With the prices of gasoline on the rise, and the amount of fossil fuels consumed by the United States, coupled with the effect green house gases are having on our environment, it comes as no surprise that alternative fuels in the automotive industry are being researched.
We hear politicians talk about our fuel alternatives and mention electricity as a real possibility for the automotive industry. We hear things like senator McCain offering enormous amounts of incentive monies to help develop a battery that would help,Jump Start the Electric Car Industry.
It is very important that we, The American people, devote a substantial amount of time considering all our alternatives. During this time of research and the real efforts of many to make the difficult transition away from Fossil Fuels to alternative fuel sources, that we take into consideration all ramifications of each possible alternative fuel we have at our disposal.
Electric cars are a real possibility, as long as politicians and big money push for this,clean technology. In reality, one must consider the number of existing automobile owners that do not have the financial means to buy new electric automobiles. There are literally millions of automobiles on U.S. roads at the present, none of which would reap any benefits from a change to electricity.
What would be done to help these motorists? What would be done with millions of gasoline burning vehicles? As Americans, we like to think that we are capable of recycling most everything within reason. But, in a perfect world, if every U.S. citizen was able to make the switch to electric cars, we would have one very large amount of scrap iron to deal with and while we are on the subject of waste and recycling. What impact would electric cars have on our environment?
Electric cars take batteries. Not just any kind of batteries, but highly developed lithium ion batteries. Batteries are inherently wasteful due to the fact they inevitably die, or lose their ability to store energy. Will these toxic batteries be the next mountains in our waste dumps?
Hydrogen on the other hand, is a viable alternative to fossil fuel for our vehicles. And, for the millions of vehicles on the U.S. roads at present, could be outfitted to make and use hydrogen gas as fuel. There is even some use of hydrogen in conjunction with natural gas to fuel commercial vehicles such as buses and cargo trucks at present. This is a proven, clean, green technology.
Hydrogen, being the most abundant element on Earth as well as in our universe should be highly considered as a fossil fuel alternative. Outfitting vehicles with hydrogen producing fuel cells the produce hydrogen on board the vehicle, to be burned in their combustion engines, not only reduces green house gas emissions but would ease our dependence of fossil fuels with very little waste.
This, in the view of Hydrogen Operated, makes perfect sense. As the world watches America as an example and eventually follows our lead, we could make the transition to hydrogen, and every American citizen would be able to easily afford the small conversion needed to enjoy the immediate benefits of hydrogen power. By not only producing automobiles that both burn hydrogen or in the case of Hondas new car, the Clarity, convert hydrogen into electricity to be used with electric motors, we can keep many of the present day automobiles on the road and out of the scrap yards.
When choosing the next fuel source, Hydrogen operated says,that we must take the long term use and impact to our environment into consideration.Government, both state and federal, must take steps to encourage the use of hydrogen. States must allow alteration or elimination to existing vehicles pollution or smog control devices as to allow motorist full capability to utilize hydrogen as a fuel.
As long as the vehicle passes the pollution test levels imposed by the state and federal governments, their wasteful, unneeded smog and fuel management systems must go. The States need to encourage all alternative fuel endeavors, not just those few that our wasteful automotive industry supplies us.
A company in Arizona, has an inexpensive, Supplemental hydrogen fuel system that can be added to virtually any vehicle in America. The high output fuel cell provides more than enough hydrogen that can be utilized in our automobiles as they are currently configured. With just a very small engine conversion, one would experience 30% increase in mileage guaranteed.This is just the beginning, states Hydrogen Operated Founder, Todd M. Ash.When the majority of automobiles make the conversion, we will see our green house emission fall sharply. Couple this with other nations following suite and we could see a real significant change in our global warming problem.
By, Todd Ash
Monday, November 10, 2008
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
Could Time Travel Be Possible?
Just recently I watched a trailer for the upcoming Terminator film, Terminator 4: The Future Begins. The series is one of my favourite film franchises and I'm looking forward to the new film, even in spite of the disappointing Terminator 3. Part of the reason that the films are among my favourites are the ways in which they deal with time travel and the paradoxes that it could potentially cause.
