from a carrier approved cafeteria since it would have to be picnic food in the sky.
The flip side of this would be super luxury carrier offering cargo service. The top deck of a 747 would be super luxury and the rest of the plane cargo. This configuration offers possible the best business model, since most 747 are used for cargo anyways, so selling 10-20 seats on the upper deck at $5K-$20K per seat for non-stop trans-oceanic flights could be gravy.
Biofuels the right way
The problem with biofuels is we have to use farmland to grow fuel and not food. What we need to do it find a way to produce fuel without taking land out of cultivation. The solution is as close as your front yard. There are 32 million acres of lawn in the USA alone, which is about half the acreage given to corn. Yes switch grass and cellulose ethanol are part of the answer, but that still requires farm or unused marginal land to be converted to agriculture. Lawns are already under cultivation and mostly wasted space. However, if Scotts or the other tuff grass companies got together they could breed a grass that could be used for biofuel feed stock and still be a nice lawn. People would cut their grass and leave the clippings in special bins on the curb, once or twice a month a truck would pick up the clippings and take it for conversion. Or people could take the clippings to recycling centers. I think a high cellulose grass would be the best, but a grass high in lipids could work too. Yes, this is far less efficient than growing grass on a massive scale, but lawns are not about practicality, so recovering any value from the waste contributes. According to a lawn services industry survey Americans spend >$1,000 per household per year on lawn care, but they only spend ~$2,100 a year for gasoline (assuming they burn around 10 gallons a week).
Also, by using a non-food feedstock for fuel it should also help reduce food prices, since the corn can be feed to people and animals, and grass feed to yeast. The issue is getting people to used chemicals that won’t hurt the yeast or bacteria. Organic grass would be best but I am sure that Scott’s would come out with companion treatments to their grasses. The government could encourage this by giving people tax credits for replanting their yards and the companies processing the fuel share the carbon credits.
Also, by using a non-food feedstock for fuel it should also help reduce food prices, since the corn can be feed to people and animals, and grass feed to yeast. The issue is getting people to used chemicals that won’t hurt the yeast or bacteria. Organic grass would be best but I am sure that Scott’s would come out with companion treatments to their grasses. The government could encourage this by giving people tax credits for replanting their yards and the companies processing the fuel share the carbon credits.
The new Greyhound
With the airlines canceling service to small towns there is a need for people to get to and from large cities to catch flights. This will mean that non stop bus service can fill the niche. Yes fuel for buses has gotten more expensive but not like jet fuel. Plus buses can hold more people than a regional jet. If the airlines partner with the bus companies they can offer regional service that still fits the flight schedule. Yes a bus is slower and less glamorous but it beats having to drive. To be successful the bus companies are going to have to reinvent themselves with plane type service and airport like amenities in the stations. This will mean the need for new buses and terminals just off site from the airports.
Tuesday, June 03, 2008
Microsoft’s next move:
With all the talk about the Vista debacle and the possible Yahoo acquisition, it is easy to forget that MS makes a lot of money on Office. With Adobe’s release of Acrobat 9 and creation of acrobat.com, the gauntlet has been tossed. Microsoft must now pick it up and try and take on Google and Adobe in a head to head contest over who will dominate content creation and collaboration in the virtual work place. They have a good start in SharePoint and Silverlight but they have yet to answer with a portable document format.
If I might make a humble suggestion, I would like to see the interface for Word change to look more like MS Paint or a tack board or even PowerPoint. Yes if I am writing a letter it is one thing, but the moment a picture, table or text box goes into the document, the document should be live. I want the picture to go where I put it, and the text to properly wrap around it, and use the margins I set for it. I want thumb tack icons to make things stick to the page and not move around. I want to select sections of text as a module and move them around, to layout a page. It is time for all the weird formatting that is a legacy of the days when Word was a word processor to give way, so Word can be reborn and remove the need for pdf’s.
I would like a lasso tool for Excel. I want to open a text file, lasso what I want the columns to be and have it auto-convert to a spreadsheet. I also want better visualization tools and the removal of the 16 and/or 32 bit file limitations. If there are 64 bit OS’s then people should be able to work with information in 64 bit spreadsheets.
I am suggesting, but what I am suggesting is substantive changes to MS’ flagship product, not the use of pastel colors for the buttons. That might be too much to ask, as a baby step perhaps MS could try hybridizing Word and PowerPoint, and create a rich content file editor.
