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Comment Electrostatic Inertial Confinement Fusion (Score 1) 225

by mknewman (#47375531) Attached to: Senate Budgetmakers Move To End US Participation In ITER
We should be pursuing the legacy of Robert Brusard https://www.youtube.com/watch?... like these folks http://www.talk-polywell.org/b.... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P... It works, 15 year old students have made it work in a lab http://www.popsci.com/diy/arti... and $100m would build a proof of concept energy positive plant. I have no idea why we have not done this other than we may have already under the NAVY but they aren't talking. NASA should build one for interplanetary ion engines.

Comment Re:Flyout and back plan (Score 1) 105

by mknewman (#47274667) Attached to: SpaceX Falcon 9R Vertical Take-Off and Landing Test Flight
I believe the first stage makes an orbit before de-orbiting via a burn, comes in head first with an ablative heat shield, and flips over once it's roughly subsonic. The details are still sketchy but from what I heard the first real 'landing' on water was approximately 1 mile off course. Musk wants 300 ft on next flight and on a pad at the cape by end of the year.

Submission + - Tesla releases electric car patents to the public (teslamotors.com)

Submitted by mknewman
mknewman writes: Yesterday, there was a wall of Tesla patents in the lobby of our Palo Alto headquarters. That is no longer the case. They have been removed, in the spirit of the open source movement, for the advancement of electric vehicle technology.

Tesla Motors was created to accelerate the advent of sustainable transport. If we clear a path to the creation of compelling electric vehicles, but then lay intellectual property landmines behind us to inhibit others, we are acting in a manner contrary to that goal. Tesla will not initiate patent lawsuits against anyone who, in good faith, wants to use our technology.

Comment Lots of updates coming (Score 2) 136

by mknewman (#47194401) Attached to: Tesla Makes Improvements To Model S
Elon Musk has said there will be a roof rack for skiis and other things (bikes, canoe?) not sure how he's going to pull that off. He's also promised 400m batteries, self driving (entrance ramp to exit ramp), better seats, 4wd and of course the megafactory and a sub $40k car capable of 200m range. Oh and Mars missions. Got to hand it to him, he doesn't think small.

Comment Re:Foolish (Score 1) 358

by mknewman (#47163955) Attached to: The Disappearing Universe
The problem is that even with FTL speeds things are still too far apart. Assume you could do 10*C it would still take 3000 years to the center of the galaxy or 10,000 years to the outskirts of Andromeda. 100*C and you are still into many multiple lifetimes of travel just to get there. The distances are so great as to be unapproachable.

Submission + - Computer Science freshman, too soon to job hunt?

Submitted by stef2dotoh
stef2dotoh writes: I've got about a year of computer science classes under my belt along with countless hours of independent online and tech book learning. I can put together a secure login-driven Web site using PHP and MySQL. (I have a personal project on GitHub and a personal Web site.) I really enjoyed my Web development class, so I've spent a lot of time honing those skills and trying to learn new technologies. I still have a ways to go, though. I've been designing Web sites for more than 10 years, writing basic PHP forms for about 5 or 6 years and only gotten seriously into PHP/MySQL the last 1 or 2 years on and off. I'm fluent with HTML and CSS, but I really like back-end development. I was hoping I might be able to get a job as a junior Web developer, but even those require 2+ years of experience and a list of technologies as long as my arm. Internships usually require students to be in their junior or senior year, so that doesn't seem to be an option for me. Recruiters are responding to my resume on various sites, but it's always for someone more experienced. Should I forget about trying to find a junior Web developer position after only one year of computer science classes? I need to find work and would like to do something that excites me, but maybe it's just too soon?

Submission + - Scientists create best-ever model of the evolving universe (nature.com)

Submitted by bmahersciwriter
bmahersciwriter writes: Mark Vogelsberger, a physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, and his colleagues created a model of the Universe that follows the evolution of both visible and dark matter starting just 12 million years after the Big Bang. While previous models have either been small and detailed or large and coarse, this simulation covers a region of space big enough to be representative of the whole Universe but detailed enough to resolve small-scale structures, such as individual galaxies.