The film tells a story where in the near future artificial intelligence has taken over the planet and sends cyborg assassins back in time in an attempt to kill the future leader of the human resistance. At the end of the first film the robot terminator is crushed and destroyed, the only remains being the forearm and part of the microprocessor 'brain'. The irony here is that the only way that the machines are eventually created is by using the parts left behind from the destroyed one.
It creates an interesting paradox in that the terminators would never have been invented if they hadn't come back in time, so in theory the machines came into being by simply appearing out of thin air. The film dealt with the fate of John Conner, leader of the human resistance and whether his actions were predetermined or the result of a choice. In the end nothing he did could stop the inevitable and the machines started the war. The series raises a large number of interesting questions about time travel and the effects it may have.
This leads me onto the subject of time travel. Is it possible? It is a subject that has captured the collective imagination and inspired countless works of science fiction. As well as inspiring works of fiction it is a subject that has been the topic of serious scientific investigation and thought. Many notable physicists including Albert Einstein and Steven Hawking have done significant research into the prospects of the possibility of time travel. In this article I will have a look at some of the more common theories of how time travel may be possible and the effects it may have on the universe.
In fiction time travel has been presented in a huge number of different ways. The most common use is that of a time machine that can propel people backwards and forwards in time, or in some cases only in one direction. Popular examples include the DeLorean from the Back to the Future trilogy and the Tardis from the Doctor Who television series. In reality such devices are impossible but provide a romantic vision of how one might travel through time.
However despite these ideas of time travel it has been proven that time travel backwards in time is for the most part impossible. Time travel into the future, however is seen as being arguably possible. There are considerable (ie virtually impossible) boundaries to overcome but the possibility within the laws of physics is there for time travel into the future.
Theoretical time travel into the future would work on the basis of time dilation. If one was to travel away from the Earth at close to the speed of light before turning round and returning at the same speed then considerably more time would have passed for the people on Earth than those on the spacecraft. This would allow a form of travel into the future where people could arrive back at Earth several thousand years after they left even though they've only felt like they've been flying for a few years.
This is explained in Einstein 's theory of special relativity. A common way to relate this to time travel is with the twin paradox. The twin paradox states that if someone travels away from Earth at light speed and returns several years later they will find that their identical twin has aged considerably more than they have. The maths and physics behind why this happens is extremely complex and most likely far beyond the scope of this article, but it has been proven to happen. Experiments have even taken place on Earth that have proved the theory to be correct. The National Physical Laboratory in the UK flew clocks to Washington DC and back to London and found the results to be as Einstein had predicted.
Another factor that is able to cause time dilation is extreme gravitational forces. It has been calculated under general relativity that if a person was able to live inside a sphere with a diameter of five metres and the mass of Jupiter that their time would move four times slower than of the outside world. It has been proven in scientific experiments that clocks will appear to tick slower the closer they are to a strong gravitational pull. A person will see that a clock at ground level will tick more slowly than one up a tower.
With the knowledge of how time dilation works is it just a matter of time until we're able to build a craft that can travel sufficient distances at a high enough speed that we see some more dramatic effects than a few nanoseconds? Imagine what kind of effects a craft that travelled at near light speed to a black hole and used the gravitational pull to slingshot back home would see. The combined dilation from the journey and the gravity of a black hole should see them arrive back on Earth a very, very long time after they've left.
The only way that we will be able to experience any kind of time travel is through this method, or by travelling through a wormhole.
A wormhole is a theoretical object that can link two distant points in space via a tunnel. The possibility of wormholes is driven by Einstein 's theory that objects curve space and time. Imagine space as a bed sheet that is pulled tight, when you drop a ball onto it the sheet will curve and the ball will roll to the middle. It has been theorised that if two objects with sufficient mass were to depress space in this way enough that they might meet in the middle and form a wormhole between the two points. Travel through these points would allow us to cross vast distances of space in a fraction of the time it would normally take to get there.
However if we were able to move and manipulate the mouths of the wormholes then it has been thought of that they may offer a way to travel into the past. From inside a wormhole the two mouths will always remain synchronised. That is to say if a clock reads 3000 on one end, it will also read 3000 on the other end. If we were able to bring two mouths near each other and then accelerate one away at relativistic velocities before bringing it back then the mouth that had been on the journey would have aged less. Let 's say the clock on the stationary mouth reads 3050 and the mouth that has been accelerated reads 3000. If you were to enter the accelerated mouth then both ends of the wormhole would read 3000 from inside. In this respect if you're in 3050 with the stationary mouth and you enter the accelerated mouth you will exit in the year 3000, a trip back in time.
