How would you step down the high voltage DC in the transmission lines to household voltage levels without using transformers?

Don't fast neutrons tend to destroy the containment vessel? Isn't sodium dangerous when it leaks? I thought that was why there have been few reactors of this type supplying commercial power.

Larry Niven? https://images.app.goo.gl/RfGt...

Flat earthers claim that it is impossible to orbit the Earth. They also claim that space is fake and rockets don't work unless they have air to push off of. They used Project Loon as "proof" that all satellites are helium balloons. Look at all of the helium that NASA purchases they say. What excuse are they going to use for the fact that anybody can see the damned satellites? Won't somebody think of the flat earthers?

He just took their money.

I see that you have been duped into thinking that Samuel Rowbotham had a PhD. Mad Mike Hughs did no science. He didn't even believe in it. There were no witnesses to Rowbotham's experiment.
Rowbotham placed a telescope eight inches above the water in order to maximize atmospheric refraction. He then observed a boat with a flag on its mast row away from him for six miles. Alfred Russel Wallace repeated the experiment in 1870. He used three poles that were 14 feet high in order to minimize refraction. He placed a telescope at the height of the poles. Wallace found that the tops of the poles did not line up as Samuel Rowbotham said they would.
In 1901, Henry Yule Oldham did the experiment again using three poles fixed at equal height above water level. When viewed through a theodolite, the middle pole was found to be almost three feet higher than the poles at each end. This version of the experiment was taught in schools until photographs of the Earth from space became available.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

I don't know how.

Like a reserve parachute on his stomach.

Premature parachute ejaculation?

I knew that I came to SlashDot for a reason.

I saw that video, too! It's called, The Day After Tomorrow. If you give equal weight to actual scientific research as you do to some dumbass video, then you really shouldn't be posting on SlashDot.

What wonderful news!

The geysers could spit them out and they would fall back to the surface. We need an orbiter to fly through those plumes and measure what is in them.

There is an article over at New Scientist where they power devices with a hardware-modified router that delivers an extra 20 Watts on an unused channel. They claim to get around the FCC's 1 Watt limit by transmitting only a carrier wave.

Is that really how the regulation works? If I don't put any information in the signal, I can use all of the power that I want?

http://www.newscientist.com/ar...


According to the article referred to by this Slash Dot story, the received power is on the order of microwatts, while the camera requires milliwatts. Because of this, you need to wait many minutes between camera frames.

I think that if we are going to broadcast noise for the purpose of powering gadgets, we should dedicate some unused spectrum for this and not interfere with existing signals.

On another subject, I used to live within sight of a 50,000 Watt AM radio station. The signal used to get into the band's amplifiers. I bet that you could power a lot of gadgets from that monster.

They aren't even weapons at this point. (You know, the "W" in "WMD")

They are toxic waste.

Saddam had ammo dumps everywhere. Saddam wasn't a big fan of maintenance and upkeep, so you are going to find a lot of old, dangerous junk in these places.

The NY Times article suggests that the Pentagon did not crow about these finds precisely because they were pre-1991 junk and not the WMDs that we were promised. The press would have laughed at them. As to keeping the number of injured servicemen secret, that is the default behavior of the Pentagon going back to Agent Orange in Viet Nam. I have heard rumors that the Pentagon is keeping the number of servicemen injured by depleted uranium secret, also.

I believe that the Pentagon actually thought that Saddam had an active chemical weapons program going on when we invaded Iraq. A modern army such as the U.S. army has little to fear from chemical weapons. What they didn't know was that Saddam had given up making chemical munitions when Clinton bombed all the chemical plants.

AC above is totally wrong. Saddam was cooperating fully with the inspectors when we attacked him. He was begging us to inspect whatever we wanted. There were UN inspectors on the ground when George W. Bush told them to get out because he wanted to start bombing.