Submission + - Yellowstone Eruption Report: US Has Deal With Brazil, Australia and Argentina (theepochtimes.com) 1

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: If the Yellowstone supervolcano erupts then millions of U.S. citizens could end up in Brazil, Australia, or Argentina.

That’s according to the South African news website Praag, which said that the African National Congress was offered $10 billion a year for 10 years if it would build temporary housing for Americans in case of an eruption.

The potential eruption of the supervolcano, one of the biggest in the world, has been a hot topic ever since videos of animals allegedly fleeing the area before an earthquake were posted online. Although the veracity of the claims haven’t been backed up, dozens of bloggers and others have been trying to figure out what, if anything, is going on.

One of the latest theories is that the U.S. Geological Service and its partners, which keep an eye on the caldera, are hiding data from the public.

Submission + - Mathematical Model Suggests That Human Consciousness Is Noncomputable (medium.com) 1

Submitted by KentuckyFC
KentuckyFC writes: One of the most profound advances in science in recent years is the way researchers from a variety of fields are beginning to formulate the problem of consciousness in mathematical terms, in particular using information theory. That's largely thanks to a relatively new theory that consciousness is a phenomenon which integrates information in the brain in a way that cannot be broken down. Now a group of researchers has taken this idea further using algorithmic theory to study whether this kind of integrated information is computable. They say that the process of integrating information is equivalent to compressing it. That allows memories to be retrieved but it also loses information in the process. But they point out that this cannot be how real memory works otherwise otherwise retrieving memories repeatedly would cause them to gradually decay. By assuming that the process of memory is non-lossy, they use algorithmic theory to show that the process of integrating information must noncomputable. In other words, your PC can never be conscious in the way you are. That's likely to be a controversial finding but the bigger picture is that the problem of consciousness is finally opening up to mathematical scrutiny for the first time.

Submission + - The Death of Dark Matter's #1 Competitor

Submitted by StartsWithABang
StartsWithABang writes: Since as far back as the 1930s, observations of the largest structures in the Universe have shown us that there's a discrepancy between the amount of mass that can be inferred from the starlight we see and the amount of mass that we know must be there due to its gravitational effects. Either there's some new, unseen form of matter that isn't present in the Standard Model of particle physics — dark matter — or the laws of gravity are wrong and need to be modified. The leading candidate for the latter option is TeVeS, the first relativistic formulation of MOdified Newtonian Dynamics (MOND). Well, the first observational test capable of distinguishing between TeVeS and General Relativity is complete. Spoiler: Einstein wins again.

Submission + - Tesla Logged $713 Million In Revenue In Q1 And Built 7,535 Cars

Submitted by cartechboy
cartechboy writes: Tesla just announced its first-quarter earnings and the numbers are interesting. It logged revenue of $713 million on deliveries of 6,457 Model S electric cars. It's worth noting that's basically the number of vehicles it said it would sell in the quarter, but that number is slightly down from the prior quarter. It built a total of 7,535 Model S cars in the quarter as it built inventory as shipments began to China where sales just started last month. Net orders in North America grew 10 percent, and production for the second quarter is expected to increase to 8,500-9,000 Model S cars. Tesla expects to deliver 35,000 cars during the 2014 calendar year. Musk told analysts that China's enthusiastic and that government support is crucial. The Model X is delayed until spring of 2015 with production-design prototypes being ready in the fourth quarter. Tesla hopes to possibly break ground as early as next month on its gigafactory, though the location has yet to be announced. Of course, the stock market is already reacting to these numbers and is currently down nearly 3 percent in after hours trading.

Submission + - Astrophysicists Build a Virtual Universe (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: In the most detailed effort yet, astrophysicists and cosmologists have modeled the evolution of the universe right down to the formation of individual galaxies. The results of the mammoth computer simulation neatly match multiple astronomical observations, ranging from the distribution of galaxies in massive galaxy clusters to the amounts of neutral hydrogen gas in galaxies large and small. The findings once again neatly confirm cosmologists' standard theory of the basic ingredients of the universe and how it evolved—a result that may disappoint researchers hoping for new puzzles to solve.

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