Disqus - Friends of harleycw

Re: A Solar Power Plant in the Sahara Could Power All of Europe

GoatGuy — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 14:42:26 -0000

Naysaysers:

"what about night" and "what about 3 days of little sunlight?". E-storage is trivial on such small scales. Compressed air in unused mines. Lifting coastal seawater to artificial reservoirs a few hundred meters up coastal valleys when the terrain allows ... trivial. 90% energy recovery too.

"supergrid will lose more to resistance". Nope. Just use more aluminum in the wires. Resistance (and corona discharge) are easiest things to cut: higher voltages, thicker wires, better insulation.

"geothermal" - is very expensive to drill down far enough (except for Iceland) to get reasonably high temps.

"wind" is capricious, to be sure. But it is also quite powerful, especially in the desert. Reread the "storage is easy" argument.

Further, remind yourself that countries such as Germany, France, England, Italy, Spain ... are heavily "baseline" powered by nuclear energy. That's not going to change - indeed, it is being expanded.

In essence, ALL the arguments against wind-and-solar having to do either with duty-cycle (daytime only) or capriciousness (wind) are settled by another reality: instead of trying to load-average as is current practice over the course of the day (with optional things done at night, including heavy industry), "following the sun" is just as practical, where one concentrates energy usage TOWARD the middle of the day. People would be encouraged (not discouraged) to run air-conditioners, washing machines, car-rechargers (huge), and industry would be encouraged to do all its heavy electriciy use in the day. It is thought that 100% of the "baseline" of Europe could be satisfied with 50% of its current nukes, the balance made up by wind - if done this way.

I tire of the whining about being unable to store the energy. Let's just use it when its available! No harder "imposition" than trying to load-average as is the current fad toward the wee hours of the night.

GoatGuy

Re: Blacklight Power follow up and other claims

GoatGuy — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 23:36:08 -0000

My good fellow goats... the problem with this "technology's credibility" is manifold. I always ask the same questions of technologies that are supposed to be fundamental breakers of "known science":

* Is the technology accompanied by a long list of 'obvious Wow!' resolutions to civilisation's hard or looming problems?
* Is the device been shown only to a secret enclave of investors, but not the public for fear of letting the proverbial cat out of the bag?
* Is there a dark conspiracy powered by legions of conventional scientists and assorted dunces that is but the only thing standing in the way of this invention's radical change of most-everything as we know it?
* Are the names, "quantum", "nano", "radical", "known science", and especially "Tesla" conjured into the conversation points?
* Is the chief scientist figured largely in other areas of research where his results are considered just as if not more controversial?

And Finally...

* Is this a business proposition whose only shortcoming is a lack of funding?

Passing all of these questions - while many pieces of bonafide science do - generally points to the object of discussion being at or near the Fraud Line. I detect this with JUST the captions of the ancillary studiously prepared (but likely abstruse) articles presented above:

OPTICAL POWER BALANCE ... 1000x (one THOUSAND times) more light at a given plasma power? Well, ain't that something: the glow-discharge inside a metal-halogen discharge lamp emits over 100 lumens per watt (1,000W car-sales lot bulbs), and is 15% efficient. Theoretical maximum efficiency is 683.002 lumens/watt. So ... this technology is going to produce 1,000 times that 100 lumens per watt, or 100,000 lumens per watt, and moreover over 150 times more light than is theoretically possible? GIVE ME A BREAK. Its not.

Let's try another: "100 times the H kinetic energy..." (referring to Balmer line broadening). Now this is harder. Balmer lines do broaden with increased kinetic energy ("temperature") of plasmas. Pretty well known. It seems to me though that the disingenuity is obvious as well as devious: Run the plasma tube at much lower pressure and much higher voltage, and voila. MUCH higher temperature of the plasma. Or, vice-versa ... much higher pressure (kilobars) and again higher voltage ... and the gas-discharge Balmer lines will be markedly widened. It is the classic result for LIGHTNING BOLTS, since their plasma channel measures 'microns' for the powerful and bright return-stroke.

OK, OK. Goat is a skeptic. Well, at least the 3rd one can hold water, no? "Energy balance 100x that of combustion of [diatomic hydrogen ...] power density greater than 10 watts per cubic centimeter"

What on earth is this referring to? There's no evidence of what energies were INPUT to the aforementioned reaction in order to produce the startling anomalous results. These results are, by themselves so patently absurd so as to call into credibility the READER for entertaining the time to review the article!

In any case ...

Its time to move on.

Re: Blacklight Power follow up and other claims

GoatGuy — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 04:41:30 -0000

NextBig[future]:

You see my good fellow, I really do WANT to believe. From the center of my scientific soul, I hope that there are cunningly accessible degenerate states of "hydronium" or "hydrino" or whate'er its discoverers have labelled it - that in their one-time creation release capturable, tangible, macroscopic amounts of energy which may in turn be captured as energy for the masses to use.

The problem is that I don't have what all scientists in the end need to have: a reasonably accessible procedure to reproduce the results, to verify the findings, to accept the tabular degrees of freedom that purportedly embody the technology.

People argue, "but there are things being done, discovered, disputed and set aside by Big Science that no common man may even dream of funding, building and reproducing. That is the nature of Big Science. How dare you demand that the Boffins of Blacklight come up with a tangible, reproducible, economically ponderable vision of their technology. Good God, man ... this is going to power civilization itself to the next phase. You sound like a woodchuck, and worse, with a damaged cudgel!"

Well, maybe so. But I think not.

I think that there is precious little "science" that can't at least from a discovery-of-the-equations-of-state perspective be done on the lab-bench. All of thermodynamics can be done in a thimble (so said Dr. Carnot), and the vast majority of "big science" that powers todays world-wide nuclear reactors ... also happened in test tubes.

I've given a "college effort" several times at making headway through the abstruse pseudo-science articles presented by Dr. Mills. I've put up on several other forums similar responses of, "well they got buckets, bags and barrels of money ... you think a bunch of dumb bastards would just bequeath money on them if they were selling snake oil?"

And my reply remains the same: surely if the technology is actually, factually as simple as it is said to be, then it must be something that can be clearly outlined, that any one of us educated dunces can use to verify the findings. I mean, please: how hard should it be to create the hydrino, if there are over 68 "degenerae ionization states' for it.

Re: Blacklight Power follow up and other claims

GoatGuy — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 16:11:37 -0000

Indeed - and thank you: the analysis is as you would admit, "off the back of a napkin", but you know, most really great technologies always "pass the napkin test" from before their inception through the research phases and finally even into production. They're just not "barely" anything. They make obvious sense.

Separately, I did take the time to read a fair amount of the 103 page paper found at the "various experimental results" hyperlink above. To quote you, "lest I start to sound like a believer" ... I too am impressed by the miasma of real science and technology words used to describe the series of tests performed in their apparently well-outfitted laboratory.

