Mr. McGuire: "Plasma."

Wasn't that "Plastic" in the original movie? :-)

Let me know when I can get my own personal force-field. Hmm.. if they get thin enough and are not hot, we could have plasma condoms.

Remember kids. You shouldn't be having sex out of wedlock. But if you do end up doing it, remember to play it safe. Shields Up!

Ok.. I already doffed my extra point. That's one less that you moderators will get from me! Ha Ha Ha!

-------
"Idiot. 'Lego' actually comes from the Klingon le'Qo', meaning 'building blocks of war'"

Yes, this was a *very* bad joke.

Amiga will be back, dammit, and then you'll all be sorry.....

Still, it makes any army using these shields rather vulnerable against suicide attacks by even a single enemy. Considering how frequent such things are in wars, the shields would seem rahter useless to me. Still, it was a nice way to reintroduce large-scale melee combat in a future setting somewhat realistically.

Michael "Brazil" Borgwardt --- Member of #WASHU# and Her would-be guinea-pig.

Anything can be used for military applications, no matter how useful it is for benevolent endevours. If the fact that an invetion could potentially have a military "use" automatically means that moral scientists should avoid it like the plague, then the only "moral" scientists are those who limit themselves to stone knives and bearskins. (No, wait, stone knives can be used to kill people, too. I guess you're stuck with the bearskin, if you can get it away from the bear without using a stone knife, that is.)

--GrouchoMarx

So given that
a) You don't live near the uranium mines, or are in any way dependent of the nature surrounding it
b) there are no more nuclear power plant accidents, ever
c) you don't live near the place all the waste ends up at (and don't worry about all the things that can go wrong with it for the next couple of thousand years)
then I suppose you can call nuclear power clean.

My email adress has been put through crypt(3). Use crack(1) to send me email.

Your suggested uses sound very much like the Langston field from _The Mote in God's Eye_. The first seems like a very bright idea, and it might apply in other situations where finished surfaces are exposed to high-velocity debris at relatively low pressures... self-cleaning rooms or fan blades with integrated ozonators would be cool :)

But I don't follow you on the second. [Hot] fusion already involves plasma and ways of handling plasma without touching it... how exactly does adding another layer of *cold* plasma help?

I see that you are stuck in a 1 atm world :)

Using RF radiation to trap ionized gas or plasma at a surface is very useful in space. You can maintain a small barrier in which solid particles can be vaporized harmlessly before they interact with the hull proper. You could also collect fuel and mineral resources, although you might want a larger scoop than your hull for that.

Isn't that about as absurd as lubricating your brake pads?

Considering we still haven't a source of light that is even close to efficent, that would seem a much better application than using the plasma for shielding.

You worry too much about your job. Stop it. You are not paid enough to worry.

LED's are up to 55% efficient in converting electricity into light, Article here 55% is pretty darn good considering that say the light bulb is 5% efficient or so.

"you've corrupted the Borg"

-Picard to Lore

Piss off the man,Vote Nader!

I think the answer is - nowhere.

What I said in my first post is still true, generating light is still extremely unefficient when it comes to everyday usage.

If plasma were more efficient I'd happily use it.

This of course begs the question "Where can I buy a Lamp with LEDs which I can put on my desk?".

They might be here soon. Here in Sweden most traffic lights have been changed to use LED lamps.

"you've corrupted the Borg"

-Picard to Lore

Piss off the man,Vote Nader!

Yes, I watch too much Star Trek myself, why do you ask? :-)

--GrouchoMarx

$ cat < /dev/mouse
$ killall cat; more /dev/mouse

It's a sad day indeed when the best SciFi force fields reference they can come up with is Star Trek Voyager.

I'm sure there are better references, but none as well known. Little point in making a reference to something most people have never heard of...

But they really should have omitted the "Voyager" part of the name. "The Next Generation" is much better IMHO. Voyager is too much political correctness and Picard is missing :-)

DCUP spokesperson Dr Eric Mbunge sees a bright future for the penal application of cold plasmas. "With this technology we could execute prisoners by the batch, instead of one at a time," explains Dr Mbunge. "There would be this purple glow, and they'd all fall to the floor. Dead. It would be just like Star Trek."

When it was pointed out that Star Trek does not feature executions, Dr Mbunge responded, "It would if it was set in Texas."

