rcain wrote:Betamax anyone? DC grid perhaps? I'm sure we'll all get along just fine, so long someone gets to market.... quickly as you like
(ps by welcome contrast Unix/open-source is still doing just fine - bucking the trend/skewed game).
Hardly a similar scenario. Polywell/ITER is more like when caveman was trying to decide between triangular or star-shaped wheels, and had to wait several thousand years for someone to invent the circle.
(D'you like my little bit of 'instant' philosophy - was the circle, as a shape, 'invented' or 'discovered', and if the latter where was it before it was first 'found'? The invention of the 'notion of a circle' had to come before the wheel.....)
i believe the wheel (or spherical moments at least) might be slightly concerned in protien folding.... but other than that who cares? unless yu want a prize for it
personally, i'll stick to boats or pipelines when i can.
chrismb wrote:The idea of a polywell vs ITER race immediately caused me to imagine a fat elephant with no legs up against a dwarf on a penny farthing, sitting there at the start line long after the starter klaxon.
I like the analogy with the addition that the elephant could still make progress provided it is supported by an army of strong backed bearers (scientists and enginers) plus some large props (money) to keep it from rolling backwards, while the dwarf only needs to find a set of stilts (like ceiling painters use) or make a clever modification to his penny farthing. http://www.geocities.com/rcgilmore3/3PennyFarthing.jpg
If the dwarf fails, at least he isn't blocking the road.
chrismb wrote:The idea of a polywell vs ITER race immediately caused me to imagine a fat elephant with no legs up against a dwarf on a penny farthing, sitting there at the start line long after the starter klaxon.
chrismb wrote:The idea of a polywell vs ITER race immediately caused me to imagine a fat elephant with no legs up against a dwarf on a penny farthing, sitting there at the start line long after the starter klaxon.
ROTFLMAO Thank you chrismb.
Regards
Polygirl
Grammatically correct leetspeak. An oddity to be sure.
ITER wont be coming online for like 6 years, let's just do what we do and see if polywell will work, if it does, you know what will happen. We also have to make a vow to each other right now to not let this go if it does work, do not let this be buried, covered up, etc.
Robthebob wrote:We also have to make a vow to each other right now to not let this go if it does work, do not let this be buried, covered up, etc.
We should probably also agree to let things go if in fact the Polywell does not work. I'm hoping it does, and based on what I've seen so far I think it will, but I'm not exactly a "qualified expert" in the field.
Robthebob wrote:We also have to make a vow to each other right now to not let this go if it does work, do not let this be buried, covered up, etc.
We should probably also agree to let things go if in fact the Polywell does not work. I'm hoping it does, and based on what I've seen so far I think it will, but I'm not exactly a "qualified expert" in the field.
Also, keep in mind that there are some intermediate possibilities. If the Polywell or some other compact neutron producer (like RFC) can make enough neutrons via a D-D reaction to feed a thorium fission process it might be very usefull, despite it's negative energy balance. The thorium fission process could make so much power that it would be profitable despite any losses in the neutron producing fusion trigger.
Robthebob wrote:We also have to make a vow to each other right now to not let this go if it does work, do not let this be buried, covered up, etc.
We should probably also agree to let things go if in fact the Polywell does not work. I'm hoping it does, and based on what I've seen so far I think it will, but I'm not exactly a "qualified expert" in the field.
Obviously I wont hold my breath for it to work, I have faith in it tho, most of us do. Doesnt mean it's gonna work because we believe it will. We just need to let it run through, we will know if it will work sooner or later. If it doesnt, we should not be delusioned and work on it more, like what the tokamak guys are doing, nevertheless, if it works, do not let it go.
rcain wrote:Betamax anyone? DC grid perhaps? I'm sure we'll all get along just fine, so long someone gets to market.... quickly as you like
(ps by welcome contrast Unix/open-source is still doing just fine - bucking the trend/skewed game).
Hardly a similar scenario. Polywell/ITER is more like when caveman was trying to decide between triangular or star-shaped wheels, and had to wait several thousand years for someone to invent the circle.