They're employing gas chromatography, X-ray techniques, gallium ion streams, calorimeters, vacuum pumps, compounds aplenty, and more. Here is the KEY fiinding in my reading: through a complex set of sample preparations, they believe they have masured samples of reactants that have generated in excess of 50 kilowatts of heat over the period of 40 minutes reaction-time, or some 250kJ of energy from a kilogram of reactants. However, their preparation techniques (including and not limited to the compounds, but their admixtures and addition of significant thermal pulses) could also easily be storing large amounts of thermal energy as allotropic crystaline systems and so on.

I'm still quite skeptical.

Oh, BTW: the best part is the first 2 pages - they're worth the read. Dr. Mills (or an associate) posits that Hydronium is Science's Missing Link between Cosmological Expansion and Dark Matter. I will say this with honesty: after I got up off the floor from laughing so hard, i was struck by the thought that should Dr. Mills' theory prove even slightly possible in the deep recesses of intergalactic space, well... then the dude is up for a Solid Gold Pen and a Nobel.

However, if his pot remains cracked ... then I think he HAS to get a handle on his cabal of marketing stretch-spinners, and let them know in no uncertain terms that getting a few minutes of 50KW out of a kilogram of highly reactive lithium-hydride and hydroxide mixtures ... does NOT a 50KW generator make. Not close, not by a nose, not by a length. A league perhaps.

Re: IEA oil market report

GoatGuy — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 22:57:06 -0000

This may seem terribly pedantic ... but PLEASE do not use a small 'm' to indicate mega. Please!

M = mega = 1,000,000x
m = milli 1/1,000x

Also, you should probably use Mbbl and kbbl instead of Mb and kb, since by general consensus 'b' refers to bits, not barrels. But on that, it is less of an issue because there isn't really an ambiguity between an article talking about oil and 'b' = 'barrel' (and not 'bit').

Thanks ...

Re: IEA oil market report

GoatGuy — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 01:32:07 -0000

Thanks NextBig ...

It was, and I thank you. Also (pardon if I'm repeating myself): I really
enjoy reading your site.

In sending you the comment, I was (and am) hoping that maybe you'll correct
minor (but vexing) problems like what I cited. Maybe it is a personal
crusade, but I always "fix things up" if they're trivial (seconds, not
minutes) and "more right" -- even when I'm cutting and pasting.

Keep up the excellent work!

PS: one of the things that I've recently found that REALLY bothers me
especially from our English speaking superiors - the British - is that their
news-sites have come to de-capitalize acronyms. Ever seen Nato? Well, it
is supposed to be NATO. I've even seen Unifil, Unesco and Nabla, all of
which crucially should be fully capitalized. None of them have the "name"
suggested by the formal Nominative spelling.

Yes, I am was school teacher. Sigh.

Re: Why the Megapixel Race Needs to End

GoatGuy — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 18:19:12 -0000

A lot of misinformation here!

High MPix counts don't necessarily mean 'slower transfer' since the technologists are widening transfer busses, and increasing clock speeds.

Standard 35mm "premium" Velvia Fuji film has a grain size of about 1.5 microns - which (incorrectly) if extended to full 35x24mm frames would be 560 megapixels. But we forget. FILM IS DIGITAL, albeit not in the way people remember it to be: each of those grains is either ON (exposed) or OFF (unexposed). The perception of resolution and color is the net of billions of the devils being, or not being exposed.

Using detailed simulation to show equivalent "resolution" of 35mm film (my study and work), it is clear that full-frame 35mm chips deliver 'film sharp' images at about 44 megapixels. 5500 x 8000 pixels, or 225 pixels per millimeter of the sensor. (i.e. about 4.4 microns/pixel).

This is not particularly small - it is about the same as the pixel pitch on most 'consumer grade' cameras. (10mm x 15mm, 4.4 um pitch, 8 Mpx)

The author's contention was that lower pixel counts mean "higher sensitivity" and "lower noise (at a given ASA)". This is true, yet not absolute: a 44 Mpix image can be smoothed to 8 Mpix, and will be just as sharp, and noiseless, and sensitive as a 8 Mpix DSLR - for the same chip size. One can always "add up adjacent pixels" to create larger synthetic pixels. But one can NEVER "split up" the larger pixels to recover resolution lost to the smearing of a large-sensor chip. Once its gone, its GONE baby.

So I say, NYET. Let the megapixel count go up to the resolution limit imposed by Shannon's information theory, the quantum efficiency of silicon to detect photons, Laplace's formulas for maximum-resolution of light, and the pragmatic necessities of storing the huge pictures.

I, for one, am waiting for a USE for my new "quad core" system. Sounds to me that having a dozen gigabytes of memory, 4 (or who knows, 8 or 16) cores, and software that can handle it ... is the right way to go.

Re: Energy news roundup : Nuclear uprates, cheaper ethanol and biofuel

GoatGuy — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 21:29:53 -0000

REMEMBER folks ... the "efficiency" of cellulosic plant material is no higher than 1% - and remarkably lower for forest-derived cellulose feedstocks. We're already chopping down forests at a prodigeous rate - quail at the thought of doubling, or quadrupling that rate ... just to cook up some ethanol for our 17%-or-less efficient thermodynamically limited engines.

Let's put our money where the real action is: algaeic biofuel, wind capture, photovoltaic multilayer, serendipitous geothermal and hi-efficiency water electrolysis for transforming all the 'energy' into transportable fuels. If compressed hydrogen were being piped all over the country in a "grid" just like natgas is today, and electricity ... it is absolutely certain that all sorts of uses will be found for it, thus displacing the carbon-economy dependency.

Just think of how many gazillion square-meters of single-crystal Si could be manufactured per year from 10% of our spending on foreign and domestic oil! 6.6 billion barrels a year TIMES $100 a barrel is $660,000,000,000. 10% of that is 66 billion - which at $5.00 an installed watt becomes 11 gigawatts installed per year, or about the equivalent of three or four large nuclear power plants. In 25 years, the aggregate is on the order of "100 nuke plants" equivalent, which pretty near approximates in joules how much energy we need for all our put-put-mobiles.

But let's leave the friggin' trees alone! They're valuable for CO2 scrubbing and of course building materials. I feel the same about oil: its WAY more valuable as the chemical industry 'feedstock', not for burning in our antiquated internal combustion engines.

GoatGuy

Re: Near perfect solar coating and a record 10% efficient dye solar cell

GoatGuy — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 14:46:19 -0000

Hold a moment, folks...

