Matter antimatter annihilation is the reason. During the early stages of the Big Bang, matter and antimatter were created in nearly equal amounts. Electrons and positrons, protons and antiprotons, etc. They annihilate on contact and produce two gamma rays. But due to expansion of the universe the photons lose energy as they are stretched in transit and lose the ability to transform back into particles. Today they are very low energy indeed and roughly one thousand times less energetic.

Thus they are very numerous but make up only a small fraction of the energy in the universe. The ratio of these photons to normal matter essentially is the symmetry breaking that tipped the balance in favor of matter throughout the visible universe. No one knows exactly why it's this ratio, a successful theory could net someone a novel prize.

You sir are an idiot if you think the "common people" are concerned over monitoring. They think it's just stuff they post on Facebook for everyone to see anyhow. Get them to understand that the NSA is hoarding pictures of their teenagers junk and you will get the outrage that will actually get something done. No politician cares what a few concerned citizens say; for any real change you need mass viral outrage right before elections.

What's the point if you can't collect pictures of people's junk? Also, given how teens act today, wouldn't the NSA have the largest collection of pedo in the world? Apparently the NSA does think of the children.

WTH geologists why are you ruining life for these people. Your discovery ENABLED these quakes where the state was obviously disabled before you went mucking around like some caffinated and curious teenager in a mess of java. If anyone gets hurt or there is any property damage you just opened yourself up to the largest lawsuit in California history. Hope you are happy you smug bit****.

My 30 dollar laptop battery packs and my 15 dollar power tool packs and my 2 dollar iphone batteries? The whole article is off when it fails to take subsidy into account as well as the fact automanufacters actually sell packs below cost to encourage people to buy. When the first large tesla battery came out it was 30 thousand usd. Now it's around 12 with subsidy and below cost.
besides the fact i have a personal grievance with how pollution is advertised with electric vehicles the main thing holding them back is the battery. Once that is reduced in cost and increased in performance they actually become practical. Right now they aren't very practical from a cost perspective at all.

Let them eat cake!

I didn't mean to imply you but in general.
I pretty strongly object to testing in real life situations when the populace has an expectation of safety. The google car is perhaps the most advanced in the world yet is not able to function safely in city driving. Google themselves admit it's not ready or it would be rolled out as a product. It's a far cry from teams of engineers, programmers, and scientists fussing over every last detail, planning routes where only expected problems (if any) are in ideal situations and real life situations where these vehicles will be dirty, neglected and abused.

Personally i dont feel that its reasonable to allow any self driving cars on any public roads until they have rigorous safety testing completed on closed courses first. I'm less worried about google than some of these fly by night companies that really are close to a mod/DIY community level of technical ability. The latest test by Delphi comes close to that.

The whole ethics framework debate is a straw man (computer) argument. It's patently obvious people don't make those split second judgement calls. The real reason the Germans are on sound moral grounds is autonomous cars are nowhere near commercial prime time on sunny day clear traffic straight highways. Dirty sensors, unpolished code with bugs, proper reliable extraction of features, sensor failures, intelligent prediction of object locations, prediction and proper avoiding of road hazards, and many more things still need to be ironed out. Problems creep up where a driver may have only a second to take over after the AI bails - complete bullshit that a human can hyper concentrate over the controls and take over in one second properly three hours and twenty six minutes in.

How the fuck do you justify putting people's lives at risk with your crap box wanna be AI? I want self driving cars as much as anyone not employed in the commercial driving industry. But not when any jackass car with half capable systems risks everyone's life. Honestly it needs to be banned in the United States on public roads. Wanna play? Pony up for a closed course before risking people's lives. If you think moral decisions are the barrier to AI cars you haven't the foggiest idea what the actual challenges are.

Riight. Next you will be saying that the united states is not a Christian nation.....
You forget their flavor of the christian religion is not only correct, history is as they believe it to be. For example Allah may have acted according to contemporary norms but that's just showing how backward Islam is compared to the right religion which is nothing but love and the source of all morality and purpose.
At least we can all agree to hate atheists. They should be rounded up and put in camps. Thank god many states specifically state they can't hold any political office.

I mean think of the potential here. FTFA:

Just think with this advancement Walowitz would never have had to go to the ER.

Small business owners, no of course not. Same with large business owners. They are more like dukes or princes, squashing the unwashed masses beneath their corporate stallions.

Sure but that's not racist. /sarcasm

Your complete neglect of cost is rather funny. It's still cost per kWh/year obviously you need a battery that will meet your actual capacity vs discharge rate. That is a given - what isn't isnt is paying more money for a more compact and light weight solution.
if you actually read the article they explain how though there is interest, refurbishing packs is not viable. Use of nearly dead packs makes no financial sense in the general case. You will be replacing them all the time, from months to at best a year or two or you need ridiculously oversized batteries to make up for the fact you are losing capacity and discharge rate alarmingly fast. Further you fail to understand as cells to bad it gets exponentially worse as the remaining cells take up the same load, worsening an already bad situation. The only way it's even feasible to use them is if you own both the auto company and the solar company and eat the cost difference between a viable and cost effective economic solution. Sure you can make a great electric car for 100k but he's losing money on them - probably the reason no one else decided on that business plan.
show me where these large scale systems use the same cells and chemistry as tesla packs. Can't? Because saying lithium is like saying computer or car. A MacBook isn't the same as arduino. The lithium batteries you use for ev are no where near the kind you would use in a grid backup. You can't even read the cited source i posted or provide your own so why should I take your point of view as having any credibility?

It's ridiculous that we would ship them off to gitmo. What will be done is the two affairs they have had, the business deal under the table last year, his son being gay, the fact that his family has employed illegal immigrants, and the fact he did cocane in college will all be released to the public if he votes the wrong way. Further if he speaks out on this he is revealing state secrets and will be tried in a secret court by secret judges and sentenced to 'pound me in the ass penitentiary' in the most pedestrian sense.
10 years ago I would have called this tin foil hat material, now I'm not so sure.

Again it's simply cost per kWh/year. You simply have a need for kWh at some level of demand. You fail to understand its cheaper to simply buy a slightly larger pack, or different annode/cathode material than use the most finicky fire prone batteries known. I see hand waving but nothing addressing the issue.
you obviously never have worked with lithium batteries, doubly so packs of 7000 individual cells. Here is a good example of why using these defunct packs is bull.

From page 46 of this report Discussions egarding smart grid applications include using automotive battery packs connected to the grid for temporary energy storage, and as emergency power supplies when power is unavailable. There is also considerable discussion in the industry regarding repurposing used or refurbished automotive battery packs for stationary applications such as home level power storage once the packs are no longer suitable for use in vehicles.70 It remains to be seen whether refurbishment of packs will be practical or economical,71 as cells must generally be well matched to provide good performance in battery packs, and aged cells are particularly difficult to match effectively. In addition, for refurbished pack safety, the issue of determining when a cell should be retired will need to be resolved.
tl;dr leading industry experts say the same thing I'm saying. Feel free to cite some actual facts here, say from well cited industry leading experts. Because using burnt out lithium batteries to power your grid is more of a pr stunt than actual economics.