Your way to do it probably had shitty efficiency. 1-2% of the electrical energy probably ended up used to produce hydrogen. With fancy catalysts and carefully controlled temperature, it's possible to improve that efficiency by a factor of 30 or so, with the best methods now getting efficiencies between 30 and 60%. The problem is that those schemes tend to either rely on very expensive catalysts (like platinum ), or they are chemical processes which produce CO2 as a by-product ( steam reforming, in which hydrocarbons are reacted with water to form hydrogen and CO2 ).

What the article seems to speak of is that they've found a catalyst that drastically improves the efficiency of electrolysis, without resorting to expensive materials.

Better question is how many KWh can it deliver in 15 mins? Since vehicle battery capacities vary significantly, that's the relevant question.

Dunno about this particular technology, but the Japanese are standardising on a system that can deliver 60kW, with experimental designs up to 120kW.
In comparison, the Tesla's battery pack is about 50kWh, so the 120kW system should be able to charge it to 80% in 20 minutes.

It gets even more amusing when you consider that a proton has a mass of about 938MeV/c , whereas the three quarks it is made up doesn't even add up to 10MeV/c. The binding energy of protons and neutrons is immense compared to the particles they are composed of.

It's possible to get everything you need from a strictly vegetarian diet - but it's very, very difficult.

No it's not. It really isn't. If what you say was true we would see vegans and vegetarians having poor health on average. In reality vegetarians have slightly better health than meat eaters in most studies, mostly because they're frequently the types of people who don't smoke and drink. When lifestyle habbits are taken into consideration the difference in health between vegetarians and meat eaters is slim to none.

Seriously, every now and then somebody comes up with som study to push the benefits of a particular diet. Vegetarian, HIgh carb, low carb, fish based, low GI, omega-3, but these always fail to live up to the very simpel scrutiny which shows that as long as you eat a varied diet, get the vitamins you need, and don't poison yourself with huge quantities of junkfood/drugs, you're going to be reasonably fine.

As for how to get all your vitamins and amino acids on a vegan diet. Vary your source of protein, take a B12 supplement, and eat 3 meals a day. You really don't have to worry much more than that.

Even today, children of vegans still die occasionally due to malnutrition.

This is also true for children of meat eaters, yet you don't use that to argue against a omnivorous diet.

If we're going to actually listen to the professionals, multiple dietary associations from differentc ountries, and even the WHO themselves have made it very clear that Vegan diets are perfectly healthy. Yes, it means you need a B12 upplement, but before you use that as "evidence" that it's not a good diet, be aware that many food products are heavily fortified. Dairy products are often fortified with vitamin A and D. Salt often contains additional iodine. Drinking water is frequelntly fluorinated to help combat tooth decay. Many soft drinks use vitamins as acidity regulators or stabilizers. Cereals are frequently fortified with B vitamins and minerals ( Corn Flakes is a good example).

Despite of this you still see loads of people going "trololol, vegan diets are nto natural" conveniently forgetting that unless you grow your own food, your diet is very far from natural as it is. There is no evidence to suggest it is "better" to get your nutrition from meat, as long as you get what you need, and contrary to popular belief it is fairly easy to get everything from a vegan diet. Yes, you need a B12 supplement, but given that B12 is extremely cheap and safe, you can't really use that to argue it's a bad diet in light of how much of our food is fortified anyway.

The scientific community was very sceptical to his claims until astronomical observations agreed with his predictions, making him world famous more or less over night. The same thing happened with global warming. People were sceptical, then the data started pouring in from various places, ranging from NASA to whether channels. The people who are sceptical now can best be compared to those who were still doubting Einstein's theory in 1940 because they didn't like the implications.

A government small enough to fit in your uterus.

But you can't fill up your massive battery in 5 minutes at any standard gas station.

This is true for the time being, but likely to change in the coming decades. There's newer forms o batteries that can recharge in 5-10 minutes, and several companies are designing electrical systems that can supply the necessary power. Now, these battery types are fairly new ( and hence expensive ), and it would probably take something like a government mandate to start retrofitting existing gas stations with the necessary electrical equipment, but technologically speaking it can be done.

Cyanobacteria and algae are responsible for the majority of the earth's atmospheric oxygen. Of course, their impact is indisputably positive, whereas we tend to fuck things up.

One of the things I actually like about the EU is that the courts here actually bit you if you violate competition law. Instead of the slap on the wrist you often see in US rulings, when a company is convicted of unfair business practices over here their options are basically to comply, cease doing business or face a fine so harsh it will eat up their profit margin.

When it comes to cellphones I expect they telcos will be in trouble if they try to pull a quick one here. Most EU politicians have to deal with many different telcos, and they are affected by unfair pricing structures more than most of us, since they tend to make a lot of international calls. Thus this nonsense is something that actually affects them personally, and they have been in a ruffle with the telcos before over unreasonable rates for international calls.

I can't imagine 100T. Hell, we stuck a dumpster to a brick wall with a 5T magnet.

Now have a guess what my reaction was when our astrophysics lecturer started talking about gigatesla field strengths. Granted, neutron stars have a few other impressive features, such as a spoonful of their surface material having a mass that exceeds that of the pyramids, but the mere mention of gigatesla field strengths was enough to drop my jaw.

At least polywell is complete bull. You often see these kind of things pop up. They make a bunch of claims on webpages, blogs, conferences and so on, but when it comes to peer reviewed journals they're very lacking. Sometimes they claim their results have been reproduced, but it's again almost impossible to get any details.

How can I be so sure? Well, basically the polywell crowd is claiming they can arrange a magnetic field in such a way as to maintain a non-maxwellian velocity distribution without using energy to do so. This violates the 2nd law of thermodynamics. In addition the polywell concept was heavily debunked some years ago, by a scientists who showed that the energy needed to maintain a mono-energetic distribution was more than what fusion would produce. Instead of addressing these concerns the polywell supporters basically just accuse their critics of not understanding polywell, without giving any real explanation of how it works beyond vague descriptions of the general concept.

I've seen enough of it to call it for what it is. It's a fraud intended to attract investors, and it will never produce anything useful.

Nobody here is planning to do anything. People just use cash less and less because it's more convenient to use a debit card. With time solutions to small transactions and power failures will develop, but don't worry. We're not just about to drop our paper money and coins before those things are reliable.

You know, it might be a completely alien thought to some (most?) Americans but some countries have citizens / subjects that trust their government to represent and protect their interests.

I can assure you Sweden is not among them. People here are fairly sceptical to politicians, and one of the massive headaches for our government right now is that people don't like the data-retention laws that EU directives require member states to implement. Basically most people here pretty much just wants government to do its job and not fuck it up. The American crusade-like political rallying you have before every US elections would just not work in Sweden, since such candidates would be perceived as crazy and unelectable. The current right wing government likely got to power precisely because their leader, Fredrik Reinfeldt, has a fairly calm and down to earth image. That doesn't mean we don't have people screaming at the top of their lungs about immigration and whatnot. They just don't get enough votes to define policy.

>And here I was, thinking it was a two party dictatorship...

While the US two party system is less than ideal, it is partially made up for by the nominations of the candidates. Both the republicans and the democrats have a nomination process that is heavily based on popular support among the people. In contrast a dictatorship would simply declare Rick Perry the supreme leader and have him in office for 40 years or so.