The Department of Cruel and Unusual Punishments has not developed any new execution technologies since the introduction of the lethal injection in 1974. Its 1984 invention, the "microwave chair", was never used in Texas prisons because of fears that it might cause adverse health effects to prison wardens.

$ cat < /dev/mouse
$ killall cat; more /dev/mouse

The fact that death penalty still exists is just another demonstration of how the ignorant masses are allowed to rule.

It seems that someone always has to bring up some controvertial subject for everything. I just think thet I'm lucky and most of them get moderated to a -1, so I don't see them.

Thanks a lump for furthering the stereotype that Texans are a bunch of unremorseful, 6-gun wielding cowboys who have nothing better to do than kill things. The fact is, if you've ever been put to sleep (for an operation, dentistry, etc.), then you've felt as much pain as any deathrow inmate put to death in Texas since the introduction of the lethal injection. And how much pain did the pregnant mother that the guy stabbed to death feel? Hmmm...

luckman
the preceding was most likely jibberish

In the recent Gary Grahm case, Bush had no legal power to prevent his execution. Graham had already been granted a 30 day reprieve from Gov. Ann Richards. Bush could only grant another reprieve if the Department of Paroles recommended one. They did not. After the board made their decision, Bush had just as much control over Graham's fate as did you or I.

P.S. I have lived in Texas for most of my life

Hooptie
A.D. 1517: Martin Luther nails his 95 Theses to the church door and is promptly moderated down to (-1, Flamebait). -- Yu Suzuki

In Texas, we don't fuck around with someone's life. That means that every death row inmate is given years to appeal his/her case before they are put to death. That's also why if you take a life in a violent crime, you're going to lose yours.

luckman
the preceding was most likely jibberish

Hooptie
A.D. 1517: Martin Luther nails his 95 Theses to the church door and is promptly moderated down to (-1, Flamebait). -- Yu Suzuki

luckman
the preceding was most likely jibberish

Not in Texas. Texas does not have life without parole. There is Life (~40yrs before parole) or death (only in very specific circumstances)

Hooptie
A.D. 1517: Martin Luther nails his 95 Theses to the church door and is promptly moderated down to (-1, Flamebait). -- Yu Suzuki

"there was very little of the "i hate n*ggers" mentality and oodles of the "i have nothing against 'african-amurricans'...but..." "

What mentality are you talking about? But what? I have lived in Austin all my life and have no idea what you are talking about. Maybe we come from different parts of town (you went to the big W, right? not me) or maybe I would have to be "African-Amurrican" to understand.

P.S. Austinites don't hate Texas. Please don't speak for all of us.
luckman
the preceding was most likely jibberish

Just realize that Texans have a lot of pride in our state. I've been in Michigan for 3 months and still don't know what the state flag looks like. That's odd to me. So please remember when you joke with a Texan about the state, they will want to take it seriously (most likely). Thats all. I now subject myself to whatever heckling you can give.

luckman
the preceding was most likely jibberish

It's not a stereotype if you live up to it.

Sincerely
luckman
the preceding was most likely jibberish

Now, let's look at your argument: people who kill should die. So, by that argument, there should be no wardens left in the state. Also, Duh-bya should've fried long ago. Or maybe you just mean "black people who kill should die." Or "people who can't afford good lawyers should die." Frankly, I think life in prison is a pretty horrific punishment and I'm willing to pay a few dollars more a year in taxes so that I don't have to have blood on my hands.
The Mad Scot strikes again...

I'm not referring to any case in particular. In fact, I think it's pretty likely that Graham was guilty. I'm referring to the fact that the death penalty is FAR MORE LIKELY to be given in a case where the defendant is black than in one where the defendant is white. I'm also referring to the fact that W says he gives his full attention to a review of the facts of each execution that takes place in his state, but clearly cannot, 'cause there just isn't time for him to do that _and_ run the state.

I'm also saying that supporting the death penalty lowers you to the level of the murderer. Throw the murderer in jail. Throw away the key, if you want. But killing him is taking an irrevocable step. I'd prefer to kill NOBODY to finding out I killed a million murderers and one innocent person.
The Mad Scot strikes again...

Here's another couple of numbers for you: 12% of Americans are black, but 40% of death row inmates are black. Or how about these numbers: a black defendant is twice as likely to be executed (100 since 1973) if his victim is white than if is victim is black (49 since 1973). And a white defendant who kills a white person is 48 times more likely to be executed for killing a white person (242 since 1973) than for killing a black person (5 since 1973). Numbers are from the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.