While theoretically possible this relies on technology that is far beyond our current understanding. However it does answer one of Steven Hawking 's queries on travel into the past. He asked that if time travel were possible then why haven't we seen any tourists from the future? Well by using wormholes it would be impossible to travel back to a point before they were discovered and accessed.
Travel back in time would also raise the well known question of the Grandfather Paradox. This is the name given to a basic cause and effect paradox that could be raised from time travel into the past. For example, imagine you were to travel back in time far enough to a point before your father was born and kill your grandfather. This would mean that you would never be conceived and would never exist. If you never exist then how do you go back in time to kill your grandfather? Logic would say that you can't and so that means your grandfather would live and you would go back in time and kill him, which of course we know you can't. It is this example that is often used when saying that time travel into the past is impossible.
There is a school of thought though that you would be simply unable to change anything if you went back in time. Say you went to try and kill your grandfather. You would encounter a continuous stream of bad luck and you wouldn't be able to do it, your gun would jam, you would miss, your shot wouldn't be fatal, you would die, etc.
The idea of time travel into the past certainly raises an enormous number of paradoxes and questions on cause and effect, none of which are answered easily. While time travel into the future remains an exciting extreme possibility I do not think we will ever see time travel into the past, and certainly not at 88mph in a DeLorean.
The film tells a story where in the near future artificial intelligence has taken over the planet and sends cyborg assassins back in time in an attempt to kill the future leader of the human resistance. At the end of the first film the robot terminator is crushed and destroyed, the only remains being the forearm and part of the microprocessor 'brain'. The irony here is that the only way that the machines are eventually created is by using the parts left behind from the destroyed one.
It creates an interesting paradox in that the terminators would never have been invented if they hadn't come back in time, so in theory the machines came into being by simply appearing out of thin air. The film dealt with the fate of John Conner, leader of the human resistance and whether his actions were predetermined or the result of a choice. In the end nothing he did could stop the inevitable and the machines started the war. The series raises a large number of interesting questions about time travel and the effects it may have.
This leads me onto the subject of time travel. Is it possible? It is a subject that has captured the collective imagination and inspired countless works of science fiction. As well as inspiring works of fiction it is a subject that has been the topic of serious scientific investigation and thought. Many notable physicists including Albert Einstein and Steven Hawking have done significant research into the prospects of the possibility of time travel. In this article I will have a look at some of the more common theories of how time travel may be possible and the effects it may have on the universe.
In fiction time travel has been presented in a huge number of different ways. The most common use is that of a time machine that can propel people backwards and forwards in time, or in some cases only in one direction. Popular examples include the DeLorean from the Back to the Future trilogy and the Tardis from the Doctor Who television series. In reality such devices are impossible but provide a romantic vision of how one might travel through time.
However despite these ideas of time travel it has been proven that time travel backwards in time is for the most part impossible. Time travel into the future, however is seen as being arguably possible. There are considerable (ie virtually impossible) boundaries to overcome but the possibility within the laws of physics is there for time travel into the future.
Theoretical time travel into the future would work on the basis of time dilation. If one was to travel away from the Earth at close to the speed of light before turning round and returning at the same speed then considerably more time would have passed for the people on Earth than those on the spacecraft. This would allow a form of travel into the future where people could arrive back at Earth several thousand years after they left even though they've only felt like they've been flying for a few years.
This is explained in Einstein 's theory of special relativity. A common way to relate this to time travel is with the twin paradox. The twin paradox states that if someone travels away from Earth at light speed and returns several years later they will find that their identical twin has aged considerably more than they have. The maths and physics behind why this happens is extremely complex and most likely far beyond the scope of this article, but it has been proven to happen. Experiments have even taken place on Earth that have proved the theory to be correct. The National Physical Laboratory in the UK flew clocks to Washington DC and back to London and found the results to be as Einstein had predicted.
