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Science: Everything explained by PV=nRT, F=ma=Gm(1)•m(2)/r^2

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St. Clown said:
How do we know the mammal wasn’t defending its young from a perceived threat?
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*shrug* To this and DX's post. There's a lot we probably don't know and are just assuming. Unless we could find similar evidence flash frozen in time it's going to be a guessing game.

A lot like how we just assume things about ancient civilizations until we unearth more evidence.

Another crazy thing to think about is how much evidence of past society, and even long past animals, was potentially destroyed in the original archeology digs.
 
Keep an eye out for news on these superconductor papers. We may be living in a time where the first room temperature superconductor is found and incredibly, it's claimed to be producible with early 1900s tech with incredibly common materials. SO we should be able to have confirmation within a week or two.

A scientist with an h-index of 45 (meaning, he has 45 papers with at least 45 citations - an h-index of 45 is a pretty big deal) has attached his name to it and there's fighting over authorship between the two papers which have overlapping authors. This would seem to indicate people are fighting over who gets to fly to Sweeden.

Anyways, if this proves true, and that's still an insanely big if, we could be witnessing the beginning of a new technological revolution the likes of which we haven't seen since the invention of the transistor. Some examples of what RTSCs would mean:
  • Green energy has a step change reduction in cost and demand (for instance, zero resistance superconductor wires could have near lossless transmission between megainstallations of solar panels in the desert to the rest of the country)
  • MRIs get their cost cut by at least half. THey could also be turned off at night.
  • Quantum computers are suddenly much more feasible. Cold SCs are required to run them and even small changes in temp can basically shut down the computer.
  • Fusion becomes more likely (supercold superconducting magnets required to contain the plasma could be replaced with RTSC, as I understand it)
  • Battery tech could see a step change in efficiency.
  • Middle east gets abandoned to the dustbin of history.
Suffice it to say, I'm really hoping this proves true. Unlike all of the other RTSCs in the past.
 
Seriously. I hate that priceless is just making decisions on what we can and can't share here. He's literally acting like Elon musk.

oooooh no. Twitter makes me all scared! I must censor it!!
 
So that means MIT will have to rebuild their record setting magnets. I wonder how many they have finished so far.

And I wonder if the world fusion project will rethink where they are now.
 
I think it's about five years too early to reconsider any existing projects on something just barely announced and only preliminarily replicated much less understood.
 
dxmnkd316 said:
I think it's about five years too early to reconsider any existing projects on something just barely announced and only preliminarily replicated much less understood.
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Given the speed of the projects, it fits right in. We still have 20 years before fusion, lol.
 
Question about something I know zippo about but which has become an item of interest with “Oppenheimer.” I have a much older cousin who got his PhD in nuclear engineering at Cal and spent his career at Los Alamos “building bombs,” in his words. I assume he probably took a lot of physics, but that wasn’t his degree. So, the engineers design the build and the machines necessary to build, while the theoretical physicists provide the . . . what . . . cookbook? I don’t even know enough about it to frame the question.
 
burd said:
Question about something I know zippo about but which has become an item of interest with “Oppenheimer.” I have a much older cousin who got his PhD in nuclear engineering at Cal and spent his career at Los Alamos “building bombs,” in his words. I assume he probably took a lot of physics, but that wasn’t his degree. So, the engineers design the build and the machines necessary to build, while the theoretical physicists provide the . . . what . . . cookbook? I don’t even know enough about it to frame the question.
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There is a lot that needs to go right to get a nuclear detonation. Sure you have the reaction itself. But the means to get that to happen occur through quite a bit of mechanical means. So Mechanical Engineers would need to do their part. I'm sure structural engineers do a ton of work with the "delivery" system as well.

A nuke is one of the most complex devices mankind has ever built. It's not just one or three people that have their work in the kitchen with this.
 
burd said:
Question about something I know zippo about but which has become an item of interest with “Oppenheimer.” I have a much older cousin who got his PhD in nuclear engineering at Cal and spent his career at Los Alamos “building bombs,” in his words. I assume he probably took a lot of physics, but that wasn’t his degree. So, the engineers design the build and the machines necessary to build, while the theoretical physicists provide the . . . what . . . cookbook? I don’t even know enough about it to frame the question.
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Well, the theoretical physics behind a fission weapon have been worked out for a good long time - not all the way to the actual Manhattan project (some of that was purely experimental), but not all that long after it. It’s why the US agreed to stop weapons testing - we’ve already got the theory down cold. Hit a mass of the right isotopes at the right density with enough neutrons at the right energy, and the bomb will go. At this point, building the next gen bomb is almost entirely a pure engineering problem - there are thousands of ways to achieve those conditions, so it’s just about selecting the design that optimizes for the other things that you might care about, such as the volume, weight, cost, reliability, safety, etc of the device. Pure nuclear engineering.
 
burd said:
Question about something I know zippo about but which has become an item of interest with “Oppenheimer.” I have a much older cousin who got his PhD in nuclear engineering at Cal and spent his career at Los Alamos “building bombs,” in his words. I assume he probably took a lot of physics, but that wasn’t his degree. So, the engineers design the build and the machines necessary to build, while the theoretical physicists provide the . . . what . . . cookbook? I don’t even know enough about it to frame the question.
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It works that way in most industries. Physicists or chemists or someone comes up with an idea, then engineers come in to see if the idea is viable, and then they all work together to make whatever it is.
 
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