Comment Re:SELinux? (Score 2) 54
none, its mostly theater imo
Comment Re:Debian fixed (Score 1) 54
does not work for sid/forky due to libsodium
Comment Re:Woosh.... a bit late, Slashdot... (Score 1) 54
still no sid/forky
Comment Re:The Expense Is In The Shutdown And Cleanup (Score 1) 152
The major expense of a nuclear reactor is in decommissioning, the shutdown and cleanup at it's retirement.
It's a massive cost, to be sure. But recent history indicates that every nuclear plant represents on the order of $10 billion in upfront costs.
Comment Re:Well, duh (Score 1) 149
Two we're considering are the Toyota RAV4 and the Subaru Forester.
May I suggest you consider the Rav4 Prime, which is the plug-in hybrid version? It has enough all-electric range for a daily commute, but several hundred miles of total range. Plus, because it has enough electric power for highway driving, combined with the ICE, it has crazy peak power and a higher towing capacity than a stock Rav4.
Comment Re:The US stopped subsidizing EVs, didn't tax fuel (Score 1) 149
on top of regular vehicle tariffs, makes gas trucks the less bad choise.
What were you saying about market manipulation ??
Indeed. Go read up on the history of the Chicken Tax going back to the 1960s to see a textbook example of tariff protectionism, and part of the reason the US auto market is so damn truck-heavy.
Comment Summary misses the coolest details (Score 5, Interesting) 75
Atomic clocks work using the energy transitions between different electron orbitals. Nuclear clocks work by using energy transitions within the nucleus itself - the difference between the lowest energy arrangement of the protons+neutrons and excited states (isomers).
Normally you need a serious punch to get a nucleus into an excited state: x-rays, gamma rays, or bombardment with energic particles. It so happens that thorium-229 requires the lowest energy to get to an excited state, and that can be achieved with deep-UV (148 nm) light. Laser light at that wavelength has only recently become possible. Also: Th-229 does not really exist in nature, you have to extract it from the decay of U-235, which itself has low natural abundance.
So it's pretty cool stuff, and this first demonstration hints at what could be possible in the future. Atomic clocks use light in the microwave range; this nuclear clock uses light in a frequency band five orders or magnitude higher, and so could theoretically have that much greater precision. And because the fundamental phenomenon occurs in the nucleus rather than the electron cloud, it's much less susceptible to external interference.
Normally you need a serious punch to get a nucleus into an excited state: x-rays, gamma rays, or bombardment with energic particles. It so happens that thorium-229 requires the lowest energy to get to an excited state, and that can be achieved with deep-UV (148 nm) light. Laser light at that wavelength has only recently become possible. Also: Th-229 does not really exist in nature, you have to extract it from the decay of U-235, which itself has low natural abundance.
So it's pretty cool stuff, and this first demonstration hints at what could be possible in the future. Atomic clocks use light in the microwave range; this nuclear clock uses light in a frequency band five orders or magnitude higher, and so could theoretically have that much greater precision. And because the fundamental phenomenon occurs in the nucleus rather than the electron cloud, it's much less susceptible to external interference.
Comment Re:Paywalled (Score 3, Insightful) 75
My original submission included a number of not-paywalled links.
Comment My submission was better (Score 1) 75
Thanks, BeauHD, for swooping in, scooping my submission from two days ago, and posting a worse summary.
Submission + - First Nuclear Clocks Start Ticking in Vienna and Beijing (phys.org)
necro81 writes: Two groups, one in Vienna and one in Beijing, have successfully demonstrated the world's first nuclear clocks. Standard atomic clocks, like the caesium clocks that define the second, operate by observing the transition of electrons between different orbits about the nucleus. The resulting radiation is usually in the microwave range, and can produce clocks accurate to one second in 100 billion years.
Nuclear clocks go a step further, and probe energy transitions within the nucleus itself. Nuclei can arrange their protons and neutrons into different configurations, called isomers. The isomer with the lowest energy is the one usually found; higher-energy ones are only metastable and decay quickly. Usually it takes serious energy — x-rays and gamma rays — to excite a nucleus into a higher-energy arrangement. It so happens that thorium-229 can be excited using UV light with a wavelength of 148 nm — just within the capabilities of some exotic lasers.
It's still been quite a challenge. For one thing, Th-229 is not found in nature; it must be extracted from the decay chain of uranium-235. The Beijing team used just a microgram mixed in a crystal of calcium fluoride.
Although these prototype nuclear clocks are not yet more accurate than existing atomic clocks (one second in millions, rather than billions, of years), they show the way towards what may be possible. Because the energy transition is in the nucleus, rather than the electron cloud, it is less susceptible to outside disturbances like magnetic fields. And the fundamental frequency is much higher (five orders of magnitude), which should yield more precise timing. This development could lead to smaller and more reliable time standards across the world (and solar system).
Nuclear clocks go a step further, and probe energy transitions within the nucleus itself. Nuclei can arrange their protons and neutrons into different configurations, called isomers. The isomer with the lowest energy is the one usually found; higher-energy ones are only metastable and decay quickly. Usually it takes serious energy — x-rays and gamma rays — to excite a nucleus into a higher-energy arrangement. It so happens that thorium-229 can be excited using UV light with a wavelength of 148 nm — just within the capabilities of some exotic lasers.
It's still been quite a challenge. For one thing, Th-229 is not found in nature; it must be extracted from the decay chain of uranium-235. The Beijing team used just a microgram mixed in a crystal of calcium fluoride.
Although these prototype nuclear clocks are not yet more accurate than existing atomic clocks (one second in millions, rather than billions, of years), they show the way towards what may be possible. Because the energy transition is in the nucleus, rather than the electron cloud, it is less susceptible to outside disturbances like magnetic fields. And the fundamental frequency is much higher (five orders of magnitude), which should yield more precise timing. This development could lead to smaller and more reliable time standards across the world (and solar system).
Comment Re:Nice! (Score 3, Funny) 49
These projects are not very visible
I'll say! They buried it at the South Pole!
Comment Re:4C (Score 3, Interesting) 101
Just... absolutely staggering energy numbers.!
If you are interested in staggering some more: go check out how much power is channeled via the Gulf Stream, both in terms of heat transport and in shear kinetic energy. It's tens-to-hundreds of terawatts.
(It's tough to tease the Gulf Stream on its own from the larger AMOC, which is on the order of one petawatt.)
Comment If Only (Score 2) 101
If only we hadn't forced Trump to call off dismantling that ocean monitoring network, none of this would have happened! I mean, if you don't bother to measure it, does it really happen?
Comment Re:Users want *nix on PC hardware (Score 1) 162
Out in the alternate universe where folks are actually building things (instead of the corner office of the guy using business double speak) "success" also means "attracts competent developers and retains them."
Many folks at the time did not want to contribute code that would just get stolen by proprietary parasites and *literally* sold back to them.
Or to projects where improvements never made it back to the mainline.
Those folks, in my experience, were the ones who actually both knew what they were doing and had a strong belief that they were contributing something to the larger community - and not something easily looted by the guy using business speak who just wanted more revenue.
Those folks, whether or not you agree with me, preferred contributing their time to GPL'd projects over BSD projects.
Were you a developer at the time? If not. STFU. Stay in your lane.
Comment Re:Ok, but⦠(Score 1) 162
It's worth noting that busybox replicates many of them, and it has its own oddities.