And here's a list of some wrongful executions that have taken place in the US in the 20th century. Admittedly, only one of the victims on the list was executed since 1973, when the Supreme Court ruled that the death penalty should be reinstated.

There are numbers for you. Will they make any difference? I doubt it... no matter how many numbers people like you see, you want to see more. You'll go on blithely accusing anti-capital punishment types of not providing enough numbers, or the right numbers, or whatever. I look forward to your reply.
The Mad Scot strikes again...

Now, as far as your percentage question: frankly, as far as I'm concerned, finding out that we've executed one innocent person means that we've executed too many people. I don't really give a damn if the system executes 1% innocent people or 90% innocent people: ANY INNOCENT PEOPLE AT ALL is too many. Until we can PROVE BEYOND ANY DOUBT (not just "reasonable" doubt) whether someone has committed murder, we should absolutely NOT kill them.

I'm curious: what would be a high enough percentage for you? Would you continue executions if only 1 perecent of the people executed were innocent? How about 10 percent? 50? What do the numbers matter? We're not talking about statistics here. We're talking about real, actual, human peoples' lives.
The Mad Scot strikes again...

Animal-rights folks would have even more of a conniption fit if you caged a gorilla for 3 years and then strapped it into a chair and cooked it from the inside out.

Re: 5% So, what you're saying is this: if you were placed on death row and executed for a crime you didn't commit, you'd be fine with that as long as the other 20 people on death row with you were really guilty?

I don't have the data to answer your question, and, frankly, I think your question is flawed. Again, knowing that the state has killed _any_ innocent people is too much.

Please feel free to email me at mcsnee@hotmail.com with your response, as I'm pretty sure this topic is gonna be hard to find soon.
The Mad Scot strikes again...

$ cat < /dev/mouse
$ killall cat; more /dev/mouse

Oh the irony :)

$ cat < /dev/mouse
$ killall cat; more /dev/mouse

If you have any leads on the location of D-cup, please send me their name, number and a recent photo, and I will be sure to initiate a deep probe into the matter... ;)

The world would be a better place if God had left us a tarball.

Excuse me, but to my understanding the ordinary neon fluorescent lamps also contain "plasma" (when they are lit), caused by "electric current vis specially calibrated electrodes"....

Or no electrodes at all... a lot of fluorescent tubes just require an radio wave of appropriate frequency and magnitude... hold one near a power line some time.

The point here is *low energy* plasma, and no need for containment... neon in tubes is typically energized to about 10^4 C, and breaking the tube puts an end to the fun.

I'd like to know how they did this at 1atm without melting the walls of the container. I have my doubts.

Maybe this is why Every room ive ever been in only has 3 walls, with the space where the fourth wall would be replaced with a black void out of which laughter and applause occasionally emanates, and why everythying stops for a week after a half hour of normal life, or maybe not. STOP LAUGHING VOID!

"you've corrupted the Borg"

-Picard to Lore

Piss off the man,Vote Nader!

Yes, but this is inside a plexiglass cube.

Great. So it should go perfectly with my Apple G4 Cube, and my Nintendo Star Cube, and my Sony GSCube....

(If I don't see the Cubes, they won't hurt me. If I don't see the Cubes, they won't hurt me. If I don't see the Cubes....)

Neon tubes are filled with.. you guessed it.. neon.

The article has a rather high hype-to-explanation ratio... so I went looking for the patent they mention. Not so technical as to be incomprehensible, and more useful than the article, IMO. My first impression is that the advance here is the impedance matching system used to maintain the plasma, which allows the compact equipment and low power requirements. (I suppose it searches for the natural resonance of whatever ions you have between the electrodes... just find the lowest-energy state/standing wave at which it remains permittive/permeable.) And if you have low power plus no sealed chamber (1 atm, random molecular gases allowed), it pretty much follows that the result is a low temperature plasma, since plasma tends to radiate continuously. The scalability aspect is nice too... good for more than a toy.