Another factor that is able to cause time dilation is extreme gravitational forces. It has been calculated under general relativity that if a person was able to live inside a sphere with a diameter of five metres and the mass of Jupiter that their time would move four times slower than of the outside world. It has been proven in scientific experiments that clocks will appear to tick slower the closer they are to a strong gravitational pull. A person will see that a clock at ground level will tick more slowly than one up a tower.
With the knowledge of how time dilation works is it just a matter of time until we're able to build a craft that can travel sufficient distances at a high enough speed that we see some more dramatic effects than a few nanoseconds? Imagine what kind of effects a craft that travelled at near light speed to a black hole and used the gravitational pull to slingshot back home would see. The combined dilation from the journey and the gravity of a black hole should see them arrive back on Earth a very, very long time after they've left.
The only way that we will be able to experience any kind of time travel is through this method, or by travelling through a wormhole.
A wormhole is a theoretical object that can link two distant points in space via a tunnel. The possibility of wormholes is driven by Einstein 's theory that objects curve space and time. Imagine space as a bed sheet that is pulled tight, when you drop a ball onto it the sheet will curve and the ball will roll to the middle. It has been theorised that if two objects with sufficient mass were to depress space in this way enough that they might meet in the middle and form a wormhole between the two points. Travel through these points would allow us to cross vast distances of space in a fraction of the time it would normally take to get there.
However if we were able to move and manipulate the mouths of the wormholes then it has been thought of that they may offer a way to travel into the past. From inside a wormhole the two mouths will always remain synchronised. That is to say if a clock reads 3000 on one end, it will also read 3000 on the other end. If we were able to bring two mouths near each other and then accelerate one away at relativistic velocities before bringing it back then the mouth that had been on the journey would have aged less. Let 's say the clock on the stationary mouth reads 3050 and the mouth that has been accelerated reads 3000. If you were to enter the accelerated mouth then both ends of the wormhole would read 3000 from inside. In this respect if you're in 3050 with the stationary mouth and you enter the accelerated mouth you will exit in the year 3000, a trip back in time.
While theoretically possible this relies on technology that is far beyond our current understanding. However it does answer one of Steven Hawking 's queries on travel into the past. He asked that if time travel were possible then why haven't we seen any tourists from the future? Well by using wormholes it would be impossible to travel back to a point before they were discovered and accessed.
Travel back in time would also raise the well known question of the Grandfather Paradox. This is the name given to a basic cause and effect paradox that could be raised from time travel into the past. For example, imagine you were to travel back in time far enough to a point before your father was born and kill your grandfather. This would mean that you would never be conceived and would never exist. If you never exist then how do you go back in time to kill your grandfather? Logic would say that you can't and so that means your grandfather would live and you would go back in time and kill him, which of course we know you can't. It is this example that is often used when saying that time travel into the past is impossible.
There is a school of thought though that you would be simply unable to change anything if you went back in time. Say you went to try and kill your grandfather. You would encounter a continuous stream of bad luck and you wouldn't be able to do it, your gun would jam, you would miss, your shot wouldn't be fatal, you would die, etc.
The idea of time travel into the past certainly raises an enormous number of paradoxes and questions on cause and effect, none of which are answered easily. While time travel into the future remains an exciting extreme possibility I do not think we will ever see time travel into the past, and certainly not at 88mph in a DeLorean.
Friday, September 26, 2008
The Large Hadron Collider: Making Physics (Almost) Interesting
You may be forgiven for thinking that LHC is a new type of drug designed to be smoked in a pipe, but It is in fact the a piece of scientific equipment which will hopefully explain how we got here today.
The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is the biggest, most expensive science experiment the world has ever seen. Two years late and four times over budget, the LHC can be found 100 metres below the ground at Geneva.
The LHC is a product of the biggest collaboration of scientists in recent history; the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (Cern). Some 10,000 scientists from 80 countries around the world have come together to build the collider which rests in a 27 km long tunnel, known as the ring.
The ring contains 1,000 cylindrical magnets and a number of detectors that will monitor activity. The magnets will steer miniscule particles (known as protons - a form of Hadron) around the ring at a rate of knots similar to the speed of light. In October, when the LHC really kicks into gear, scientists will send protons in the opposite direction on a crash course with the first set of protons. The result will be a cataclysmic explosion similar to that of the Big Bang, some 13.7 bn years ago.
