Tesla, the teleforce, and old school

cuddihy · Post by **cuddihy** » Fri Oct 02, 2009 3:03 am

so what kind of windmills are you building now David?

MSimon · Post by **MSimon** » Fri Oct 02, 2009 3:11 am

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/scie ... -find.html

Psychologists have discovered that creative people have a gene in common which is also linked to psychosis and depression.

They believe that the findings could explain why "geniuses" like Vincent van Gogh and Sylvia Plath displayed such destructive behaviour.

The gene, which is called neuregulin 1, plays a role in brain development but a variant of it is also associated with mental illnesses like schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.

MSimon · Post by **MSimon** » Fri Oct 02, 2009 3:18 am

I was fortunate enough to train myself as a cross disciplinarian (whips and chains anyone?). My Nuke training in the Navy didn't hurt either.

So I got to work with controlling stuff. Much less politics than the IT stuff you mention. It also got me into aerospace. The stuff is difficult enough that lots of eccentrics are tolerated. I had found a home.

Jccarlton · Post by **Jccarlton** » Sun Oct 04, 2009 12:40 am

While Tesla's attempt to make a particle accelerator came up short due to his lack of knowledge about the physics involved the open ended vacuum tube actually exists. The secret is to keep the opening very small along a long tube and stage the vacuum pump. This is what we do with mass spectrometers where the end of the source has to in atmosphere and the ions need to be in high vacuum. We get 10^-7 even with an opening on one end without much difficulty. The small diameter tube actually prevents the air entering the vacuum at a rate the pump can't handle. As for doing this with a particle accelerator it's easier to use a window with a thin sheet of foil and the beam will exit without too much difficulty. Of course the foil will be radioactive and emit lethal amounts of Xrays, but so does the rest of the accelerator. The shielding for accelerators makes reactor shielding look like a joke. There's a reason big accelerators are buried deep underground.