Selling Office dirt cheap to students is a good start, it won't be enough to stop Adobe or Google. MS will need a rich content file solution, a low cost Sharepoint like solution, (think Sourceforge meets MySpace for documents), and a way to get SilverLight into people's hands.
If I might make a humble suggestion, I would like to see the interface for Word change to look more like MS Paint or a tack board or even PowerPoint. Yes if I am writing a letter it is one thing, but the moment a picture, table or text box goes into the document, the document should be live. I want the picture to go where I put it, and the text to properly wrap around it, and use the margins I set for it. I want thumb tack icons to make things stick to the page and not move around. I want to select sections of text as a module and move them around, to layout a page. It is time for all the weird formatting that is a legacy of the days when Word was a word processor to give way, so Word can be reborn and remove the need for pdf’s.
I would like a lasso tool for Excel. I want to open a text file, lasso what I want the columns to be and have it auto-convert to a spreadsheet. I also want better visualization tools and the removal of the 16 and/or 32 bit file limitations. If there are 64 bit OS’s then people should be able to work with information in 64 bit spreadsheets.
I am suggesting, but what I am suggesting is substantive changes to MS’ flagship product, not the use of pastel colors for the buttons. That might be too much to ask, as a baby step perhaps MS could try hybridizing Word and PowerPoint, and create a rich content file editor.
Selling Office dirt cheap to students is a good start, it won't be enough to stop Adobe or Google. MS will need a rich content file solution, a low cost Sharepoint like solution, (think Sourceforge meets MySpace for documents), and a way to get SilverLight into people's hands.
Monday, June 02, 2008
The Atom cloud
With cloud computing being all the rage there is still the problem of where to put the cloud. However Intel recently provided a solution, the Atom processor. If all the stars align, meaning that WiMax connectivity is as good as promised and battery life concerns can be addressed, the best place to put the cloud could be in your pocket. The ultimate cloud computer could be built out of cell phones and music players. Think about it, unless you are obsessive most of the time your cell phone and music player sit and wait to be used. I figure by the time the mobile cloud can be built there won’t be a difference; you will have one device that is the size of an iPhone/Blackberry hybrid. (It can’t be too small or the screen and keyboard will be unusable.)
To be most things to most people the ultra-mobile digital platform will need to have significant amounts of solid state memory and an Atom type processor. But like your current iPod it will spend most of its time sitting around waiting for you to use it, as will millions of other people’s. This resource of millions of uberPods or uPods all connected to the internet, could have more computational power than a current generation ASCI “color” computer, without all the overhead.
To be most things to most people the ultra-mobile digital platform will need to have significant amounts of solid state memory and an Atom type processor. But like your current iPod it will spend most of its time sitting around waiting for you to use it, as will millions of other people’s. This resource of millions of uberPods or uPods all connected to the internet, could have more computational power than a current generation ASCI “color” computer, without all the overhead.
Sunday, June 01, 2008
A “practical” way to harness vacuum energy
Ok I normally don’t tackle advance physics topics on here. That is not because I don’t enjoy pondering them, but because a lot of it is very very abstract. I have a great theory that unifies relativistic and quantum gravity, but it is not easy to understand, or it sounds like total BS...
However, I do post about alternative energy, and this is about alternative energy. One more disclaimer and I’ll get to the post. When I say practical this referenced against that tapping vacuum energy is currently impossible, so this isn’t practical in the sense you will see plans for a vacuum energy generator in Popular Mechanics.
Basically to tap vacuum energy all that needs to be done is to confine matter in a very small area of space and heat it to the point that the matter breaks down and quantum foam forms, and then maintain that state indefinitely. (In theory you could heat a vacuum, but I am not sure how one accomplishes that task.) When I say heat it I am talking about billions of Kelvin, so a toaster oven isn’t going to do it. Once a quantum foam forms the particle pairs that form, and are annihilated will generate a flux of high energy particles, mostly very energetic gamma rays, and neutrinos. As long as the system produces more heat than is required to maintain it, we should be able to extract energy without destabilizing it. From this system it will be possible to extract more energy than exists in the matter put in. This extra energy is the vacuum or zero point energy that is believed to represent the left over energy from symmetric baryogenesis after the universe came into existence.