(D'you like my little bit of 'instant' philosophy - was the circle, as a shape, 'invented' or 'discovered', and if the latter where was it before it was first 'found'? The invention of the 'notion of a circle' had to come before the wheel.....)
In Africa, several animals roll into balls and roll down hill (dune) to escape. Heck, there is even a snake that rolls into a hoop to do the same thing. Rolling round things are viewable in nature.
rcain wrote:Betamax anyone? DC grid perhaps? I'm sure we'll all get along just fine, so long someone gets to market.... quickly as you like
(ps by welcome contrast Unix/open-source is still doing just fine - bucking the trend/skewed game).
Hardly a similar scenario. Polywell/ITER is more like when caveman was trying to decide between triangular or star-shaped wheels, and had to wait several thousand years for someone to invent the circle.
(D'you like my little bit of 'instant' philosophy - was the circle, as a shape, 'invented' or 'discovered', and if the latter where was it before it was first 'found'? The invention of the 'notion of a circle' had to come before the wheel.....)
In Africa, several animals roll into balls and roll down hill (dune) to escape. Heck, there is even a snake that rolls into a hoop to do the same thing. Rolling round things are viewable in nature.
You misunderstand. A circle is an 'idea', the 'perfect' concept of equidistant points from a centre. So, I'm not talking about the first thing that rolled down a hill, I'm talking about the first concept anyone ever had that if they made a hub, and put a concentric circle about that hub (because they understood that's what a circle does), knowing that it would then roll smoothly and bear a load at that hub.
The concept of the circle is an invention - there are no circles in existence anywhere as it is an infinitely thin 2D geometric 'virtual' object for which every point on the circumference is perfectly equidistant to the centre. Did this idea come before the first true 'wheel', or did someone just happen to stick a hub through the centre of a disc and then also craft off the edge of that disc so it was as close to their newly understood notion of a circle as they could?
Which came first; a properly engineered wheel, or the notion of a circle?
There my be no perfectly 2D circles in the 3D physical universe, but there are visual circles in the human universe. Ancient man would have been pretty dense to never look up and notice the sun or the moon in, what is to him, a 2D sky.
MirariNefas wrote:There my be no perfectly 2D circles in the 3D physical universe, but there are visual circles in the human universe. Ancient man would have been pretty dense to never look up and notice the sun or the moon in, what is to him, a 2D sky.
The concept came first.
He might well have seen the shape of a circle, but did he understand that the centre was equidistant to all of the edge, and thus could form the hub of a wheel. I don't think that is remotely self-evident. Equally, someone might've noticed that in a slice of a tree rolling down a hill, the heart looked stationary so they stuck a hub through it. After lumping along over the lumpy bark bits, and then cutting off those lumpy bits, then they find they've formed a circle. Does it take that piece of mechanics to realise a circle can rotate on its centre? Don't treat 'everyday' inventions like they've always been known. That which is a matter of contention and serious genius long ago becomes 'self-evident' now.
I always wonder over the genius of some ancient folk whose engineering brilliance is, for their age, no less than equivalent to whosoever might come up with a working fusion reactor today. How about the door hinge? How on earth did anyone come up with that brilliant idea!? maybe for 10,000's of years folks just used to lift up the cover off their cave opening and put it back after. The hinge - Sheer genius, which we now take for granted!
Actually, you need three other things before a wheel is really useful: a smooth path (which was hugely labor-intensive to create), a large animal to pull things with (this is probably why it was never used much in the pre-Columbian Americas), and a good reason to move things from point A to point B. And if there's a river or body of water nearby, you probably want to use a boat instead anyway.
People probably conceptualized the wheel thousands or millions of times before actually making the first one that did real work. I imagine many ITER-like effort to create wheels in a world that had no use for them. "But look how neat it is!" the early engineers must have exclaimed, to shrugs from the practical-minded, who then wondered aloud what they could have used that time on that might have actually been useful.
Thank you chrismb.
