Robin Hanson at Overcoming Bias looked at nuclear winter again. Robin looks at the Scientific American article that attempts to make the case that a regional nuclear war in India and Pakistan would be sufficient to trigger a nuclear winter. UPDATE : Nextbigfuture has an updated article describing why the nuclear winter theory is wrong. …
A University of Utah scientist (Tim Garrett, an associate professor of atmospheric sciences) argues that rising carbon dioxide emissions – the major cause of global warming – cannot be stabilized unless the world’s economy collapses or society builds the equivalent of one new nuclear power plant each day. “Fundamentally, I believe the system is deterministic,” …
Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy * SENS is not one breakthrough and will not be a pill* one month of a series of procedures, stem cell therapies, gene therapy, small molecule drugs etc… and then repeated every 10-30 years* thorough repair and maintentance of tissues* Could have significant …
These images show a very young lunar crater on the side of the moon that faces away from Earth, as viewed by NASA’s Moon Mineralogy Mapper on the Indian Space Research Organization’s Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft. On the left is an image showing brightness at shorter infrared wavelengths. On the right, the distribution of water-rich minerals (light …
Dr Masao Tamada, of the Japan Atomic Energy Agency, has developed a fabric made primarily of irradiated polyethylene that is able to soak up the minute amounts of uranium – around 3.3 parts per billion – in the seawater. Dr Tamada hopes to secure funding to construct an underwater uranium farm covering nearly 400 square …
There is some concern that if there are delays in launching replacement GPS satellites that there could a degradation in the availability and accuracy of GPS (global positioning). There are currently 31 operational GPS satellites. According to the GAO report, if the Air Force keeps to its current launch schedule, the chance that we’ll still …
Femtosecond lasers have been demonstrated for use in reading/writing hard drives 100,000 times faster. 50-femtosecond read and write times for spintronics could be possible. Abstract Nature Physics: Coherent ultrafast magnetism induced by femtosecond laser pulses The quest for ultrafast magnetic processes has triggered a new field of research—femtomagnetism: using femtosecond laser pulses to demagnetize ferromagnetic …
This site has an interview of Dr Richard Nebel who is leading the IEC/Bussard Fusion project. Dr. Nebel commented: I believe we will know the answer for the Polywell [commercial nuclear fusion viability] in ~ 1.5-2 years. I haven’t looked at MSimons design, but I know he has a lot of good ideas. We’ll probably …
Chemistry World is reporting that Danish researchers have made a nano-sized box out of DNA that can be locked or opened in response to ‘keys’ made from short strands of DNA. By changing the nature or number of these keys, it should be possible to use the boxes as sensors, drug delivery systems or even …
The Cold Fusion segment on 60 Minutes. Michael McKubre is an electro-chemist who imagines, in 20 years, the creation of a clean nuclear battery. “For example, a laptop would come pre-charged with all of the energy that you would ever intend to use. You’re now decoupled from your charger and the wall socket,” he explained. …
Collapsitarians are described the Technium. Former President Reagan defined a recession as when your friend lost his job and a depression as when you lost your job. Collapse is when no one has a job; in fact, there are no longer any such things as jobs to be had. Various types of doomers/collapsitarians/dystopians: * Luddites, …