Either I'm misunderstanding something, or the sterilization is done by the radiation from the plasma... basically just using the plasma as an efficient UV lamp. (The sterilization patent talks about sterilizing liquids or gels up to 2cm deep... I can't see doing that with the surface interactions, which might be sufficient for polished tools and the like.) This doesn't appear to be sufficient for a low-volume irradiation system for food, which is unfortunate, because I like my hamburgers juicy. Oh well. (Of course, prions survive irradiation anyway, so I would still have to worry about BSE.)

There is also a separate patent for "surface shielding". Might be fun to set up on your car :) I'm having trouble figuring out how the leakage from this system would be less detectable than the reflected radio waves it would disperse, though... I suppose if you do it right, all the radiation is absorbed by the gases you are ionizing?

Regards, Ulli

Simple things should be simple, complex things should be possible.

They claim the plasma coating can:

• Affect the speed of the coated object relative to the surrounding air, by varying the charge maintaining the plasma. IE: it can provide propulsion or braking. No word on how STRONG a force it can apply.
• Reduce the turbulence created by movement through the surrounding air. IE: Improve aerodynamics and reduce air resistance.
• Prevent the formation of ice on the coated body, and remove ice already present. Wouldn't you like THAT on your next plane?
• Make the entire vehicle glow dimly, providing the world's best Daytime Running Lights.

So this is how the UFOs do it!

Deflector shields as used in any science fiction starship warp space-time in order to deflect. Therefore EM fields or plasmas have nothing to do with it. Deflectors are more connected to the warp drive. Actually they are the same.

See the book "Information Warfare" by Winn Schwartau (ISBN: 1560251328), which has a really good chapter on this stuff. I can't think of any decent web links at the moment, but searching for EMP and HERF at altavista should turn up interesting stuff

I'm not a number, I'm a human macro!

At any rate, it's always a good idea to prepare for new weapons technology--even before it comes online.

Help! Help! I'm being repressed!

-- I looked into the abyss, and the abyss looked into me--and we both winked.

Well phasers have already been developed to some extent.

There is a company that has developed a stun gun that will ionize the air in front of it for about 300 feet. And thus, it can "shoot" electricity down this corridor, stuning people.

It's not exactly a Phaser, but it's close.

The Mad Scot strikes again...

Someone should get to work on an SEP field generator.

--

"Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition..." --Dixie Chicks, Sin Wagon

...how is this any different from the "plasma ball" device, which has been on the shelves of novelty shops for years, and which operates by passing an electric current through an inert gas contained within a plexiglas bulb?

The Tyrrany Begins....

A couple of interesting references are this article where they basically experiment with using a household fluroscent tube as an HF antenna. Or page where a few more references are given.

I have to ask myself with all of this though, what the point of having an radar invisible antenna, that is optically highly visible. I have visions of fluro lit battlefields... D.

Quoted from article:

Okay, I was about to poo-poo the article at this point, since it seemed like it was about neon signs.

Not that neon signs aren't interesting or neat, it's just that when Crookes invented his first discharge tube in the late 1800s, it was news. But it isn't now.

A neon sign; or one of those neat little high-voltage fireglobe things you can buy at The Sharper Image; argon, helium-neon and carbon dioxde lasers already use cold plasma at their cores, crystal lasers like ruby and YAG:ND use xenon strobes (cold plasma) to excite them. For that matter, the strobe lights in a dance bar or the electronic flash on your camera. Even the tiny little NE-2 and NE-2H glow lamps you can buy at Radio Shack for $2 are perfect examples of cold plasma, and as the array of devices I've listed will demonstrate, it's already very versatile and scalable.

Changing the gases inside the device will change the colors. Neon is usually an orangy-red, argon is green, etc. Different mixes of the gases (usually noble (inert)) will result in different electrical and optical properties.

This is the part that finally made me stop, with some interest.

Plasma is easily creatable both in a vacuum and at atmospheric pressure. All you really need to do is excite a gas, generally using high voltage electricity. The higher the pressure of the gas, generally the higher the voltage required to excite it actually is.

Simply walking across a rug on a dry day and having static electricity jump from your fingertip is a wonderful display of atmospheric pressure plasma. But, like lightning, it's hot; if the spark were continuous, it would eventually burn you.

(As one example, I've built dozens of tesla coils as a hobby, and it's fun to pull a spark off the top of them, using only your fingertip (use proper safety precautions if you try this). That's a great example of atmospheric pressure plasma. But the problem is, it gets damned hot if it arcs for too long to any given spot on your body.)