NATURALLY, the inventor of the coating cites all the worst-case issues with alternatives - and suspiciously there aren't comparable numbers for the present coating materials. Current blue multilayer coatings based on fluorites and oxides is on the order of 96% ... when the solar cells are within 5 degrees of perpendicular to the sun rays. The mechanics of keeping them within that 5 degress is called CLOCKWORK, the mechanisms of which can shift huge arrays with almost vanishingly small power, heavy wind loading and all else.

This is not a major advance. A good one, but only a minor one. The actual "chief problem" is that reasonably efficient (20% or more) cells haven't yet been made in attractively ("profitably") high yields at moderate price. With not a shred of doubt, having a solar cell that sports the mythical "75%" efficiency wouldn't get ANY more of them installed, if they are ridiculously expensive or suffer from mechanical or other fragility.

It is also the height of scientific comedy to cite 4 digits of precision for an antireflection coating. There is more variability in the coating itself than its last digit! Come on folks, don't just chew-and-vomit up the same crap given to you... ANALYZE IT. For instance, what's the cost of this stuff? How durable is it compared to the fluorite/oxide methods? What about its longevity, or reactivity with environmental pollutants and dusts? Will it stand up to periodic "dusting"? A gazillion times over the life of a cell? Do the compounds produce toxins as they decompose? Is the chemical-deposition method a large producer of undersirable waste products? What is the inventor expecting to be the "cost per 30 year square meter" of coating?

GoatGuy

Re: Energy news roundup : Nuclear uprates, cheaper ethanol and biofuel

GoatGuy — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 13:23:18 -0000

Its funny you should have written this to me.

My brother and I, in 1972, conceived of just such a super-stored-heat idea,
especially for desert living. It finally became apparent that only large,
durable polyethylene bags of water would have the heat-capacity to serve as
the storage container for both the heated winter water and the cooled summer
water. (Cooled? Yes ... at night time, the same system can cool the water
at night, or by the "swamp cooler" process)

We figured that the perfect desert home would be made either from
meter-thick adobe (which history has shown actually works well), or burrowed
underground (but which is a little "heavy to live in", there being no
windows.)

Meter-thick adobe is a heck of an insulator (especially the 'cellular adobe'
concept pioneered a few years ago in New Mexico), and a pretty good thermal
sink. 40,000 liters of water as the 'heat sink' would do the rest.

The energy is "free", but the collector and radiator and control and upkeep
isn't. Makes the "buy/not-buy" equation a little harder to nudge toward
buy.

=b=

Re: Blacklight Power Signs First Commercial Deal with Estacado Enery

GoatGuy — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 14:36:32 -0000

Come on, fellow goats ...

There is curious, but not continuous science in play. Apart from the 'technology' unfortunately passing all of my goatish 'you-gotta-be-kidding-me' tests, the fact that some hairbrained energy derivative, in the middle of New Mexico (land of sun, lots of it...) is "licensing" the technology ... means bullsquat.

If the bunglers at Blacklight really, really have a technology that could be seriously considered, then it seems to me that (for at least SOME of the "$50,000,000" invested) they should have a nice big 50 kilowatt generator, whizzing around 24/7 ... generating copious amounts of REAL kilowatt-meter readable power, copious amounts of their supposed hydronium. The hydronium alone, delivered in 'lecture bottles' would be a goldmine for physical chemists to try their hand at. Its patented, right? Why aren't they generating kiloliters of the stuff?

Same goes for the power. If even they were generating enough power to power their own plant ... and be able to show that ALL the power inputs to making the "R-H" stuff were being covered by the energy produced ... THAT would be a frikkin' compelling demonstration of the viability of this avante-garde idea.

No, I continue to maintain that there is "no beef".

PS - by the way BW - per the previous article, where it was said at the outset, "People who don't believe won't be convinced" (paraphrased) ... is an insult, square to the face. SKEPTICS aren't dogmatic savants who only believe what they 'want' to believe. They most commonly are scientists, predispose to believe that the laws of Thermodynamics (etc.) are conserved, immutable, and for solid theoritical basis. I'm perfectly willing to UNDERSTAND how BL's tech works, insofar as it is demonstrable not just as a pulsed energy system, but a whole-cycle system.

I mean, let's be realistic here: if one only looks at the energy delivered by an energy storage system without taking into account the energy input required TO the storage system, well then, there is no implication that anything special is going on. If for instance, I were to pump air into a used salt mine for years and years, then without acknowledging that part, announced I had found a miraculous ultra-high pressure energy reserve, that anyone could make, and so on. ... you would instantly see it as bunk. Yes, of course there would be a lot of contrained energy in that air. But it took way more to get it in there to begin with!

Same for the BL tech. If you read (or even can ... they're quite dense with pseudoscience) the BL 103 page PDF, you eventually will get to the sample preparation area, which outlines a catalyst making process that is HUGELY energy costly. This is sidelined however, because like the great pressurized air cavern, the product, a super-catalyst, is itself the object of the "technology". Well, there's bunk on that.

Take care, folks. Don't be led down the path by brightly colored crumbs that anyone with a calculator and a sense of scale can connect into a potential super-highway of profit, energy and greed.

CHALLENGE TO BLACKLIGHT: "power thyself with thy tech, and better yet, create a significant surplus".

After fifty million bucks has been "invested", is that asking too much? is it? Does that really make me a hopeless skeptic? We all should be asking BlackLight the same thing. If their technology has such enormous potential, then I should think that they could get together the mechanics to have an multiphase system that generates all the power they need, and then some.

Just a simple 4 phase system: a reactor that takes the "stuff" and gets the thermal energy out, creating steam, to drive a highly efficient turbine generator. Another phase that continuously removes the byproducts and (I suppose) regenerates them ... with the waste-heat and extra energy created by the generator. A third phase that stores, rations, load-levels the "plant", keeping it viable for the long run. And a fourth phase that recovers the H(1/p) byproduct, purifies it, and stores it in pressure vessels to be sold as a highly valuable chemistry reactant.

Think about that paragraph. It doesn't require belief, just proof. Proof that an extra $1,000,000 in "stuff" can be cobbled together to form a full on, excess energy producing, byproduct producing reactor. For in real terms, if the installed price is $500/kw ... (their tables, not mine), then 50 KW worth ought to only cost $25,000 ... or in research premium terms, maybe 20 times that ... or $500,000 ... less than 1% of their $50,000,000 investment!

GoatGuy

Re: Blacklight Power Signs First Commercial Deal with Estacado Enery

GoatGuy — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 15:08:26 -0000

Thanks, Disqus.

Here is something to consider regarding the sequence:

0 mo. Announcements of syndicate formation.
+2 yr. Technology demo.
+1 yr. Prototype demo.
+1 yr. Version 1 commercial demo.
+2 yr. Version 2 full commercial demo.
+1 yr. Manufacturing expansion.
+1 yr. Version 3 maturity phase.
+2 yr. Industrial scale demo.
+1 yr. Manufacturing expansion.
+0 yr. Subsystem licensing.
+2 yr. Version 4 maturity phase.
+3 yr. Municipal scale demo.
+1 yr. Technology-to-manufacture licensing.
+1 yr. Independent sourcing.

