Yeah, I'd say it's pretty useless for ordinary folk: too expensive to justify the price. But for high-ups in companies and governments that are jetting all over the place all the time and may 'lose' enormous amounts of time sitting on planes, they will be happy with this and won't care about the costs.
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Full article: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01692-7Nature Briefing said:
I was reading an article on CBC today called 'How electric vehicles could transform the power grid', and it sounded really cool. Here's the key bit:
Some of the bigger electric cars will have really strong batteries - like that F150. So you can use them to go to emergency sites and provide power (yes, as a generator). And you'll be able to power your home for a few days with your car's battery (assuming it's charged
) in case of an outage. It's even good for climate change, as cars will be able to be part of surplus electricity storage, compensating for some of the fluctuations in the electricity generation of solar panels and wind turbines. As explained in this bit:
Source: https://www.cbc.ca/news/science/ev-to-grid-1.6100454CBC News said:
Some of the bigger electric cars will have really strong batteries - like that F150. So you can use them to go to emergency sites and provide power (yes, as a generator). And you'll be able to power your home for a few days with your car's battery (assuming it's charged
) in case of an outage. It's even good for climate change, as cars will be able to be part of surplus electricity storage, compensating for some of the fluctuations in the electricity generation of solar panels and wind turbines. As explained in this bit:They even have a pretty picture:
That was emerging tech 7 years ago I think. Maybe only Teslas could do it back then though.I was reading an article on CBC today called 'How electric vehicles could transform the power grid', and it sounded really cool. Here's the key bit:
Source: https://www.cbc.ca/news/science/ev-to-grid-1.6100454
Some of the bigger electric cars will have really strong batteries - like that F150. So you can use them to go to emergency sites and provide power (yes, as a generator). And you'll be able to power your home for a few days with your car's battery (assuming it's charged
They even have a pretty picture:
Yeah, clearly it's not new, as there are already cars that can do it. This is what the article says about that:
This might be from a Canadian perspective; a lot of European brands aren't available over here.
Wasn't sure where to put this but it feels as good a place as any. Add Moon wobbling to what seems a growing list of bad news. Pity some coastal areas.
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Do they say why our Moon is set to wobble.
Clearly there has to be some kind of force involved. Gravity?
Well that's not cool.
Just one of those things that's always happened apparently, but rising sea levels means a much greater impact this cycle.
Wish they'd use a word other than wobble in scenarios such as this. It just doesn't sound serious enough.
It's probably cooler under water
Understand that thanks.
But it must take a massive force on the Moon to cause it to wonder from its established orbit. Maybe I ought to Google it.
Ah sorry. Get you. Appears to just be a varying speed. Below is the best I could find.
https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/10836
Really appreciate that. From what I read and understood, it appeared more like a rotational variation as viewed from the Earth.
But obviously it must be more than that for NASA to warn of impending effects on our tides.
Just read something about it from the Washington Post.
The easiest way to look at it is if you flap your hands in a bath. That causes ripples and waves.
But when the bath is almost full, those ripples and waves start to slosh the water over the side of the bath.
Rising sea levels resulting from climate change compounded with the effects of the Moon wobble tidal effects resulting in the increased likelihood of flooding.
Apparently this is a cyclic phenomenon over something like an 18.6 years cycle.
The easiest way to look at it is if you flap your hands in a bath. That causes ripples and waves.
But when the bath is almost full, those ripples and waves start to slosh the water over the side of the bath.
Rising sea levels resulting from climate change compounded with the effects of the Moon wobble tidal effects resulting in the increased likelihood of flooding.
Apparently this is a cyclic phenomenon over something like an 18.6 years cycle.
Wouldn't fancy living too near the sea in a few years.
Sounds like a lot more will be though whether they like it or not.
Would this affect river systems as well or are flood barriers enough?
It sounds pretty serious to me actually - I mean, if something as fecking big as the moon wobbles...
Maybe you need to imagine it more literally (with an actual face on the moon and the whole thing going all wobbly. )Seriously though, that's nice going for us. As if people living on coasts didn't have enough to look forward to as it was already...
It's called axial precession. It happens to every orbiting body as far as we know.
What's good for climate change is that the earth is trending towards a lower axial tilt and wobble, which will cool the earth just in time for our great grandkids x100.
I agree! It's the word wobble I was taking issue withIt sounds pretty serious to me actually - I mean, if something as fecking big as the moon wobbles...
That's more like it.
