SCIENCE!!!

[Lethosos]

Nah, Randall Munroe (XKCD) did an analysis of the Earth's oceans draining off onto Mars. It's pretty illuminating about how little deep surface features exist on the Red Planet.

[Kocken926]

Nah, Randall Munroe (XKCD) did an analysis of the Earth's oceans draining off onto Mars. It's pretty illuminating about how little deep surface features exist on the Red Planet.

It's to be expected, since there is no tectonic activity there to create new mountains and valleys, but there ARE winds that erode the mountains and fill the depths with sand.

[Viktor_Berg]

Water on Mars? Of course!

Alright, pardon me this little cheek. In all seriousness, it is interesting to speculate on terraforming planets, but sadly we lack both tech and resources to do this in the nearest centuries. Even our grand-grand-grand children will probably not experience life on another planet in the Solar system without specialized dome cities and stuff.

[Lethosos]

Still fun to speculate based on the science we know about.

[Rod Roc]

Some very interesting posts in this thread. I do believe that science is the only thing that is helping our societies to keep on growing. I have a question about power generators and would appreciate anyone's help. I want to reduce some of the noise that these machines make and was wondering if anyone has any scientific tips for accomplishing this? Thanks http://kittenwar.com

[Kocken926]

Some very interesting posts in this thread. I do believe that science is the only thing that is helping our societies to keep on growing. I have a question about power generators and would appreciate anyone's help. I want to reduce some of the noise that these machines make and was wondering if anyone has any scientific tips for accomplishing this? Thanks http://kittenwar.com

Do you mean the humming, or is it some inherently loud generator, like a gasoline one? In that case you,ll have to switch in order to reduce noise, since insulation might cause the thing to overheat.

Hydrogen cells are quite quiet.

[Neowulf]

Mr Rod Roc works for mouseandman.com, a marketing firm specializing in SEO and link building (according to google).

His account and that post were created simultaneously. He's also from Reynosa, Mexico and has probably never been to that titan company is SC he's shilling.

Also, "scientific tips"? The science behind acoustic emissions has been well known for decades. Beyond the discovery of new materials and microstructures that are more efficient at dampening the sound, it is entirely an engineering problem. Science discovers things, engineering make those discoveries do something useful.

With the complete lack of information given we literally can't give any tips at all anyway. Well, except beyond "try different setups until you find one that works".

[Lethosos]

...moving on!

Uh, power supply issues is the new topic. Go!

[dwwojcik]

My, the bots certainly are getting creative. That was the most realistic I've ever seen.

Sciencentific advancement definately has some disadvantages.

[Neowulf]

...moving on!

Uh, power supply issues is the new topic. Go!

I've seen some interesting stuff on harvesting power from the boundary interaction where fresh water mixes with salt water.

Though if it involves the ocean I'm a big fan of wave/tidal power generation. I remember seeing a show when discovery green started airing, showing some guys making a small power generator that used waves pushing air in and out of a tube and a bi-directional fan blade turning the airflow into power.

[dwwojcik]

Just spam solar panels. Works in IC2.

Although, I did see a pretty cool hydroelectric generator that would be anchored to the sea floor in popsci.

[Neowulf]

Yeah, no. Without more advances in solar cells and an extreme efficient, cheap, and long lasting storage solution you can't convert too much of your generation capacity to solar and still function.

You still need power when and where the sun doesn't shine, and cutting it off for half the day doesn't work.

[holymage!]

Geothermal. works in minecraft why wouldn't it work here?

we also got warded blocks right? just make a reactor encased with the stuff.

EDIT: why not use lighting...with lighting rods...you would just need a big freaking cable to transmit that energy and make a storage container to keep it.

[lukeb28]

Geothermal. works in minecraft why wouldn't it work here?

we also got warded blocks right? just make a reactor encased with the stuff.

EDIT: why not use lighting...with lighting rods...you would just need a big freaking cable to transmit that energy and make a storage container to keep it.

Geothermal:

It would be a great source of power and a near infinite one (infinite power by our meager standards) and would work around the clock. The problem with that however is that to get at the 'good stuff' (The molten core of earth) we'd have to dig very deep. Past that I'm not sure about the logistics.

Lightning:

Too unpredictable to be reliable.

[Neowulf]

Geothermal. works in minecraft why wouldn't it work here?

we also got warded blocks right? just make a reactor encased with the stuff.

EDIT: why not use lighting...with lighting rods...you would just need a big freaking cable to transmit that energy and make a storage container to keep it.

This is science talk, not minecraft...

And lightning is a heck of a lot of power, but it's not as much as you think. All together every lightning strike in the world, if harnessed and stored perfectly, could power 129million households (each strike can power a house for a month).

