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Comment Re:Let's Put Belgium To Sleep (Score 0, Flamebait) 267

Correction, Belgium broke off.
The french ruling class of 1831 created Belgium, as an intermediate step to joining France. However, once Belgium was created they liked it so much that they gave up that idea. For the longest of time, the Flemish (majority) has been second class citizens. Their culture and language suppressed. As the Flemish are taking back their culture and rights, the balance of power is shifting towards them. The Walloons have at the same time become the best protected minority in the world. Belgium is experiencing since two years a political crisis, because the Flemish want more regional power. The Walloons want to keep it federal. They are afraid of losing power, influence and especially the yearly money transfers of billons of euros from Flanders to Wallonia. Flanders is one of the richest regions in the world, yet Walloon is a very poor region. In return for the social support, the Walloons spit on our culture and language. They continously threaten the Flemish territorial integrity and refuse to learn Dutch when they settle in Flanders. They are a bunch of arrogant, selfish bastards that threaten the welfare and future of, not only the Flemish people, but the entire Belgium population.

Comment Re:Let's Put Belgium To Sleep (Score 2, Interesting) 267

For all I care Belgium can disintegrate. If wallonia wants to join France, so be it. If Eupen want to join Germany, so be it. If both want to stay independent, so be it. I don't care. But Flanders will become an independent republic. It would never join the Netherlands. You would have to pry Brussel from our cold dead hands, before we would let it join Wallonia. Or it could go to the EU as the DC capital of europe, which is also fine. Fighting over Brussel costs too much money, and we are a peaceful people anyway. But sending billions of euros to wallonia, while they spit on our culture and threaten our territorial integrity, has to stop. Bonus point if you guess which side I am from.

Comment don't lose a USB port (Score 1) 519

Go for the bluetooth thingy. You won't lose a USB port, and you won't get annoyed by this stupid radio receiver which sits 5 cm away from your mouse. You might as well take a wired mouse, since the wired radio receiver will still clutter up your workspace and claim a USB port. Stupidest thing I ever bought.

Comment Re:Energy Independence (Score 1) 438

commercially available energy from nuclear fusion by 2020 ? Dream on. At the moment there are two main pathways towards fusion. Inertial confinement (lasers, such as in this story) and magnetic confinement (tokamaks such as JET or ITER that will be build in France). Don't let those people over at the inertial confinement facility convince you that they are in this for fusion. It has more to do with high power lasers for the military and simulation of nuclear explosions. Nuclear test explosions has been banned. That is why France quickly did a few more before the ban started, and why the USA and France (and probably others as well) are so interested in inertial confinement. That leaves magnetic confinement. The timescale here is that by 2020 ITER will be finished, up and running. But ITER is a test facility, designed to prove that the energy output is greater than the energy input. If you want to get to a reactor that will actually provide energy to a grid, then you will have to wait another 20 to 30 years. Thus energy to the grid around 2040 - 2050, from a reactor called DEMO that has to prove the commerciality of fusion energy. By that time, we'll probably just be happy to get any energy at all from any source (unless solar lives up to its promise). A single reactor by 2050, how many are we going to need to power the world? After DEMO, it will probably take another 10 to 15 years (a guess, based on the build time for ITER) to get that total power production up to something significant. Yes, I am a big proponent of fusion, and we absolutely need to do it, but some realism won't kill us.

Comment Re:And (Score 1) 194

I work in applied physics, related to fusion and I don't think any physicist would say that funding for cern or fermilab should be cut to benefit fusion research or any other. Not even someone who works on fusion itself. We are all trying to understand the universe and push the boundaries of our knowledge and technology. It is extremely short sighted to direct (or even to try to direct) fundamental research. You never know where you might end up, and because of that funding is important. Who knows what unexpected discoveries will be made.

Comment Re:Life Cycle Analysis (Score 1) 432

Linear fusion device? As in a z-pinch device? Such things have been tried before. How are you going to deal with the end losses? You still to need to confine a plasma in a magnetic field. If it is linear, it needs magnetic mirrors at the end. The charged particles need to stop there and return back to the center. How are you going to deal with these energy losses? Why not combine solar cells with a hall thruster for you spacecraft propulsion?

Comment Re:Boiling It Down (Score 2, Interesting) 436

(IAAPhysicist) The heat load on part of the wall is around 10 MW per square meter. Only the Ariane V rocket has higher power loads, but only for a few seconds. ITER, the one they are building in france, will have a plasma for about half an hour. Yes, it's a materials issue. It's also (still) a problem of plasma stabilities. Control of ELM's is also important. These are sudden outbursts of plasma towards the wall, depositing massive amounts of gas and energy on the wall. At the moment, JET the largest reactor to date, still requires more energy input, than there is energy output. ITER should demonstrate net energy production.

Comment Re:Interferowhatsjiggy? (Score 1) 233

They don't bounce. You get the superposition of the two separate lightwaves. That is, you take the sum of the individual light waves. If there are out of phase by 90degrees, you get destructive interference (zero amplitude of the resulting wave function). If they are in phase, you get constructive interference (higher amplitude of the resulting lightwave). Light displays the wave/particle duality. Depending on what you do, a photon will behave as a particle, or it will behave as a wave. A photon (light packet) could be seen as a collection (superposition) of waves. Each wave travels with a wave-velocity, but the total travels with the group velocity. While the individual wave velocity can be higher than the group velocity, the group velocity equals the speed of light (duh). More I can't dig out of my memory at the moment. Sorry, this is not my daily topic.

Comment Re:community (Score 1) 326

I don't think that is how the sentence should be read. You don't refer to people as elements, you would use members to do so.
I read it as that a certain mindset within the community creeps him out. A mindset that was not originally present, and certainly not planned for. I am merely wondering what that would be.

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