I'm not being pessimistic, at all. From the moment the syndicate (company,
coalition, cooperative or bloc) forms, it takes a couple of years to
demonstrate technology that is independently tested. From there, another
year to build a "full system" prototype. Is BL there? I don't think so
yet. They seem more at the final phases of the technology demo.

But it takes another 2 years to work out a practical small
commercially-manufacturable product. That's just the nature of this kind of
tech. From there, a "line" of product needs developing. Another year or two
at least to get a full set of commercial products flowing. To establish
markets, sales, compositing, delivery, installation, maintenance, track
record and engineering modifications to early units.

After that, it takes quite a few years of conservative scaling to hit
industrial targets, then municipal targets. No one is going to drop
$500,000,000 onto a multi-gigawatt generator system when the largest extant
example is 20KW.

Also, and finally ... lest anyone be unduly impressed by the '50,000 watt'
generator (that delivers a total of 1 megajoule or one million watt-seconds
of thermal energy) ... let's just recall: one million watt-seconds divided
by 50,000 watts is 20 seconds. Yet, the device is reported to have
delivered the power over 20 minutes. Well, it must be a nice long tail to a
fast reaction ... OK. But to put it different, a device that delivers
50,000 watts of thermal energy continuously ... would only be able to
produce 35% or 17,000 watts of electricity, if it were working almost at the
limits of the Carnot cycle of thermodynamic efficiency. At this scale
(50KW-th), I don't expect any reasonable steam-powered generator to produce
more than 15% efficiency. The thermal numbers are too low: Carnot cycle is
limited by the difference between the hot side and the cold drain. So...
the device shouldn't be able to make more than 10HP or 7.5KW of electrical
power.

And it needs to be continuous. Not a "batch demo" of mixing up some
chemicals, seeing the pot get real hot, then slowly cool down over the next
half hour. That's not a generator, but a pot of hot rocks.

=GoatGuy=

Re: Blacklight Power Signs First Commercial Deal with Estacado Enery

GoatGuy — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 22:01:15 -0000

OK, the idea that there is a bought-and-paid-for upstanding professor at the
UNM that backs Dr. Mill's research as profound ... is great! It warms the
cockles of my heart to hear that there are tenured, respected scientists
that feel that Mills is onto something really big.

Now ... since I'm a simple kind of scientist that just likes to see things
work ... let's have that 50 KW (or 1 KW ... I don't care) electrical
generator prototype. Let's show that all the energy invested in creating
the magic catalyst can be generated by the extra energy afforded by Dr.
Mills' hydronium. Let's see that the said device delivers a measurable,
tangible, storable stream of hydronium-stuff. Finally ... lets show that it
can run for something quite reasonable. A week.

That is all the demonstration I need, supplanted by "keen observers" that
will detect unreported energy inputs, or fabricated results.

I'm not at all cynical, just skeptical.

=b=

Re: Blacklight Power Signs First Commercial Deal with Estacado Enery

GoatGuy — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 22:19:09 -0000

Uh, hum.

250 megawatts ... continuous? Or in one lump sum. Well, let's be positive
and assume it is continuous. OK, then they're going to get about 70
megawatts of electricity, provided the thermal output is driving a modern
steam turbine system with regeneration and every other trick in the industry
applied. Cool! If it can be done, and if it can be shown ... then I think
it is just great. I'll make a contribution by buying stock.

However, it seems really odd to me that a big conservative electrical
generation company would be buying into a technology that supposedly will
continuously generate 250 megawatts of thermal output ... when even a
continuous 50 megawatt system isn't operating merrily someplace. Or a 10
megawatt system. Or a 2 megawatt system. Or a 500 kilowatt system. How
about a 100 kilowatt system? Or just even a measly 20 kilowatt system
(which is barely large enough to power a house)?

I mean, come on folks. The argument presented by BROCK along the lines of "
They may (wisely) be refraining from 'wasting their time' on solved problems
like running a steam turbine." Is just a huge, enormous cop-out. I mean
really. The very FIRST thing that they would want to do would be to
engineer the technology to produce CONTINUOUS output ... demonstrating
viability for the power-generation customers that they're trying to woo!!!

No matter what, that is a guarantee: to be able to show that their precious
thermal generator is viable as an energy source, it has to show extended
thermal output. Rather than just deploying it to get a whole lot of cool
water warm (AKA "calorimetric measurement of thermal energy production"), it
can and should be used to get a whole lot of water under high pressure
heated to the 400C or higher that is the "valuable thermal point" of a
pressurized steam generation system.

They don't even have to hook it up to a generator. Just release the steam
at 300C to 400C at high pressure. On this, you're right ... they don't need
to demonstrate the output of electrical energy, just a LOT of high pressure
steam, for days and days, continuously.

An hour or two won't do.
A 'batch system' also won't do.
A system that separately prepares all the catalyst and just "feeds it" to
the reactor chamber ... won't do (or won't unless the whole energy-cost of
creating the catalyst is measured and included in the balance sheet.)

THIS IS NOT ASKING TOO MUCH.

Demonstrate a measly 20 KW-th for a few days. Hell, I'd even be fine with
them just boiling unpressurized water at 100C. It is the cheapest "heat
sink" that can be manufactured, and absorbs 2.26 megajoules per kilogram on
vaporization.

At 20 KW continuous, that would be about 120 seconds or two minutes to fully
vaporize 1 kilogram (liter). So, they'd be going through 30 liters or about
8 gallons of water an hour. Times 24 ... about 200 a day. Nothing! Costs
about two bucks.

Yes, I remain skeptical. I think it is absolutely foolhardy for a power
company to be signing into a technology to deliver 250 megawatts of thermal
power ... when something 1/1000th the size hasn't even delivered a
continuous stream for a few days.

They're just funding research. Good for Mills!

GoatGuy

Re: Blacklight Power has signed a Second Commercial Deal. This deal is with Farmer's Electric

GoatGuy — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 17:14:01 -0000

Again...

BlackLight "technology" doesn't pass the basic snake-oil test.

1. Are the words, "unknown science", "nano-...", "Tesla", "radical", "beyond standard physics", etc. used?
2. Does the tech promise not only great performance, but virtually superior to all other types?
3. Does it exist in 'the lab', but virtually nowhere else?
4. Are the byproducts of the tech hyped to address all sorts of world-shaking problems?
5. Does the tech come at almost no cost?
6. Are the whole-system thermodynamics numbers ... suspiciously missing?
7. Is the tech summarized as the Way to Save The Earth, and so on?
8. Are there quite a number of peer-skeptics of the peer-reviewed publications?
9. Is the technology ostensibly simple, but wrapped at its core in deeply secret (or obfuscated) ideas?
10. Are there NO commercial or industrial running examples of the tech?

