woofuls

However, if you read the website of the George Eby Research Institute, it sounds like a quack: http://www.george-eby-research.com/

Right now every solar hydrogen production technology is an order of magnitude more expensive than steam reforming with little opportunity of ever becoming competitive.

Absolutely not. H2 gives 5.6 MJ/L @ 700 psi, which is too weak compared to diesel which gives 35.8 MJ/L @ 1 atm. Also, compressed H2 is considerably more difficult to work with than diesel.

The Department of Energy mandated that these same researchers pursue liquid fuels in the future (note, they do not mean H2) from the reduction of carbon dioxide, because they do not think H2 stands a chance.

Have they made a cheap device entirely out of sustainable materials? No. The photoactive GaAs/InGaP would be extremely expensive to fabricate. Have they tested it for commercially relevant timescales? 40 hours is hardly close, realistically they need to do stability testing for thousands of hours. They did use non-precious materials to protect the semiconductors from the corrosive solution and inexpensive catalysts, but this is a very long ways from practical. Further, they didn't even hit the 10% efficiency mark which has long been heralded as starting point for these devices.

It is not clear to me that this approach could ever be economically viable even with the right semiconductors. H2 just doesn't provide enough bang for your buck.

You assume the bombers were definitely carrying nuclear weapons. They needn't if your goal is to have the enemy wipe itself out by this method, they only need to think you are carrying them.

Also, I argue that your line-of-sight is increased by "low-altitude" EMP blasts (30 000 ft for a localized EMP on a bomber vs >100 000 ft for high-altitude EMP) whereas a nuclear detonation probably occurs at much lower altitude (~2 000 ft), so the higher altitude could in theory attack a much larger area as far as power is concerned. So in terms of electrical infrastructure, a larger area of damage could occur by Nike attacks on bombers higher up. But who knows.

>>Even if it fried every electronic device, that'd still be much better than a 10 megaton nuke going off above downtown.

My worry is what happens to critical infrastructure. For instance, if the blast were in line-of-sight of multiple high-voltage transmission lines then extra-high-voltage transformers (think >200 kV) could “melt-down” (that is to say, the cellulose insulation is damaged by higher than normal temperature of the oil caused by the excess DC current, but maybe I am wrong?). These are multi-million dollars, weigh 500 000 lbs, are very difficult to move, and have a lead time measured in years. (There are probably 10 of these on hand as spares across the country for the 4,000 currently in use.) Cascading power failure, say substantial failure in San Francisco, could affect the entire Western Interconnection. If the power goes down, so does water pressure which depends on electrical pumps. A loss of power/water for more than a week could be an extremely severe event. A military strategist wouldn't settle for just one city to be in this state either.

So if you have an attack on multiple fronts, then today it would be suicidal to potentially knock out the power to your own cities. But, maybe back when the Nike was in use power failure wouldn't be as catastrophic as it would be today OR this wasn't a possible failure mode.

Wouldn't a low yield nuclear weapon detonated at a relatively low altitude generate a localized EMP?

There are at least some sunscreens with ingredients (such as titanium dioxide) which will help reflect some UV light. I suspect it is the combination of absorbing molecules and reflective materials which will make up a better sunscreen.

I was just curious, why is 24 x 10000+1 = 107 x 2243 not prime? I was under the impression for any n, 24 x n + 1 is prime.

Capitalism.

You shouldn't put so much faith into our system.

Your theoretical model for how the system works falls short of reality. If you truly think the law is applied equally among all, you need to do some serious research. The powerful among us don't have to obey the laws like everyone else. Finally, it isn't the powerless among us writing or influencing those who do write the laws.

DNA mutates spontaneously from background radiation and mutagens present in the cytoplasm (oxygen is even one!) and etc. This isn't normally a problem because the rate at which this happens is balanced by protein repair kinetics, however, if you are boiling the blood denaturing these proteins isn't an unreasonable expectation in non-thermophiles... Furthermore, if you're boiling blood, DNA can uncoil and become susceptible to other problems.

The question is what power is required affect this balanced system. Apparently over time mutations occur which cannot be repaired and sometimes after that cancer occurs ordinarily. It is easy to tell when this happens to 100% of organisms you're studying after doing X and waiting less than a year's time, but is considerably harder to answer when you're trying to see if there is a lethal effect over 60 years in 1 in 1,000 or 1 in 10,000 or 1 in 100,000 or 1 in a million. This is an open and challenging problem.

I don't claim microwaves of some power won't cause cancer, but I also won't claim oxygen can't cause less cancer. In the microwave case there isn't enough evidence to expect it in lower power situations, but to some tolerance there is always a possibility.

The problem with a lot of folks is the way in which they perceive risk. Risk management should be taught. SF should worry a lot more about an earthquake than cancer from wifi.