Talk-Polywell.org

Actually, I think it's the nitrogen tetroxide they're even more scared of; turns to nitric acid when contacting water. You don't even want to catch a whiff of this stuff--or get it in your eyes. The hydrazines are extremely unfriendly, too. It's partly why rockets are gradually getting away from usi...

Definitely needs a reality check. Sounds more like a potential for a high explosive than a controllable propellant.

Although nitroglycerin has been successfully been used as a propellant (in a plasticized binder).

Never mistake motion for actual work.

Never trust extrapolations based on theoretical models, when working devices have yet to be built.

Today, I bought my first LED lamp with a Edison screw-in base. About $7 at WalMart, made by Feit. Draws barely a watt, and produces a miniscule 70 lumens, though still enough to be useful to me. And get this: it's shaped like a pyramid on the inside, IsweartoGodI'mnotkidding. Got to appeal to Certai...

Yet more forms of matter beyond neutronium?

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

I just stumbled across this in the science news and am trying to wrap my poor brain around the concepts. Maybe the LHC has a nasty surprise waiting for us after all?

I was a relatively early embracer of CFL technology in my home, and happier as the price came down and "daylight" CFLs became available. I figured on cutting power use by two-thirds, and it also helped in summer in some rooms by the reduction of radiated heat. However...I wasn't quite as happy with ...

At around $40 a lamp, it's hard to see any benefit recovered from the investment. Prices will have to come down to CFL levels for me to begin to be interested.

And precisely how efficient are these LED lamps compared to incandescent and CFL?

Depends on how fast polywell-based fusion can be moved into the power generation market; I'd assume it would displace older coal-based technology first but there might be a couple of decades before the polywell technology is >fully< developed into a reliable service. Since fusion isn't obviously des...

My main hobby is electronics with an emphasis on audio, and test and measurement. I like to build and modify audio amplifiers, as mindset and budget allows. The test bench is mostly geriatric Heathkit with a few bits of Hewlett Packard (courtesy Boeing Surplus) and Tektronics. Music preferences are ...

Why not just start blithering on about anti-matter interstellar propulsion while you're at it. Direct energy recovery from fast p11B ions is blithering, twiddling, utter-and-complete, undemonstrated, lacking-in-fundamental-understanding-of-the-engineering, can-only-be-imagined-in-the-mind-of-a-theor...

This thread is getting frustrating. Is it not understood that a reactor doesn't earn money until it delivers electricity to the grid? A reactor that produces 300 MW of thermal energy doesn't get paid for >that<, it gets paid for the fraction that can be converted into electricity--and the conversion...

Aren't friction and drag essentially two different things? Here we're dealing with two solids, not a solid surface and a fluid.

A possible test of that theory would be the decay rate of RTGs used to power planetary probes as they traveled far from the Sun. Was a measurable variation in the power decay observed? I don't recall any mention of unexpected changes from them.

The villagers are accustomed to their creature comforts and will do whatever it takes to keep them. Those who want to go back to the farm and pull plows can do so. I don't expect it will be easy. I >do< hope fusion works out, especially aneutronic fusion, but barring a big breakthrough a la polywell...