I believe that any technology that doesn't pass #10 ... isn't viable. Period. It is the "missouri / show-me" case, that is most important. Let's be clear here: BlackLight isn't about a much larger windmill ... were the existence of thousands of smaller windmills points to the 'reasonable scaling' concept. Or about an undersea tidemill, that is just a much larger version of a ship's screw attached to a stout generator. It isn't about the novel use of specialized fuel injectors and materials to make a plausibly more efficient engine. It is about a completely 'new' technology that promises at its core to overthrow all of quantum physics, most of thermodynamics and in short ... just fvck standard physical chemistry.

And we're asked to believe it?

SHOW ME THE FIRST CONTINUOUS RUNNING INDUSTRIAL OR COMMERCIAL PLANT.
ESTABLISH THAT IT IS REALLY GENERATING POWER IN EXCESS OF INVESTMENT.
BOTTLE, AND LET ME (a pro chemist) CHARACTERIZE THE 'hydrino' gas.

All of the above should be utterly trivial, and in fact DONE ALREADY ... if even 10% of the $50,000,000 was spent on making a full-scale plant.

At this point, since BLACKLIGHT's tech officially fails 8 out of the 10 Snakeoil questions ... and especially #10 ... I declare it a fraud, until proven otherwise.

No amount of their Marketing Department eagerly announcing all sorts of technology licensing deals makes me feel any more comforted that they actually have something. The history of science (and fraud) is littered with millions of patented processes ... that in the end ... were and are bogus.

Beware, investors. Beware.

(UPDATE)... check out this link: http://www.spectrum.ieee.or...

Re: Blacklight Power has signed a Second Commercial Deal. This deal is with Farmer's Electric

GoatGuy — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 15:25:32 -0000

Brock,

I appreciate your defense. I don't remember Mills insulting my Mom, so we
can put that aside, yes?

Let's just put it this way: as a practicing (and ageing) scientist, I don't
like false science, and vainglorious claims. You can read ENDLESSLY by
googling "free energy" and "zero point energy device" and "over unity
power". All, to the last one, crackpots.

Mills, in my mind, is just a more sophisticated crackpot. I apologize - well
in advance - if I turn out to be wrong. I admit his education is greater
than mine, and that it is focused in the area of his research, making his
claims pretty compelling ... if it weren't for the fact that they also just
don't pass the Snake Oil tests.

If his technology works, and it has the potential to really revolutionize
(and for all practical purposes, displace all known present sources of)
energy production, then

A) He's going to get a Nobel
B) He's going to be the richest person on earth
C) He'll be the target of big business elimination
D) All physics will need to be rewritten.

But you know, there's just something mildly disingenuous about his lack of
obvious 'we got it, now lets leverage it to the max' attitude. I see that
he's licensed the technology to two firms. They're going to make a pitch at
commercializing the tech. this is wonderful! I ABSOLUTELY HOPE THEY
SUCCEED. Indeed, I'd love to work with either of them developing their
commercial power generation products.

So, we wait then. You hold your breath. I'm not going to. Each time you
bring up Mills and yet another of his fancy announcements ... I'm going to
comment just as I've done. Because just like Mills' unending stream of
announcements (giving false sense of 'realness' to the tech), I think it
needs to be countered by an equally unending stream of skeptical
reflections.

Thank you for providing a forum onto which I may be the lone crow. Hopefully
you won't ban my responses just 'cuz they're a bit heavy handed. I am
trying to be respectful as well as uncompromising.

GoatGuy

Re: Blacklight Power has signed a Second Commercial Deal. This deal is with Farmer's Electric

GoatGuy — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 16:14:31 -0000

Brock,

I'm a busy man, yet I find time to write about 10 "long" comments on any one
of 30 different blogs per day. So, that's about 1 comment per 3 blogs a
day. Combined, the 30 blogs probably have on the order of 500 topics per
week upon which I could comment. But, that would take WAY too much time.
So, I pick and choose: I choose the most egregious charlatan tech just as
often as I choose to hoorah the most cool tech. We just don't participate
in the same blogs, is all.

Eric Lerner's focus fusion isn't a bad concept. It doesn't rely on changing
the laws of physics, or the empirical findings of plasma electrodynamics.
Indeed, there are a lot of ideas in the plasma physics world that deserve
research monies: they very well could lead to real-world fusion energy
production by sidestepping the mainstream way of thinking about Tokamak
principles.

Likewise, I do remember Steorn. I was very tempted to write a scathing
skeptic's view when the tech was blogged ... but it seemed obvious that it
was just more free energy crap. So, I let it be.

I like very much reading the NextBigFuture blog, and I do so just about
every other day (unless, like this, I'm suddenly "involved").

Keep up the good work. Expect more from me re: Mills whenever it is posted
here. I'm just keeping up the skeptics prime directive: to be clearly,
objectively, and unwaveringly skeptical.

GoatGuy

Re: Blacklight Power has signed a Second Commercial Deal. This deal is with Farmer's Electric

GoatGuy — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 12:31:12 -0000

[dodanimal]

Yes, the 10 'snakeoil questions' are not perfect. But in the energy-world,
they're pretty good.

That the demonstration unit(s) are small ... is part of the problem. Release
of a megajoule is, well ... given $50 million invested ... pathetic. On
another post on another site, I proposed that it would take at LEAST 10 more
years to get a full-scale continuous (or overlapped multiphase batch)
process working. Why? Because when moving from lab to concrete pad, it
takes several 'confidence steps':

Year Progress
1 ramp up to continuous low kilowatt (thermal) output.
2 re-engineer for 100 kW (thermal) output.
... Attach to generators, demonstrate output-over-input thermodynamics
... Send hydrino gas around world to have labs actively research it
3 begin build of a 1 to 3 MW 'scale demo'.
4 characterize its operation. Rework chemistry for efficiency.
6 begin build of a 20 MW full-scale industrial reactor.
8 demonstrate the power OUT to IN ratio is positive, per claims.
9 begin build of a 100 MW commercial reactor
11 show that it is safe. Show that it is 'per claims'.

Rejoice!

Now, if that can be done in a prudent, conservative fashion, then it should
be done. As to some cockamamie announcement from a marketing department
that they've signed 250 megawatt deals with power companies, please. Let's
not have the wool over our eyes, y'know? Unless the power output is just
enormously greater than input, and unless all the reactants can scale
without degradation to gigajoule power levels in bulk (quite the
achievement), then ...

