Yep. A physicist trying to explain a balanced line to other physicists, without knowing the word for it.

Haldane would be spinning in his grave.

If the end of the coil that is hanging is grounded (earthed), it becomes an autotransformer. As it's shown, it's a variable inductor and the disconnected end is irrelevant and has no meaningful physical effect at the frequency a spark transmitter could have reached.

This comment seems to get closer to what they actually mean in their scientific paper. But the article about it is garble and the paper might suffer from second-language issues, and a lack of familiarity with the terms used in RF engineering.

Sorry, I was being sarcastic. I happen have built more than one counterpoise.

The point they're missing is grounding of the "asymmetric" half of the antenna, and that's to keep a static charge from building in the antenna that'll zap through your electronics (or you) for safety reasons.

Sometimes. But you're missing what a Counterpoise does.

Any TDI owner who is not at the very least well-informed enough, and acquires a VAG-COM and some of the special tools, is in deep doo-doo. Even if you are on the good side of a very competent mechanic who will let you watch over his shoulder and check up progress, you still need to prime them on the fundamentals and ins-and-outs, because it would be totally prohibitive for them to do the learning themselves. Dealer repair shops are absolutely out of the question. Even if the cost were not prohibitive, there isn't a single one with TDI competence or who gives a single shit about your car.

Replacing the timing belt is a major, major operation involving dismounting the engine and supporting it, lining things up with special jigs and tools, and replacing every part in the path of the belt, including water pump, tensioner, and all rollers. Then you have to set the tension very precisely, not rotating the tensioner the wrong direction because it's opposite to that in a gas model, and finally nudging the heavy injection pump by thousandths of an inch to get the injection timing in spec, using the VAG-COM to check it. And if you're off the scale advanced or retarded when you begin the adjustment, it's a special adventure to find your way into the window so you can see anything at all on the VAG-COM. Or get it running at all.

If the timing belt ever strips teeth or skips more than a single tooth, you are in dire danger of doing several thousand dollars of damage to the engine, or totaling it.

Then there are the special cute things that can go wrong, like an injector that sticks open instead of pulsing properly. That will turn it into a blowtorch that will burn right through the top of the piston.

Damn, I wish I would have patented that and all its quantum magic...

I noticed that my vertical transmitting antenna often works better if I connect a horizontal wire about the same length as the antenna to ground at its base! The wire isn't connected to the transmitting side of the circuit at all! And how well it works varies depending on the length! Obviously there is some deus ex machina at work here...

Clearly you missed the bit where they invoked quantum mechanics, surely that explains away all the inaccuracies, like the fact you can already buy chip scale dielectric antennas

The thing that I really hate about Innovation Stories is that the reporter invariably doesn't understand what's going on, and invariably is easily convinced that The Obviiously Very Technical People have some very valuable invention.

Wannabe central planners think they have all the answers.

Here's a crazy idea - stop artificial price fixing of water and let the stupid uses become unprofitable through millions of decisions by people who know about their own business.

"Oh, no," they say, "we know better. Even though they created this mess with that attitude.

Remember, Slate's entire business model is to find fault where there is none and assign blame. Keep this in mind when you read their next inflammatory article and you'll see the pattern.

Marconi's connection to the center tap of a coil with one end not connected worked by broken symmetry? Really? It wasn't just a method of tuning a coil to the correct reactance for a particular frequency?

Entirely right about nitrogen asphyxia. There is nothing magic about nitrogen; you could as well use any other colorless, odorless inert gas, but nitrogen is the cheapest.

One correction, though. "Stopping the heart" per se is most definitely not painful. Ask anyone who has undergone true sudden complete cardiac arrest. You immediately feel a surreal calm as all that commotion in your chest you never really noticed until that moment, and the rush of blood through your head, stops. Within single digit seconds you feel crazy high. In 10-20 seconds you are out like a light. It may take 10 minutes for clinical irreversible death to eventuate, but after 10-20 seconds you are a sack of meat. We know from those whose heart spontaneously restarts, or are resuscitated before complete death or brain damage, that the experience after 10-20 seconds is nothing more than unconsciousness.

It's not so much that CO2, or cardiac arrest, "turns off" pain. It entirely sidesteps the strangling sensation caused by buildup of CO2. As others have noted, there is no physiologic sensation from lack of oxygen, but there is an almighty agony from CO2 buildup.

Batteries need to come down in cost before it makes sense to switch to an off-grid solution. I have a 1kW battery/solar system (not grid-tied) as an emergency power source and I have to replace the lead acid AGM batteries aver 5-7 years at a cost of $500 to $1000.

I guess your battery guys have a license to print money as it stands. Compare your putrid 1 kw battery to a Tesla >100 kw battery. The latter certainly doesn't cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.

What would be more interesting would be to find what the kwh rating of your battery is.

They don't have nearly as much to offer if they can't do launches quickly. I'm sure they would make that a feature of their offering.

They can carry about 110kg to LEO, compared to the Falcon 9's 13150kg. That's 0.84% of the payload capacity. A launch is estimated to cost $4 900 000, compared to the Falcon 9's $61 200 000. That's 8.01%. That means cost per mass to orbit is nearly an order of magnitude worse.

Yes, this is a really small rocket. If you are a government or some other entity that needs to put something small in orbit right away, the USD$5 Million price might not deter you, even though you could potentially launch a lot of small satellites on a Falcon 9 for less.

And it's a missile affordable by most small countries, if your payload can handle the re-entry on its own. Uh-oh. :-)

I just stood up on my chair.
*golf clap*
Well done, Sir.

--
BMO