I found this bit at the start surprising: "Lightning is one of the leading causes of climate-related deaths worldwide. In recent decades, there has been a considerable increase in lightning due to worsening global warming [1], [2]."
Increased lightning makes sense, but I'd still have expected most climate-related deaths to be caused by flooding, heat waves, disease & crop failures, with lightning being a much smaller factor. Do they just mean it's in the top 5 or 10 climate-driven causes, or is lightning really killing people on the same (or greater) scale as these other things?
You'd get better energy density that way, but I think it's offset by worse efficiency & more damage to the engine. The inert gas fraction (N2, CO2, H2O) provides a useful working fluid to convert combustion heat to force pushing on the piston. Burning pure O2 would mean a lot more heat is needed for the same amount of force. Higher peak temperatures & more available oxygen will tend to create hotspots & knock/pre-detonation, & possibly erosion of the cylinder wall & piston from directly burning the metal.
Using nitrous or cool compressed air keeps most of the benefits while mitigating the problems of using pure O2.
No, I think the conjecture is more that people from the surrounding areas could be claiming residency in the affected area to receive the payouts, even though they normally live elsewhere.
The way i see it people really do often live in multiple locations at once and bureaucracy has a hard time with that fact. Think of the itinerant workers travelling around for seasonal jobs. The census might count them in one location but it’s quite reasonable they count for the relocation too.
So it’s possibly a matter of edge cases in the wheels of bureaucracy than outright graft.
Edison Motors is working on a system like this. They're looking to sell kits for retrofitting it onto pickup trucks, & a larger scale semi truck cab version for use with logging trucks. It looks great in their videos, although I'm not sure if they're selling to the public yet - probably a ways to go before it's really mass produced.
IMO both usages are correct, although yours is probably more common. 'Dubious' here means something like questionable/uncertain & it can apply either way: The distinction can be 'questionable' in terms of whether it's something to be proud of, or in terms of whether it's even true in the first place.
I had a similar discussion here with someone who thought that "dynamic programming" was the act of programming in some sort of dynamic manner. Not sure I managed to disabuse them of that notion.
Nice article, although I think this must be a typo: "Despite the fact that a supernova has 1045 times as much energy as our tin blasts, the same math describes the evolution of both types of explosions."
Was probably written in one system, formatted with the 45 as superscript, then copied into a CMS that converted the superscript back to regular script. Lots of popsci type publications end up having this happen.
The carriers aren't sailing around alone - they're escorted by a whole fleet (plus air patrol) that will intercept the drone launching vehicle at multiple dozen nautical miles range. Smaller quadcopter drones won't even get close to catching the carrier (which can travel over 40 kts while evading) before their batteries die. And even if a few hundred got through, how much damage can they really do? I'd imagine the flight decks can be patched quickly, although some radar equipment & any jets parked at the time of the attack would probably be lost.
It's definitely a concern as part of a larger attack, but I don't think a quadcopter drone swarm alone is likely to sink a carrier or leave it combat ineffective in the long term.
Agreed. But there's going to be "happy medium" drones that can be delivered by a long-range mothership. Price is no object when you can take out a carrier.
That's just silly. For attacks against surface targets, the bombers or strike aircraft (possibly unmanned) are going to continue carrying large, fast cruise missiles just like they have been since the 1960's. There is zero reason to use quadcopter type drones for this mission.
Doesn't this vary for different cruising speed targets? I thought jets & ducted fans were more efficient above 400 kts or so, while (non ducted) propellers were more efficient below maybe 300 kts. But I'm mostly thinking in terms of turboprop vs. turbofan designs - not 100% sure if it applies the same way for electric types, although I assume it probably would.
Modern fission designs mitigate meltdown concerns well enough that I'm not sure the safety & security around a fusion plant would actually be any better/cheaper, although public sentiment may be enough of an advantage. Tritium & neutron activated metals are dangerous enough to require keeping the traditional nuclear plant safeguards IMO. As far as proliferation concerns go, I don't see any reason you couldn't breed plutonium in the neutron flux of a fusion reactor, & the tritium is clearly viable for boosted warheads.
Modern fission designs plausibly mitigate meltdown concerns well enough...
To move that "plausibly" into "actually" you have to have very careful design review by regulators. Very careful review of construction to make sure what is constructed is what was designed. And so on and so forth. It's a lot of friction that skyrockets costs. Legitimately. People inevitably attempt to cut corners, and there's no way to make sure they aren't on the safety parts without checking. Actual currently regulatory costs seem to bear out the difference between these, with SMR people spending large amounts of money to convince regulators they didn't screw up, vs Helion fusion being "regulated like a hospital".
I'm not saying fusion has no proliferation concerns. But it's the difference between "low grade nuclear waste, or a very high tech very advanced program to weaponize a working reactor" and "even a broken reactor can be strapped to some explosives to make a dirty bomb". I can't say I'm very aware of how much proliferation concerns drive costs.
I was thinking more of large scale D-T fusion, e.g. the tokamak design, which requires breeding tritium & is expected to create a lot of neutron activated waste. The tritium is especially concerning, as it's roughly as deadly as polonium-210 & highly bioavailable in the form of super heavy water.
You're probably right for smaller aneutronic designs like Helion's. If they can actually be made to work, they'll be much safer.