Oil of Snake.

Re: Blacklight Power Response to Eli Rabett

GoatGuy — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 14:07:56 -0000

Mills response to Eli's thermodynamics points are themselves interesting: he's countering classical chemical thermodynamics with emperics. Further, he is proposing to have a new catalyst that works 10 times (!!!) more efficienty or productively to produce way more energy.

OK, why is the 10x claim any more juicy than the existing technology? Is it not likely that the existing NaOH doped Ni(R) 'reactant' could actually be cast into a continuous or larger batch venture? Or is this the classic, "we're actively researching version 2.0" ... where 1.0 never quite got to market! Or maybe verion 7.0, where 1,2,3,4,5 & 6 never made it.

Chasing rainbows: how appropriately said. Go check out www.steorn.com - for a mirror example of dead tech. Its a pretty site, it is austere, yet convincing. Note though that it was last updated in 2007 ... when the big pitch fell apart.

Mills is just way more clever at marketing his oil than McCarthy of Steorn. It may well be that Mills is the ultimate innocent: suffering from self-delusion, and working furiously to prove that the delusion is true, while carefully not stepping into those Missouri Cow Pies: "SHOW ME".

GoatGuy

Re: First 1 Terabyte solid state drive from Pure Silicon

GoatGuy — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 12:27:48 -0000

On the one hand, solid-state drives are a revolution ... on the other, they're not addressing one of the key bottlenecks that is today impacting the ability of modern processors to process ''more, faster, in parallel''.

The revolution is easy enough to see: a device modelled after the conventional hard drive, supporting the protocols of the SATA interface standard allowing it to be dropped in to most any computer design sporting the SATA channel. ... Gigabyte sizing that is similar to the capacity of conventional hard drives. ... Superior 'data access' performance - at times vastly superior - and near saturation of the SATA 300 megabyte per second capacity. Anecdotally, for otherwise identical laptops, one with a top-of-the-game conventional HD, and the other with a top flight SSD ... the SSD version boots in 1/4th the time, programs load between 1/10th to 1/2 the time, and to the human tester, the SSD version seems hardly ever to 'bog down', as is so common for conventional HD based units.

The shortcoming though (and really this is no fault of any of the SSD makers, but more of the industry as a whole) is that the channel - SATA II - is itself pathetically underpowered compared with modern DRAM 'performance * capacity'.

This is what I mean ... on a little stroll through computing history.

Early personal computers were uncontravertibly DRAM challenged. DRAM moved data in byte or 2-byte words, was clocked at 8 MHz and attained data rates of about (4 x 2) = 8 megabytes per second. The total DRAM was also small, from tenths to a few megabytes. Hard drives at the time could deliver 2 MB to 5 MByte per second ... so theoretically all (1 MB) of DRAM could be swapped onto and off of a HD in the high milliseconds to a couple seconds. This in turn allowed many programs to be split up into 'overlays' and other schemes that could swap modules out in time spans short enough that the attendant user saw only tiny delays.

To critical people (humbly, like me), it looked essentially smoothly virtual.

However, due at its core to Moore's Law (of transistor doubling every 18 months), inevitably the amount of DRAM (especially) installed in computers grew at an exponential rate. Today for instance, it is not uncommon to buy laptops and desktop machines running Vista with 2,000 MB to 4,000 MB of memory. Even more so, the Apple Mac community regularly purchases desktop machines with 16,000 MB to 48,000 MB of memory. Video, heavy graphics ... uses all of it too!

Continuing the original analysis ... and assuming that we all in the future will have 16+ GB of memory on our machines, the question is, how fast do current top-of-the-line nonvolatile memory devices (HDs and SSDs) perform?

Conventional HDs are endlessly benchmarked, and are shown to deliver 50 MB/sec to just over 100 megabytes per second in the streamed mode. Lets say "60 MB/sec" for the average HD. Well the 3,000 megabytes of a new laptop could swap in ... 2 x (3000/60) = 100 seconds! A couple of mintues! I trust the point is obvious: that the laying down of serial bits - even at blistering gigabit per second rates - still is pathetically slow, compared to DRAM capacity. The ideal of having a modest amount of memory, and a REALLY much faster offboard system to virtualize it to a larger pool ... isn't achieved, because the 60 MB/sec data rate is just way, way too small to make the transfer of thousands of megabytes possible "in a flash".

The SSD's appear to get closer to the ideal - which is pretty obvious: saturating the design limits of the transfer channel (in this case SATA). The above announced SSDs are able to deliver 250+ megabytes per second - a 4x improvement over the 60 MB/sec of a conventional drive - and have tons of buffer RAM to boot - to mitigate the relatively slower random WRITE performance. A great end. But it is really SATA II that is the limit.

What is needed is an interface that can mimic (or attain) the performance of the DRAM-to-CPU channel itself, these days on the order of 12 GB to 24 GB per second, interleaved. The performance of the DRAM-to-SSD channel should be at least 25% of the DRAM itself, along the lines of the 'DMA' access method sported in now-ancient computer designs. At least that way, one could swap meaningfully large fractions of a computer's entire DRAM to and from the drive, bringing back the kind of eyeblink virtual memory performance that made virtual memory so useful in days of old.

And that would mean performance of the channel in excess of 10,000 MB/sec (10 GB/s), or 30 times today's 300 MB/sec performance.

For conventional hard drives (which to me haven't yet given up the ghost), having read-write heads that access 32 to 64 adjacent tracks in parallel, simultaneously, would kick up the streaming performance to match the "new channel" capacity of 10,000 MB/sec. It would be possible to swap sizeable (25%) fractions of one's 4 GB memory to and from even conventional hard drives in the 'mid millisecond range'. Tenths of a second. "Eyeblink" rate.

Insofar as the hands-on feel would go, such performance, coupled with an economical amount of memory (say 10% of the machine-cost) would give pretty pleasing and ostensibly spectacular performance. I think that chasing the rainbow of 'ever more DRAM' should slow down, but the emphasis instead be placed on radically upgrading the nonvolatile memory (HD, SSD) channel.

POSTSCRIPT

I'm sure our technologist readers will counter that the solution really is to get rid of virtual memory and just have a large enough block of real DRAM to avoid swapping altogether. Yes, this is so ... but it is also more tightly limited to the physical design of the computer than the comparatively humungous capacity of nonvolatile drives.

Virtual memory's chief benefit (when fast enough) is that it doesn't impinge (or shouldn't) on application RAM performance when RAM demand is well below physically "free memory", and that it impinges "reasonably" on high-memory use applications (or many running simultaneously) when the aggregate demand "reasonably" exceeds physical memory. My point was to showcase that the present day streaming performance of Virtual Memory has lagged egregiously behind both DRAM bandwidth and gigabyte capacity, rendering it only useful for the smallest excursions of virtual performance.