Regardless of the temperature at a very low probability virtual particle pairs are forming and being annihilated all over the universe. This tiny leak of energy from the vacuum might be minimal, but a stable quantum foam would allow the particles to become real long enough to make the energy flux that could be massive. Considering there is more than a million times more energy in the vacuum than there is in all the matter in the universe, we don’t need to worry about running out for a while.
Lest you think this is half baked BS there is evidence from some ultra high temperature experiments done in the Z machine that support my theory. At >2 gigaKelvin they got more energy out than they were suppose to, however the authors of the paper claim MHD is the cause. However, this claim is widely disputed, and not just by me.
To be practical for energy production I would imagine that a quantum foam a couple of nM (10^-9 M) in diameter would be all that is necessary. A quantum foam just a few Angstroms wide could still produce large amounts of energy, remember all this happens at near Planck’s length (10^-35 M), so there is plenty of room to work. (If Planck’s length was 1 meter, two nanometers would be larger than the size of the visible universe. Like I said there is plenty of room!) Still is a tall order to stably maintain these kinds of temperatures, regardless of the volume. As you have undoubtedly noticed I have not put equations on here, so I can’t be sure of the energy production per unit volume, but remember the foam would be contained in much larger heated volume, but I'll come back to that.
The issue would be how you design a confinement field that won’t use more energy than you can produce. The magnetic field in the Z machine collapses almost instantly, so it would require a totally new design to form the quantum foam and extract energy from it.
While unmaking matter and bring extra energy into our universe sounds dangerous, I don’t think there is much of a possibility for a run away reaction. Sure you wouldn’t want to touch it to you tongue, but if the confinement failed the quantum foam would cool, and release its heat as photons.
When I first started writing this I was unaware of the Z machine experiment, so this idea was just something that made sense.
he real problem is not how do we generate gigaKelvin heat, it is how do we extract energy from this system without disturbing it? You can’t very well put a water jacket around it, to make steam. If we can’t extract the energy then this is just an expensive trick.
So I’ll take a crack at this one too.
In the super heated volume surrounding the quantum foam, we use the heat and field lines to do “heavy” element fusion (Be, Li, C, etc). This would utilize the “waste” heat to drive fusion and create an even more energy rich plasma stream. This secondary plasma could be cooled by impinging it with gas to create a "cooler" plasma stream that could be utilized directly for power generation. If a more direct means of cooling were required elements heavier than Fe or Ni could be fused by the intense heat. This type of fusion requires energy to be spent, since above this transition the elements created by fusion are heavier than the two elements that formed it. If the right elements were fed into the system it is possible to generate elements that will decay rapidly producing usable amounts of heat, or be completely stable and hopefully more valuable than the ones that went in.
With either system I see a need for a plasma turbine, where spinning plasma would induce a rotating magnetic field that would impinge on another field thereby doing work. By allowing the plasma to directly do work, the efficiency of a plasma turbine could be >60%. Then the much cooler non-ionized gas could be feed through a regular turbine, to extract more energy, and if necessary the last little bit of heat could be extracted by boiling a liquid and turning a steam turbine.
The reactor housing could be cooled by a helium stream that could dump its heat into system that could drive endothermic chemical reactions (like C02 + 2*H20 --> CH4 + 2*02). Since the helium wouldn’t actually be used in the process, it can be recovered by gaseous diffusion through a membrane, and methane used for chemical feed stocks.
If the plasma turbine or similar can be built then the next generation of power generation has a future beyond being ultra high tech steam engines.
As for my vacuum energy theory only time will tell if it is sound or not. I will close like I began with a caveat. I am not a particle physicist by training so I have attempted to explain my theory using what I believe to be the correct terminology, but I likely got the names of things wrong. So, do dismiss the idea because of a terminology mistake.
However, I do post about alternative energy, and this is about alternative energy. One more disclaimer and I’ll get to the post. When I say practical this referenced against that tapping vacuum energy is currently impossible, so this isn’t practical in the sense you will see plans for a vacuum energy generator in Popular Mechanics.
