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I belive that there was a discusion. we need something like high tech ot forum
I like that decision.Quote:
I often let highly technical, non-computer related discussions go if they look like they can generate interesting, technical discussions
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Go into a drugstore, get some RAID and your computer will never have bugs in it ever again (literaly), I guarantee it.
My future system
(1) How wrong was the ether theory again? ;) Hehe.Quote:
Originally posted by russ_watters
(1)I'm speaking of course of the scientific method. People like Aristotle, while smart, did not use the scientific method and because of that their answers were quite often waaaay wrong.
(2)Science was also hindered by religion (and still is in many ways).
(2) Opinion.
The quantity of energy released from a matter/anitmatter pair may be small per pair, but it's much larger than that released from fission (which was dismissed by Rutherford when he first split the atom) or fusion. As both are annihilated, the maximum amount of energy is created. Protons' antiparticles are antiprotons: positrons are electrons' antiparticle. The idea is unpractical because it appears to need small black holes (which we can't make ;)) and would produce incredible power levels for a very short time. I believe there was an article at arstechnica.com about this.Quote:
Actually, the implication here for vacuums is that particles and energy continually "pop" into and out of existence in a vacuum. This is also covered in ABHOT, and I'm pretty sure it is NOT called "zero point energy". I can't remember if this has been tested or if it is still mathematical though. The idea of harnessing this however is ludicrous since the quantity of energy is both balanced (protons/positron pairs, for example that destroy each other) and infinitessimal.
2)Science was also hindered by religion (and still is in many ways).
Rado, thats not an opinion unless you don't think Galileo (just one example but the best) was at all hindered by being arrested and imprisoned by the catholic church. He was recently pardoned actually - not that it did him much good as he had been dead for 500 years or so.
Another good example is a bunch of scientists sat down with the pope a few years back and he explicitly told them not to research the big bang. Hawking mentions this in A Brief History of Time.
In fact, FACT, the Catholic church does all it can to stop science that it doesn't agree with - both historically and today.
One funny thing about Aristotle - he believed that EVERYTHING could be figured out by pure thought. So he did almost no experimentation or observation. He was so bad in fact that he once postulated that a fly had 4 legs like a table. It made sense to him, but it never even occurred to him to catch a fly and check for himself.
His theory on gravity would have been easy enough to verify as well - it only takes a few objects dropped off a building to see that the idea that falling speed is proportional to weight is wrong. But hey - if you got logic, why do any testing, right?!
stoo, you're right that by mass matter/antimatter reactions are more energetic than nuclear ones, but for that to be useful there has to be a lot of antimatter generated - and the evidence suggests there isn't enough for it to be useful.
An "A-Bomb" and an "H-Bomb" are different types of "explosions". An A-bomb is a fission explosion, meaning an amount of nuclear material is "exploded".
An thermonuclear explosion (or H-Bomb) is a fusion reaction meaning material is compacted into a very space releasing a massive amount of energy (the Sun is one big H-Bomb). What triggers a thermonuclear implosion is a fission explosion. The fission explosion compacts the nuclear material to critical mass which is many times more powerful then an nuclear explosion. The biggest one ever done was in Russia way back in the cold war era, supposed to be 190MT but they scaled it back to 90MT, I think they said the flash was seen 2,000 miles away. In comparison the largest bomb the US has ever had is 9MT. Don't quote me on the size of the Russian one, I saw the program a while ago.
In theory it wouldn't be that hard to make a nuclear (fission) bomb. But you need enriched Uranium or Plutonium which is the kicker. My father has worked in nuclear power plants for most of my life, right now he works at Palo Verde Nuclear Power Station in Arizona, so I've been around it since I was very young.
otacon, fission and fusion are simply opposite sides of the same coin. Both are nuclear, meaning they involve the nucleus of an atom. The difference is simple - in fission the nucleus is split, in fusion 2 nuclei are joined. The mechanisms for achieving this are the biggest difference. Other than that, your explanation was pretty good.
Um The US had tested bigger bombs then 9MT
Castle Bravo
Test: Bravo
Time: 18:45:00.0 28 February 1954 (GMT)
06:45:00.0 1 March 1954 (local)
Location: Artificial island on reef 2950 ft off Nam ("Charlie") Island, Bikini Atoll
Test Height and Type: Surface burst (7 feet above surface)
Yield: 15 Mt
Castle Yankee
Test: Yankee
Time: 18:10:00.1 4 May 1954 (GMT)
06:10:00.1 5 May 1954 (local)
Location: On barge, Bikini Atoll
Test Height and Type: Barge shot (14 feet above surface)
Yield: 13.5 Mt
Ivy Mike
Test: Mike
Time: 19:14:59.4 31 October 1952 (GMT)
07:14:59.4 1 November 1952 (local)
Location: Elugelab ("Flora") Island, Enewetak Atoll
Test Height and Type: Surface burst
Yield: 10.4 Mt
http://www.fas.org/nuke/hew/index.html
Russia's Biggest was only 50MT
"Tsar Bomba" ("King of Bombs"): The World's Largest Bomb
Time: 30 October 1961
Location: Parachute retarded airburst, 4000 m altitude
Over Novaya Zemlya Island test range (in the Arctic Sea)
Yield: 50 Megatons
Shown here in the Russian Atomic Weapon Museum, the "Tsar Bomba" was the largest nuclear weapon ever constructed or detonated. This three stage weapon was actually a 100 megaton bomb design, but the uranium fusion tamper of the teritiary (and probably secondary) stage(s) was replaced by one made of lead to eliminate fast fission by the fusion neutrons. The result wThe nickname Tsar Bomba is a reference to the Russian proclivity for making gigantic but useless artifacts for show. The world's largest bell (the Tsar Kolokol) and cannon (the Tsar Pushka), neither of which are actually useful for anything, are on display at the Kremlin.
as also the cleanest weapon ever tested with 97% of the energy coming from fusionreactions.