But you've got major losses from the bolt itself (that flash of light is energy lost to resistive heating) and you have to create a world spanning collector network.

That's not taking into account the physical issues of maintaining the collectors. In many areas storms tend to bring nasty things like tornados, which tend to eat things like metal poles.

[TheBytemaster]

Geothermal:

It would be a great source of power and a near infinite one (infinite power by our meager standards) and would work around the clock. The problem with that however is that to get at the 'good stuff' (The molten core of earth) we'd have to dig very deep. Past that I'm not sure about the logistics.

Problems are where to drill, how to drill that deep and produce/transmit energy from a source that is that deep, and how to not cause earthquakes, (or at least make people stop freaking out about drilling = earthquakes.)

[Neowulf]

Found the salt/fresh water generator info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osmotic_power

[TheBytemaster]

Found the salt/fresh water generator info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osmotic_power

Very cool. I wonder if we could just pump the waste water into the ocean to keep the salt from messing with the environment too much.

Anyways, I'm still going to hold out for thorium reactors. Especially in cars. That would be beautiful.

[Kocken926]

Y'all need to store your energy in hydrogen form! Extremely unpractical if you need high voltage/amps, but it works as good as a battery, and without acids and heavy metals! The fuel cells aren't exactly cheap, but neither are batteries.

Note on the geothermal: I know many people who heats their houses with it, but it's not enough to produce any significant amount of electricity.

[dwwojcik]

Anyways, I'm still going to hold out for thorium reactors. Especially in cars. That would be beautiful.

I don't think something with long lasting radioactive waste could be a solution.

[Neowulf]

Very cool. I wonder if we could just pump the waste water into the ocean to keep the salt from messing with the environment too much.

Anyways, I'm still going to hold out for thorium reactors. Especially in cars. That would be beautiful.

That's the idea. You build the power plant where you have a steady supply of both salt and fresh water, which is conveniently exactly where nature is already mixing fresh water with salt water. The output is just dumped exactly where it would mix anyway.

Though the environmental concerns on it say it will cause salinity fluctuations, which can stress marine life. But frankly, the environmental impact of that is MUCH less than a coal or natural gas plant.

As for thorium cars, I'm hoping on those as well.

Frankly with all the hype and debunk I've found on it, I'm considering asking my sister to kidnap some materials science majors at the university she works at and make them do the thorium + laser experiment and give some hard data on the output. It could be cold fusion-ish quackery or it could be real, but I have no clue because there's no data either way just opinions.

Edit:

Kocken: Hydrogen doesn't store well. Very badly actually. It tends to slip between the atoms making up the storage vessel and disperse out.

And geothermal heating is very different from geothermal power. Those heating systems just take advantage of the fact the soil temperature 10ft down stays constant, at the average of the air temperature for the entire year in the area. Around here that's about 40F, so geothermal cooling works wonders around here.

dw: Thorium produces much less waste than normal nuclear fuel. In reality the normal waste from a nuke plant is still perfectly viable for fuel, just not in the bomb material breeding reactor design they demanded people settle on back in the 50s.

[TheBytemaster]

I don't think something with long lasting radioactive waste could be a solution.

Really? Apparently it produces around 100-1000 times less waste than uranium, and that waste decays in only a few hundred years, whereas uranium takes thousands and thousands.

Plus you can't make weapons out of the leftovers, and it's about as common as lead.

Have an article.

(Now if only we had some hard data)

[Lethosos]

Touching on solar panels: they're a great idea to begin with, but currently have a major drawback. If I recall correctly, our current materials science allows us to capture up to 30% of the solar wavelength and convert it into electricity.

Although I'm way interested in microwave transmission from an orbital solar farm. Can you imagine the output from a Matrioska design of solar multiple solar panels surrounding 80% of our sun? :downs:

[dwwojcik]

I skimmed the wikipedia article and saw "Long lasting nuclear waste" but after reading the title of

Have an article.

and looking at the picture I'm convinced.

[TheBytemaster]

Touching on solar panels: they're a great idea to begin with, but currently have a major drawback. If I recall correctly, our current materials science allows us to capture up to 30% of the solar wavelength and convert it into electricity.

Although I'm way interested in microwave transmission from an orbital solar farm. Can you imagine the output from a Matrioska design of solar multiple solar panels surrounding 80% of our sun?

A Dyson sphere?

Have an article.

As expected, xkcd is pretty much always relevant.

I skimmed the wikipedia article and saw "Long lasting nuclear waste" but after reading the title of

(Link here)

and looking at the picture I'm convinced.

Woah now, don't go researching too hard there.