Consider the temperature of lightning. Fine, there's less energy involved here, so the temperature is less. But I can still pull an arc from my favorite tesla coil, using my fingertip, and then use my other hand to move pieces of paper into the arc. The paper catches fire almost immediately.

Cold plasma exists in neon lightbulbs and numerous other devices. But, at atmospheric pressure it's quite a development. I can't wait to play with it.

It's based on making a huge (30km across) plasma which weighs basically nothing and using that to trap solar wind and providing a low, but very significant force- much more than ion drive but lasting a similiar period.

Anyway one of the main problems are that the hot plasma tends to melt the outside of the space craft. Perhaps a cold plasma might be better? Anyway check out the link it's cool space tech!

It seems weird that they mention that the plasmas reflect radio waves, so that they can be used to render sats and space vessels invisible to radar. The whole point of radar is that when it bounces off, the reflection is what is detected. Now later he says that it is possible to make it absorb radar, but I am not sure how that is possible. I am not up on my plasma physics, but I don't see how this can be the case. Would it have to be precisely tuned in some way I can't picture, in which case the radar transmitter needs only to change frequency rapidly.

The other thing is that supposing you build this fancy structure around space ships, then just forget about using microwave energy blasts. Tunable X-ray lasers are a possibility using free electron laser technology; visible light passes through these plasmas without any scattering it seems, so probably even visible spectrum lasers have no problem. Hell, what is wrong with regular matter based weapons like mass drivers and rockets. That might be a good use for the radar shielding technology. Missle defense programs depend on being able to detect the incoming object. However, how well can you keep the plasma shield around a rapidly accelerating object? I guess you could fire something from a mass driver, because then it would be moving a constant velocity once it left the gun.

Tinkering with things we don't quite understand and learning about them can lead to all sorts of breakthroughs and new understanding that can help in many other areas. Look at all the cool stuff that has come out of NASA's research. A lot of it really has helped people. It's not just screwing around.

Besides, there are many people researching cancer and other such things. But it would be silly to have everybody doing that sort of research. Then once it's cured, we're stuck with a bunch of biologists and such with nothing to do and then we have to send them back to school to learn how to be computer help-desk workers or something. It would be a sad, sad world.

--GrouchoMarx

Never ascribe to maliciousness that which can be adequately explained by incompetence.

Never ascribe to maliciousness that which can be adequately explained by incompetence.

(Sheesh, how to cook rice. It's true - hang around /. long enough and every subject will come up at least once.)

Never ascribe to maliciousness that which can be adequately explained by incompetence.

And you're right, very few (if any) subjects go unbroached on /. Part of it's charm.

Hmm.. I always use equal parts water and rice. Seems to come out perfect. Although I have burnt the bottom on occaision too.

//Frisco
--
"No se rinde el gallo rojo, sólo cuando ya está muerto."
-- Los Miserables "Gallo Rojo"

//Frisco
--
"No se rinde el gallo rojo, sólo cuando ya está muerto."
-- Los Miserables "Gallo Rojo"

Starting a sentence with but.
R. Murray

I always learned that you aren't supposed to start a sentence with 'and' or 'but', but sometimes I want to because it makes sense at the time. Can I break this rule?

Re: Starting a sentence with but.
Nick Carbone

R.

Guess what! You're in luck. In this case, the rule has changed. The prohibition against beginning a sentence with a co-ordinating conjunction--and, or, or but--has been lifted because despite the prohibition, writers quite often did begin sentences with one of the three. And so the new rule now states, according to Sidney Greenbaum in The Oxford English Grammar (1996, Oxford U. Press), "sentences may begin with a co-ordinating conjunction that points back to a previous sentence or set of sentences" (381).

[...]

I'm only pointing this out to you, grammar nazi, because I want you to be the best damn grammar nazi you can be!

Basically there are two different approaches to research:

• Looking at the current knowledge and trying to extend and apply it
• Think up stuff that would be wonderful to have and then try to find a way to get there

Michael "Brazil" Borgwardt --- Member of #WASHU# and Her would-be guinea-pig.

Michael "Brazil" Borgwardt --- Member of #WASHU# and Her would-be guinea-pig.

You wily little troll, you.

The Mad Scot strikes again...

What _will_ those DOD boys think of next?

The Mad Scot strikes again...