Enhancing the performance of virtual memory to where the VM "channel" is on the order of DRAM's performance itself would restore VM as a key viable technology upon which much larger memory footprints could be sustained essentially with only small degradation in application performance and responsiveness.

GoatGuy

Re: Repulsive Casimir Force: Casimir-Lifshitz force experimentally verified

GoatGuy — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 12:49:59 -0000

Mayonnaise. That was the first material where the Casimir repulsive force was observed. The intrepid researcher was looking to figure out why mayonnaise is such a durable suspension, and moreover, why mayonnaises are largely nonlinear rheodynamic fluids. The Casimir repulsive force figures centrally into the dispersion parameters of the oil nanospheres that constitute the mayonnaise suspension.

In a series of discussions with researchers actively looking into all of the various Casimir forces, the net 'problem' with the Casimir force (which is NOT a problem, but just a physics based reality) is that rather like our macro-scale Maxwell's Laws that completely describe electromagnetics, the Casimir forces are also linear through all path integrals.

Analogous to Gauss's law for magnetism ( del-B equals zero ... in differential form, or circ-integral B dA equals zero ), which states that the integration of force or flux change over any closed path in a magnetic field yields precisely zero net power, the Casimir forces also appear at all scales to be similarly closed to either energy consuming or energy delivering paths.

NET? Interesting research, and there will be many 'things' that will come from it. But I'm not holding great hopes for a new kind of space propulsion. (One of the other leading candidates is unidirectional hyperpower laser propulsion... where the orders of magnitude clearly could deliver results, but the requirements for power-to-propulsion production remain almost fictionally distant.)

GoatGuy

Re: Oil Supply, Demand and Price

GoatGuy — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 18:13:27 -0000

Excellent!

See the comment I made about the Futurists Comments ... especially regarding
the development of an industry-standardized set of robotically replaceable
battery packs (like WAY oversized versions of my Makita portable drill), but
for vehicles.

It is this kind of thing that would give the "electric drive train" a huge
boost.

GoatGuy

Re: Oil Supply, Demand and Price

GoatGuy — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 18:30:53 -0000

The idea of using nuclear thermal (and obviously derivative electrical) power is an interesting twist on power conversion. The classically cited "problem" with bitumenous and high molecular weight aliphatic crude oil utilization is of course that it takes nearly as much energy to produce a unit of commercially useful product mix as is contained IN the in-situ source material itself!

Which is kind of defeating ... to require a barrel of oil to produce a barrel of oil.

But, nuclear power isn't a liquid, nor is it easily convertable to a liquid form ... except by the path of using its energy to replace the energy-consuming components of the bitumenous stream processing facility. If one conceptually just riffs on the theme, I could see the huge earthmoving shovels and shuttling systems converted to electric power. They don't MOVE very far strictly speaking, so having long, heavily armored and protected 'industrial extension cords' (maybe tens of miles long) ... isn't really all that infeasible. No need to invoke implausible battery or fuel cell technologies, as beguiling as they might be.

Nope. A small (say "1000 megawatt, thermal") nuclear reactor, necessarily onsite. Cogeneration to pick off 25% of the thermal energy as electrical. 250 megawatts is a lot of power, and certainly enough to run a lot of heavy mining and earth moving machinery. 25% wasted heat (unutilized), and 50% to the anoxic hydrothermal cracking processes to lighten and sweeten the feedstock. In the end, maybe the 'factory' would produce a low viscosity stream of synthetic crude that would be valuable feedstock for conventional (and far more sophisticated) refineries.

Kind of a way to convert nuclear to liquid fuel! I rather like it. The plant wouldn't need much imported fuel - there probably would be plenty of low-yield diesel and other fuels from a bit of the product stream.

Not being a petrochemical engineer or researcher, what seems as open are the possibilities of using the very heaviest tar sands and not just bitumenous oils, but actual bitumen along the lines of the vast deposits in Canada, Montana and Wyoming as feedstock. You know, materials that don't begin to become pourable until they're far hotter than boiling water.

GoatGuy

Re: Analyzing the Edge 2009 Question and Answers

GoatGuy — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 19:07:35 -0000

Were I a science fiction writer, there certainly is a lot of grist for the old mill here.

A couple of thoughts ... on a couple of thoughts ...

Artificial cognition, interfaces to our own wetware, cognitive immortality, cognitive (trans)portability :==: All very interesting, based on a belief (which I find just astoundingly myopic) that by very, very closely modelling the actions of our neurons, that we can make computational systems that at (one must assume) the height of our engineering modelling, reproduce or even exceed the full intellectual capacity of the human brain, the human mind, to cognate.

Also, the lemma that once the computational fabric of the mind is worked out, that it then becomes possible to map one's mind-essence either into an electronic memory store - to be RESTORED just like a tape backup of a network server - or to be mapped onto another person's assortment of neurons in a way giving rise to dual personalities, personality-putsches, and the like.

Let's just remember one key thing: our current set of tools used to understand the brain is on the order of complexity as a pygmy with a hammer and a full bladder peeing on the ground whereever he happens to destroy some (for him) unimaginably complex chip inside the Blue Gene computer, and a light somewhere flickers in response. Oh yes, one must recall the breathless divinity of the researchers who have claimed to freeze the itty-bitty neuron mass of a fruit fly, then shave it into sub-micron thick frozen sections with a microtome, then with exceedingly care, tickle out all the interconnections of all the neurons, one by one. Yes, to the brightest pygmy with the smallest hammer, he too would feel that he would be teasing out the means by which the Blue Gene was doing its computing ... but I hate to tell him ... Uh, no. You're still just breaking the chips, pal. You don't have the first inkling as to how they're actualy working in any level of detail.

Further, we must remember that no matter what, ALL of my neurons are hooked up to each other in ways statistically certainly different from how yours are hooked up. All those tiny synapses have formed, unformed, reformed, propagated, apoptotically died ... I've gotten konked on the noggin falling off bicycles as a kid, fighting with my idiot cousins. I've run into things, had dibilitating colds that ruined my balance ... but it seemingly grew back after awhile.

I mean, let's be real! Except that generally most non-color blind people agree that "red" is "red", do we have even a single test that can, on an absolute scale, say that two people, let alone a bear and a goat, at the hardware level perceive "red" in the same approximate way? Some people for Cripes sakes even "hear" and "taste" color. It just boggles me to think that we have the projective certainty to think that with our million dollar neural sledge hammers and fvcking KNIVES, figure out how more than a handful of neurons work, let alone how the "brain" of a fruit fly works to the degree where a synthetic analog of it can be put to work ... as a fruit fly.

OTHER ITEMS in the list are better.

