What? Doesn't this break the first law of thermodynamics? Either I'm missing something, or this reporter is. Maybe they meant to say "would have to produce more value than it costs." Spoiler Full disclosure: I haven't taken a science class since high school.
Elements with small numbers of protons (Hydrogen, Helium, Lithium, etc) require more energy to split apart than to bring together, so you actually release energy when you combine them. Elements with high numbers of protons (Uranium, Plutonium, Thorium, etc) require more energy to bring together than to split apart, so you release energy when you split them. That's the primary difference between fusion and fission. When they talk about a "break even" point for fusion power, what they mean is that the reaction releases more (stored) energy than it took to initiate the reaction in the first place. This allows you to generate energy until the fuel is expended (as opposed to spending energy just to create a cool science experiment).
Off topic but still science related- My understanding was that time is a man made invention. It doesn't actually exist. If time slows as you approach the speed of light, wouldn't that disprove time being a human invention? If time is relative, how can it not exist?
Time is not a human invention, it's a fundamental property of the universe. That being said, it's way more fucked up that we humans intuit it to be, and once you start letting go of your assumptions about time and start running the numbers on it, some weird truths emerge.
Time doesn't slow as you approach the speed of light. Your perception of time slows. Everything else, moving at it's normal pace, looks like a jogger on the highway as you roar past. Only, the speed difference is so great that, right down to the molecules, your directional progress overwhelms your normal motion progress. Basically, read "The Elegant Universe", "The Universe in a Nutshell", and "A Brief History of Time". Brian Greene is brilliant, and Stephen Hawking is fuckin funny.
So, scientists found a quahog in the ocean that's about ten years younger than when Colombus first landed on San Salvador. Over 500 years old, alive. Oldest living thing there is. And they accidently killed it in captivity. FAIL
Turns out it was pretty much DOA. It was one of 200 quahogs pulled from the depths and frozen for preservation, and scientists discovered its age later in the lab. Quite a humble creature for that title.
Maybe you heard in the news a deep space probe a decade ago that just woke up from hibernation. Here's when you shake your head in amazement at what the human race is capable of: in August it will launch small spider probe that will actually land on a comet that is entering the inner solar system. It's moving at about 10,000 mph which is slow considering interstellar velocity. This ice rock is 2.5 miles wide, NOT the size of Texas and William Fincter ain't flying. How far away is this happening? Half a billion miles away. More than five times the distance of the sun. We are awesome.
Today the Rosetta probe triangulated its orbit around the Comet 67/P and has stabilized with its 10k mph speed. Unreal. We have an Earth-made satellite orbiting a deep-space comet. Here's a close-up photo it took: ...we've never seen one that hasn't flared up its tail from the sun's heat (like Halley's, ISON or Hale Bopp) so this is an insane win for science. In November it will detach a probe that will actually land on the Comet's surface. A-mazing.
this isn't really "science", per se, but this right here - this right fucking here - is a perfect example of what i do every single day. this is what i'm up against, this is what i fight against and what i fight for. and yet, for every bit of science i throw at the world, there are a hundred thousand assholes who just want to take their olestra in peace, anal leakage be damned.
dr. oz in particular infuriates me. like you, angel, i am a man . . .er, person . . of science. as such, if you can't demonstrate the veracity of something, based on reproducible results, i excercise a healthy skepticism. dr. oz is a shill for these bogus products, and is one step short of being a quack. what infuriates me even more is when my wife defends him. she has worked in the healthcare industry for a long time, and knew of him long before he hit tv. he is (or was) a legitimately talented and respected cardiothoracic surgeon. as far as she is concerned, his reputation makes him bulletproof. but being on tv went straight to his head, and he is now a complete joke.
I'll see your "dick in a box" and raise you a "dick in a petri dish". Scientists ready to test lab-grown penises on men
Don't get cocky Well, they've had the box since 2005 . . . Two phrases I never thought I'd read: donor penis and scaffold of the penis
The amount of things that are still alive and way older than us is amazing to me. Old Tjikko there is nearly 10,000 years old. That's amazing. Tjikko is often used in memes to mock Christianity of the Young Earth Creationist variety, but still, wow. To not mention the gigantic General Sherman giant sequoia or some of elder coastal redwoods, dawn redwoods, etc. Also, the deep oceans, we're getting better at getting down there, in the unending cold and darkness, and life is there. We now know the largest squid is the colossal squid, and giants are dwarfed by them. It would be even more amazing to discover a larger species. Biology is cool.