I think nuclear batteries have a big potential,
electricity directly from nuclear decay. Sheets of
glowy plastic sandwiched with solar cells. They
already sell plastic strips that will glow for 12 years.

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Gail Shaw wrote:
> "Darren New" <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote in message
> news:47e3ee74@news.povray.org...
>> Gail Shaw wrote:
>>> It's no more possible than travelling faster than light or creating
> matter
>>> out of thin air. In fact, it's less possible than both of those (which
>>> theoretically do occur under strange circumstances)
>> Actually, they both occur all the time everywhere. :-)
> 
> Has someone seen tacheons? I admit, I'm a bit behind on some of the lit.

I don't recall. I remember there was evidence they thought were tachyons.

> Matter out of thin space happens, but since they're virtual particles that
> disintegrate (and turn back into the photons that created them) in a
> fraction of a nanosecond, it's not really a factor.

I was just being pendantic. :-) Light goes all different speeds, 
including faster and slower. It's only when you get past a couple 
wavelengths that you have enough alternatives that they start canceling 
out speeds other than "c".  And of course it's exactly "matter out of 
thin air" that are the exchange particles keeping you from blowing up 
into a haze of undifferentiated fundamental particles.

> Or are you talking about zero-point energy?

I'm not sure how it relates to zero point energy. I suspect there's some 
relationship between virtual particles and ZPE, but I'm not sure what it 
is. ZPE is caused by there having to be enough energy in a system to 
keep your fermions(?) from occupying the same space. I.e., you have to 
have enough energy in the system to satisfy the uncertainty principles. 
It's also what keeps liquid hydrogen from freezing. :-)

> I was trying to leave quantum out of this. Thermodynamics alone are bad
> enough. :-)

I was just being a wise-ass. ;-)

-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     "That's pretty. Where's that?"
          "It's the Age of Channelwood."
     "We should go there on vacation some time."

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Gail Shaw wrote:
> I've read some of the discussions. Thing with the virtual particles - how do
> you make them real. Only way I know of is a black hole, and they don't make
> good pets.

You take away all the virtual particles that would cancel out the ones 
you want.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casimir_effect

I never knew until recently that it wasn't a microscopic effect, but 
hundreds of atoms in size and an atmosphere worth of pressure. Pretty cool.

And, apparently, there's no real reason to think thermodynamics applies 
to this energy.

-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     "That's pretty. Where's that?"
          "It's the Age of Channelwood."
     "We should go there on vacation some time."

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"Darren New" <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote in message
news:47e45774$1@news.povray.org...
>
> I was just being a wise-ass. ;-)

As usual. ;-)

Got some references for the light travelling faster and slower than c? It's
not something I've run into.

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"Gail Shaw" <initialsurname@sentech sa dot com> wrote in message 
news:47e3d1e5@news.povray.org...
>
> "St." <dot### [at] dotcom> wrote in message news:47e3be80$2@news.povray.org...
>>
>
>> > Oh well, it could be worse.
>>
>>    :oO  60%! I didn't know that. That's bad news.  :o/
>
> Well, currently SA has about the cheapest electricity in the world, so 
> isn't
> as bad as it sounds. The regular blackouts are far more of a problem.
> From what I hear, if they do hike the price that much, our electricity 
> will
> be around the same price as in Canada.
>

It's a pity solar panels are still so expensive...  :-(
And I don't think I'll be able to get my car to run on water soon enough 
:-P

-- 
-Nekar Xenos-

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Gail Shaw wrote:
> Got some references for the light travelling faster and slower than c? It's
> not something I've run into.

Sure.

http://www.amazon.com/QED-Strange-Theory-Light-Matter/dp/0691024170/

It's apparently pretty normal stuff. It's what makes hard doing the 
actual math for quantum physics.  But over the course of a couple of 
wavelengths, the likelihood of light traveling at a different speed 
falls off to near zero. It's mostly something you see with exchange 
particles.

-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     "That's pretty. Where's that?"
          "It's the Age of Channelwood."
     "We should go there on vacation some time."

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Gail Shaw escribió:
> Energy can never be created or destroyed. It can only be converted from one
> form to another - 1st law of thermodynamics

I discovered it applies to whining too, not only energy. Or is whining a 
form of energy?

http://lhcathome.cern.ch/lhcathome/forum_thread.php?id=2540#19240

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"Gail Shaw" <initialsurname@sentech sa dot com> wrote in message 
news:47e4b837@news.povray.org...
>
> "Darren New" <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote in message
> news:47e45774$1@news.povray.org...
>>
>> I was just being a wise-ass. ;-)
>
> As usual. ;-)
>
> Got some references for the light travelling faster and slower than c? 
> It's
> not something I've run into.
>

http://novaspivack.typepad.com/nova_spivacks_weblog/2006/01/new_quantum_pro.html

=:]


-- 
-Nekar Xenos-

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People are a certain size, air has a certain density, and people want to go 
a certain speed, this fixes the constant power a car needs to be able to 
produce to around 25 kW.  Higher peak values might be needed to get 
acceptable acceleration and hill-climbing performance.

People want their car to go a certain distance between being "refueled" 
whatever that might mean, that fixes the amount of energy a car needs to 
carry onboard to about 1000 MJ.

Now look up the various ways of storing energy:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density

Note the "energy density" column, which is how much mass you need to store 
that energy.  For our 1000 MJ we would need to carry around in our car:

7 kg of liquid hydrogen
22 kg of petrol/diesel
2 tons of flywheel
3 tons of Li-Ion batteries
3000 tons of mechanical spring power

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On Thu, 20 Mar 2008 19:36:04 +0000, St. wrote:

>  My electricity and gas prices have soared bigtime recently, as well as
>  many
> other things like food, petrol, etc.

We've noticed that around here as well.  Our end costs have stayed pretty 
much the same as we've recently reinsulated and had our roof redone (and 
replaced a 50+ year old boiler with a high-efficiency model), so with all 
those upgrades we've kept costs about the same as before, where we 
normally would have expected to see our costs drop.

Jim

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