So every spot on earth has its own geological footprint, and you can follow where creatures have lived by analyzing how permanent parts of the body that grow slowly include elements from different parts of the earth. Or in more detail (and better explained), for the mammoth that this is ultimately about:
Full article: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02206-1
And so by analyzing those tusks, they were able to say where this particular mammoth lived throughout its long life:Nature said:
Like riding its back thousands of years after the fact - very cool.Nature said:
Full article: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02206-1
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-58252784
US lab stands on threshold of key nuclear fusion goal
This is quite exciting. Clean and potentially endless energy!
US lab stands on threshold of key nuclear fusion goal
This is quite exciting. Clean and potentially endless energy!
Every time I see some kind of potentially great breakthrough nothing ever seems to come of it
In perhaps more creepy news.
https://www.sciencealert.com/scient...o-make-mini-brains-they-grew-rudimentary-eyes
https://www.sciencealert.com/scient...o-make-mini-brains-they-grew-rudimentary-eyes
Everytime this just makes me think of the, erm, legendary Val Kilmer film The Saint.Every time I see some kind of potentially great breakthrough nothing ever seems to come of it
There's just so many steps to achieving it. Each step is a milestone though. The lead scientist says that this is effectively enough electricity to boil a kettle and they will need to repeat this thousands of times a second before it's worthwhile.Every time I see some kind of potentially great breakthrough nothing ever seems to come of it
We're still decades away from thinking about building fusion reactors commercially, but we are (very slowly) knocking down the scientific barriers to getting there.
I'm just going to be super optimistic and say that's awesome! We can use some good news on the energy front.
Hope they do it. The previous record of 67% was set all the way back in 1997. It gets exponentially harder the closer you get to breakeven though.
Half the problem is these things need more power than the grid can provide. The ITER experiment in France will use more than some European countries.
I wonder how they manage to contain the heat that they say is as hot as the sun's core. Impressive but equally scary.
Boiling the kettle for free? That would half my leccy bill
Depends which way you look at it.
Totally agree with your last point. There is massive efforts worldwide focusing on developing a commercial nuclear fusion capability.
We may be a few decades away. But I am concerned that it will be done. However, it will ultimately come down to cost.
It's a bit like trying to squash a sleeping bag back into its cover. The more you press on it, the more it tries to escape. The more the power and temperate and pressure and everything else increases, the more the plasma tries to escape.
There are different approaches, but basically you have to make it float. There is no material that can hold it. The most common approach is magnets but the one in this article uses lasers.
The lasers are actually the initial heat source with a huge amount of energy focusing on a very small size of a Hydrogen isotope.
The magnet is there to hold this in place in order to create the huge pressure.
Because of the small size of the the Hydrogen isotope, the temperature is actually orders of magnitude higher than that of the Sun core.
At those temperatures, the Hydrogen atom looses it Electron to become only a positive proton. Any 2 protons that can get close enough to eachother will automatically repel. But if they can actually be smashed together, the Strong Force will overcome the Electromagnetic Force and bind them together. Then the Weak Force turns one of the Protons into a Nutron and ejects a tiny amount of mass. In doing so, the 2 fused Hydrogen Protons become a Helium Atom which is slightly lighter.
And it is that tiny amount of mass that results through E=MC2 to provide the heat energy.
In principle, perfectly simple.
In practice, extremely difficult to achieve and sustain using less energy than the output.
But it will be done, I have no doubt.
It's not really the same as having a liter of a very hot liquid. The density of the particles isn't close to that of a liquid.
It's essentially the particles that have the very high temperature, they cool down immediately upon touching anything as their thermal mass is very small. That also means you need to keep the particles from touching anything as you then lose them. So you have to keep them suspended in magnetic fields which is it's own challenge.
I know very little about inertial confinement fusion but I thought once they had started the reaction the lasers kept the inward explosive force evenly spaced around the fuel, and there was no need for magnets. Its own inertia kept it contained hence the name.
Magnetic containment is the simpler (to my mind) method and uses the huge magnets and magnetic fields to suspend the plasma.
You could well be right as there are a number of variations in the methodology. I have been looking at the ITER and the UK Tokamak developments.
ITER/tokamaks are based around magnetic confinement, which is what you describe above. NIF uses inertial confinement which is a little bit like starting a thermonuclear bomb. The outer shell of the fuel sphere is set off first using lasers, which as well as exploding outwards also pushes inwards, the force of which starts the fusion reaction in the core of the sphere.