I especially like those that prosaically call for us escaping "the gravity well" and so on. Yes, these are important goals, and should really be at the focus of our enterprise. Even if the first serious project is an equatorial 'mass launcher' to lob "SpacEx" packages of tools, raw materials, DVDs and Playboy magazines to those poor sots locked in their vacuum cans ... even that would be a big bene.

Other things would be inventing whatever technologies necessary (which may include mundane mechanical robotics) to be able to "charge" or "fill" the batteries of electric vehicles in minutes, just as a filling station's machinations today suffice. Who says the batteries, for instance, need to be bolted to the car? If the batteries in my digital camera, my laptop, my Makita drill and my cell phone are replaceable - by mere mortals - then why the heck can't the industry standardize on an undercarriage accessible battery that is robotically opened, emptied of its contents, and refilled with "full up" cells? Geez, folks ... we make the amazing contraptions called washer-dryers available at Sears for less than $1000 ... is it all that outlandish that all electric vehicles should have trivially accessible trap-doors to release the standardized, giant version of Makita batteries so that the cars can be "recharged" in minutes?

Drugs to extend life, to reverse ageing, to do all sorts of repair - these are great. However, ... be careful of what we wish for. You want to retire "under drugs" at age 175, only to make it to 200? You see what I'm getting at: in our spiral for non-replacement and mortality avoidance, unless we develop armies of happy, mindful robots to do not just most, but all of the bidding of the immortal overseers, well, we'll have to work for a mighty long set of years to "afford" retirement.

I, for one, don't think much of this is going to happen soon.

Though, if I were King ... I'd certainly mandate that the automotive and electronic industry standardize on at most 4 different kinds of chainable, mechanically replaceable battery packs. That, and I'd mandate that the battery replacement stations be placed on all public roads within 50 miles of the most inaccessible location, just as today's gasoline delivery stations are so placed. Yes, they wouldn't get used much to begin with, but with such a STANDARDS oriented mandate, it would be very, very easy for the car-making industries of this planet to adopt the standards, and make electric vehicles that would not only make a huge difference to our planet, but which would be easily adopted by the public. You wouldn't have to worry about getting a hydrocarbon burner for long trips, vacations, or much of anything. The IEEE MotoCell approach would ensure you'd always have access to power.

BTW ... one great spinoff would be that the MotoCell battery stations would be operator-less for the most part, so could be as accessible as bank ATM machines, 24 hours a day. Also ... in the windier parts of the country, the could be connected without long transmission lines to their own farms, close by. Or photovoltaic cell arrays ... and enough extra MotoCells so that the "reserve" or "cache" supply could be topped off every sunny day.

GoatGuy

Re: Analyzing the Edge 2009 Question and Answers

GoatGuy — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 00:13:36 -0000

Yes, that which you cite is so.

There are some aspects though which no matter how strong the IBM researcher's evidence is, remain decidedly in the domain of 'characterizing pebbles'. For instance, I'm sure the science isn't at the point - or even envisioned within decades - to where the "red" associating neurons could be found without a live subject under the knife to 'try and see'.

That, is my point, really. While there are uncontrovertibly "red" and "grandmother" and "smells like tomatoes" neurons, they neither have convenient labels, nor are their interconnections apparent without destroying the brain itself, irrevocably. Indeed, even if destroyed, it isn't probable that the "smells like tomatoes" neuron would ever be identified. Heck, we can't really even say with plausible authority why all of the various proteins encoded in DNA are coded the way they are, and do what they do, in concert with all the others. By comparison to brain-mapping, they're bloody trivial!

AI, on the other hand, NOT modelled after billions of neurons and potentially trillions of synapses ... but on the logic that we can tease out of what we do on a subjective level - is likely where your assertions of utility are correct. AI in transportation ... would be a great thing. It has to come really, really inexpensively though, before its implementation is widespread. Tellers may be being replaced, but "not really", just the more mundane functions they formerly were asked to perform.

Also - and I know it seems pedantic - but I rail at the idea that "brute force" is the enterprise of computer scientists, mechanical engineers, electrical engineers and physical biologists in just "emulating externally" what an arbitrary neural system (such as a fruit fly) does. I think in many regards it is the very opposite: emulation at the high level is refined, delicate, scientific, logical, and parametrically mouldable. Emulation of interconnected neurons ... now THAT is brute force. "Let's put trillions of OPS behind emulating thousands of neurons, and lo! We have a fruit fly!" ... without eyes, without snout, without well, most everything. A fruit fly indeed.

RETIREMENT ... is a social construct - recognizing that the four phases of life are sweet when the realities of the psyche are accomodated. Youth is fairly psychotic, and the young are protected, allowed to learn, to experience, and not be held too accountable for their aberrations. Early adulthood finds its members driven to achieve, to better themselves, to make use of what their youth learned and experienced. Post-children adulthood is reflective, eventually acknowledging the failings of ageing - diminished vitality, desire for simplicity, shedding of complex social pathologies, living with pains, looking for rest. Senescence ... is the all but inevitable graceful fading of enterprise, faculty, acuity, and instead the blossoming of philosophy, enjoyment of the simple, recounting of the past, mastering (or just not thinking about) eventual death.

Retirement as society's convenent to the aged, to you, may be a social economic construct, yet it is a convention that all civilisations and societies have embraced, from prehistory until the present. Children are protected not because they're cute, but because we embody a social covenant recognizing that they are, as we were, "next" ... and their future, as was ours, will possibly be improved by the covenant of tolerance, love, leadership and responsibility that we give them. In just the same way, the pervasive "golden ring" of senescence is the covenant between the working class and our elders, recognizing that they helped us, and us in turn are morally and ethically responsible to return the favor, either individually or collectively, as their acuity and sensibilities begin to crumble.

This covenant IS civilization, good moderator. Living to one hundred and ninety seven is too? It depends. If we live to 200, and in full faculty inside a youthful corpus, if we retain our cognition, our drive, our striving to better our condition ... if (almost frighteningly) we retain our ability to conceive more children, or say they're delivered by FedEx from the genetic screening baby factory ... for as long as we like ... then the whole social construct changes, to be sure. Yet, somehow, I cannot see us wanting to cure 'the decline of ageing'. It may not appeal to youth, yet from my experience with our large family of elders ... they all grew to enjoy it and its tiny little bowls of fruits-of-their-investment.

Well ... that was more philosophical than I thought I would venture.

But I also agree with you: the "AI in your pocket" is really what we will need, will use, and will become as ubiquitous as cellphones and our army of gadgets. I, for one, can't wait for the day I can get the "Alice" AI for my 17th upgraded PDA/cell phone ... which has the "brains" and bearing of your basic office secretary. I can't wait to have a conversation with "her", where she learns what I want, what I don't want, and the colloquial way that it all comes across.

GoatGuy