This weapon was developed in a remarkably short time. On 10 July 1961 Nikita Khruschev met with Sakharov, then the senior weapon designer, and directed him to develop a 100 megaton bomb. This device had to be ready for a test series due to begin in September so that the series would create maximum political impact (a bomb this size is virtually useless militarily). Sakharov returned to Arzamas-16, and selcted a design team consisting of Victor Adamskii, Yuri Babaev, Yuri Trunev, and Yuri Smirnov (who later oversaw the transformation of this design into a fielded weapon). The bomb was tested only 14 weeks after the initiation of its design.
The effect of this bomb at full yield on global fallout would have been tremendous. It would have increased the world's total fission fallout since the invention of the atomic bomb by 25%. The fabrication of the massive parachute disrupted the Soviet nylon hosiery industry. It weighed 27 metric tons. Some were actually stockpiled.
The bomb was air dropped by a Tu-95 strategic bomber piloted by A. E. Durnovtsev (made Hero of the Soviet Union).
The nickname Tsar Bomba is a reference to the Russian proclivity for making gigantic but useless artifacts for show. The world's largest bell (the Tsar Kolokol) and cannon (the Tsar Pushka), neither of which are actually useful for anything, are on display at the Kremlin.
Wonders to self how many pyromaniacs are lurking around SF...
I heard somewhere that H-bombs were more potent with the uranium or plutonium being in an oblong shape. Never heard about an A-bomb until now.
russ_watters-- a simplier explanation :)
M82A2-- True, but the largest *I think* we've ever put on top of a missle is 9MT and I wasn't exatly sure the size of the Russian one, what was that movie they made about it and the other tests in the cold war era? It was shown on the Discovery Channel and you can buy it in the store. Some person went back through the archives and "red-did" all the old footage, colorized some, took out the graining of the video. Took him many years to do it.
jester22c-- I did make some homemade C-4 years ago before Oklahoma City, powerful stuff. I used a coffee can full of the mix and it blew a pretty good crater in the ground, then I saw what several thousand pounds of the stuff can do :(. Haven't dabled with it since.
http://www.fas.org/nuke/hew/index.html <--- cool site
the whole http://www.fas.org/ site is really cool
OK I know it has nothing to do with computers but I think everyone here will find this interesting.
I will start off with a bit on string theory:
String theory states (In simple terms) that all matter in the universe (and energy?) consist of resonating "strings." It is also based on the assumption of our universe consisting of 10 dimensions. (9 spacial and one time)
This was true until physicists came up with a second, a third and eventually five theories of everything based on string theory - a bit of a contradiction. So they knew something was wrong.
A second group of physicists working at the time on supergravity theory were also working on the theory of everything BUT were using 11 dimensions instead. When the idea of 11 dimensions was put to string theory it showed that the 5 theories of everything were infact derivations of a greater theory they named M - theory (Membrane theory).
M - theory:
This concludes that the world we live in has 11 dimesions and that the universe in fact is a massive rippling sheet (membrane) exsisting within a "multiverse" consisting of infinite dimensions (parrallel dimensions anyone) all slightly different to each other. (Our universe is a sheet, others are spheres and torus's etc.)
(In our universe all matter also exsists less than a trillioth on a milimetre away from eachother).
M - theory also explains why gravity is such a weak force when compared to the other three fundamental forces (strong forces, weak forces and electromagnetic forces). It suggests that a second universe parrallel to our universe has massive gravitational forces (and different laws of physics) and some of this leaks to our universe causing the force of gravity and explaining its weakness.
M - theory explains the big bang very well, as two universes coliding (both universes as sheets like our own). The rippling sheets colliding theory explains exactly why matter is spread out in clumps (galaxies) and not spread out uniformly. It explains the big bang exactly apperently. It also shows that time exsisted before the creation of our universe.
All this is authentic, current, physics theory (althrough my explanation is no doubt crude and badly worded - (I'm a mathematition not a physicist :D :rolleyes: )).
What are your opinons? Hope this is of interest to you all.
The idea of dimensions has always interested me. Not in the sense exactly of falling into a worm hole and popping out in a world backwards from ours (anyone seen the tv show sliders?) but more of dimensions in the sense of different perspectives in relation to time. So I suppose my fascination is with the 4th dimension and how we interact with it. I do not believe in alternate universes. I do think there are more solar systems out there and that there may even be some planets very similar to ours but I believe in God and that he created it all. This is an interesting topic I hope it gets into a big discussion.