Basically to tap vacuum energy all that needs to be done is to confine matter in a very small area of space and heat it to the point that the matter breaks down and quantum foam forms, and then maintain that state indefinitely. (In theory you could heat a vacuum, but I am not sure how one accomplishes that task.) When I say heat it I am talking about billions of Kelvin, so a toaster oven isn’t going to do it. Once a quantum foam forms the particle pairs that form, and are annihilated will generate a flux of high energy particles, mostly very energetic gamma rays, and neutrinos. As long as the system produces more heat than is required to maintain it, we should be able to extract energy without destabilizing it. From this system it will be possible to extract more energy than exists in the matter put in. This extra energy is the vacuum or zero point energy that is believed to represent the left over energy from symmetric baryogenesis after the universe came into existence.
Regardless of the temperature at a very low probability virtual particle pairs are forming and being annihilated all over the universe. This tiny leak of energy from the vacuum might be minimal, but a stable quantum foam would allow the particles to become real long enough to make the energy flux that could be massive. Considering there is more than a million times more energy in the vacuum than there is in all the matter in the universe, we don’t need to worry about running out for a while.
Lest you think this is half baked BS there is evidence from some ultra high temperature experiments done in the Z machine that support my theory. At >2 gigaKelvin they got more energy out than they were suppose to, however the authors of the paper claim MHD is the cause. However, this claim is widely disputed, and not just by me.
To be practical for energy production I would imagine that a quantum foam a couple of nM (10^-9 M) in diameter would be all that is necessary. A quantum foam just a few Angstroms wide could still produce large amounts of energy, remember all this happens at near Planck’s length (10^-35 M), so there is plenty of room to work. (If Planck’s length was 1 meter, two nanometers would be larger than the size of the visible universe. Like I said there is plenty of room!) Still is a tall order to stably maintain these kinds of temperatures, regardless of the volume. As you have undoubtedly noticed I have not put equations on here, so I can’t be sure of the energy production per unit volume, but remember the foam would be contained in much larger heated volume, but I'll come back to that.
The issue would be how you design a confinement field that won’t use more energy than you can produce. The magnetic field in the Z machine collapses almost instantly, so it would require a totally new design to form the quantum foam and extract energy from it.
While unmaking matter and bring extra energy into our universe sounds dangerous, I don’t think there is much of a possibility for a run away reaction. Sure you wouldn’t want to touch it to you tongue, but if the confinement failed the quantum foam would cool, and release its heat as photons.
When I first started writing this I was unaware of the Z machine experiment, so this idea was just something that made sense.
he real problem is not how do we generate gigaKelvin heat, it is how do we extract energy from this system without disturbing it? You can’t very well put a water jacket around it, to make steam. If we can’t extract the energy then this is just an expensive trick.
So I’ll take a crack at this one too.
In the super heated volume surrounding the quantum foam, we use the heat and field lines to do “heavy” element fusion (Be, Li, C, etc). This would utilize the “waste” heat to drive fusion and create an even more energy rich plasma stream. This secondary plasma could be cooled by impinging it with gas to create a "cooler" plasma stream that could be utilized directly for power generation. If a more direct means of cooling were required elements heavier than Fe or Ni could be fused by the intense heat. This type of fusion requires energy to be spent, since above this transition the elements created by fusion are heavier than the two elements that formed it. If the right elements were fed into the system it is possible to generate elements that will decay rapidly producing usable amounts of heat, or be completely stable and hopefully more valuable than the ones that went in.
With either system I see a need for a plasma turbine, where spinning plasma would induce a rotating magnetic field that would impinge on another field thereby doing work. By allowing the plasma to directly do work, the efficiency of a plasma turbine could be >60%. Then the much cooler non-ionized gas could be feed through a regular turbine, to extract more energy, and if necessary the last little bit of heat could be extracted by boiling a liquid and turning a steam turbine.
The reactor housing could be cooled by a helium stream that could dump its heat into system that could drive endothermic chemical reactions (like C02 + 2*H20 --> CH4 + 2*02). Since the helium wouldn’t actually be used in the process, it can be recovered by gaseous diffusion through a membrane, and methane used for chemical feed stocks.
If the plasma turbine or similar can be built then the next generation of power generation has a future beyond being ultra high tech steam engines.
As for my vacuum energy theory only time will tell if it is sound or not. I will close like I began with a caveat. I am not a particle physicist by training so I have attempted to explain my theory using what I believe to be the correct terminology, but I likely got the names of things wrong. So, do dismiss the idea because of a terminology mistake.
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