If it's a wrongful dismissal, then it's better to lawyer up before you start talking about it in public forums. There's a protocol to follow. Might even get crowdfunding from other Gors.
It looks to me like somebody outed this guy, and then he got fired. It didn't sound like he was bringing it to work with him. I wouldn't consider it a frivolous lawsuit.
Student saw an in-band indication that the detector was in a non-radiation reporting state, and asked NASA about it.
NASA says, huh, that's weird. It's not supposed to happen that often. Hey kid, wanna do us a solid (in more ways than one)?
Hell yes, says kid.
BBC, realizing that story is too complicated, bowdlerizes title to get people to read it.
Slashdot talks about something else entirely.
.. will overwhelm the power output of a single truck-mounted laser, even under ideal conditions.
For example, a 300 gram tungsten projectile will require a full second at 58 KW to be melted, assuming no reflection. An alumina projectile of 42 grams will require the same full second at that power.
Fezzik: Why do you wear a mask? Were you burned by acid or something?
The Man in Black: Oh no. It's just they're terribly comfortable. I think everyone will be wearing them in the future.
Subpoena Alexa/Amazon as a witness, then.
She might need an interpreter.
No, not more space junk.
The experiment was deployed on a capsule full of sewage and trash, and is going to be incinerated on re-entry.
If you read the article, figure S7 of the supplementary material graphs a linear relationship between the velocity of the droplets and the induced voltage, so there is definitely a mechanical component to the power generation.
Not much energy, on inspection:
the math is about high-school physics level, so here goes:
For one square meter of square module, inclined at your latitude angle L, at 2.54 cm of precipitation per hour, the power from the water sliding across the module is good for about
cos L * 1 sin L * 1 * 25400 / 2 * 0.000098 watts.
For 45 degrees latitude, that's about
That's about 1/350 the energy available falling on a 22% efficient module on June 21 in the northern hemisphere at that latitude.
(that's for a square meter of square module, whose effective area for rain capture is proportional to the cosine of its inclination; with the average potential energy of a parcel of water on the module equal to the average of the highest elevation of the parcel and the lowest elevation on the parcel, and whose elevation is proportional to the sine of its inclination, in Earth's gravity).
I'm here to say the same thing.
A 45 ACP round in a Colt 45 Automatic pistol is 600 foot-lbs, or 450 joules, and it'll do more to steel-backed plywood than just dent it.
No way the projectile is ending up with 1800 joules in kinetic energy. Perhaps that is what the capacitor bank starts with, but that's not what the projectile ends up with.
Try to be charitable about the 3 million joule thing. I work on a NASA campus that has a regular old utility transformer outside labelled 23,000 Kilovolts (and it's not).
Mistakes are made
There are no pumping stations between Hetch Hetchy and the SF Bay Area.
The system operates by gravity alone.
Error is much more likely than malice, even if the computer is infected.
In a place where the infrastructure is as wide-open and completely unprotected as it is in the US, there are much better targets that require much less investment of effort and expertise.
"For the man who has everything... Penicillin." -- F. Borquin