Cern hope to solve the greatest mystery of the scientific world and gain fundamental insights into the nature of the cosmos. By looking at the Standard Model, scientists understand a lot about how particles in our universe act and interact. The trouble with this theory is that it only accounts for ordinary matter and ordinary matter only accounts for 4% of our world.
Dark Matter and Dark Energy are two proposed forces that apparently make up most of our surroundings. It is estimated that Dark Matter constitutes 23% of the universe whilst Dark Energy makes up 73%. When the LHC gets to full speed, two of the four LHC detectors will measure for evidence of this anti-matter.
Other questions that Cern hope to answer include 'what is mass?' and why does gravity behaves the way that it does? Higgs boson (sometimes glamourised and referred to as the God particle) is a sub atomic particle first proposed by Prof. Peter Higgs in the 1960s. It could explain why gravity acts the way it does. Higgs 's theory states that there is a field which matter passes through, and when it does, it experiences mass. If the LHC discovers that this field (dubbed the Higgs field) actually exists, then gravity could also be explained.
The project has been surrounded by controversy much of the way through. When some clever scientist let on the fact that yes indeed, a black hole could be generated by the events at Geneva, there was uproar. Two scientists from Hawaii were first on the scene, filing a suit to stop the activity until an improved safety report could be produced. Needless to say, science prevailed and the law suit was thrown out.
Another theory that has been born from the goings on at Geneva is the arrival of people from other universes through a wormhole. Fanciful at best, these sorts of rumours are best suited to a Pullman novel, along with the idea that millions of other universes co-inhabit the same space in time. Whilst these ideas may well appeal to the more fantastically minded people out there, the chances are that anti-matter is, in fact, as boring as the study of neutrons and electrons.
Not to worry, the world 's single greatest mind, Stephen Hawking, is putting his money on the Higgs boson not actually existing. Quite literally, he has a 100GBP wager with an unnamed friend that the God particle will not be found. If he is right, we could quite possibly be looking at not only the most expensive and ambitious science experiment ever, but also the most pointless.
However, this said, I would like to leave you with one final thought: The World Wide Web was also created by those clever chappies at Cern as a means of communicating with each other more easily. When they had perfected it, they gave it away. For free. Something to think about? I think so.
The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is the biggest, most expensive science experiment the world has ever seen. Two years late and four times over budget, the LHC can be found 100 metres below the ground at Geneva.
The LHC is a product of the biggest collaboration of scientists in recent history; the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (Cern). Some 10,000 scientists from 80 countries around the world have come together to build the collider which rests in a 27 km long tunnel, known as the ring.
The ring contains 1,000 cylindrical magnets and a number of detectors that will monitor activity. The magnets will steer miniscule particles (known as protons - a form of Hadron) around the ring at a rate of knots similar to the speed of light. In October, when the LHC really kicks into gear, scientists will send protons in the opposite direction on a crash course with the first set of protons. The result will be a cataclysmic explosion similar to that of the Big Bang, some 13.7 bn years ago.
Cern hope to solve the greatest mystery of the scientific world and gain fundamental insights into the nature of the cosmos. By looking at the Standard Model, scientists understand a lot about how particles in our universe act and interact. The trouble with this theory is that it only accounts for ordinary matter and ordinary matter only accounts for 4% of our world.
Dark Matter and Dark Energy are two proposed forces that apparently make up most of our surroundings. It is estimated that Dark Matter constitutes 23% of the universe whilst Dark Energy makes up 73%. When the LHC gets to full speed, two of the four LHC detectors will measure for evidence of this anti-matter.
Other questions that Cern hope to answer include 'what is mass?' and why does gravity behaves the way that it does? Higgs boson (sometimes glamourised and referred to as the God particle) is a sub atomic particle first proposed by Prof. Peter Higgs in the 1960s. It could explain why gravity acts the way it does. Higgs 's theory states that there is a field which matter passes through, and when it does, it experiences mass. If the LHC discovers that this field (dubbed the Higgs field) actually exists, then gravity could also be explained.
The project has been surrounded by controversy much of the way through. When some clever scientist let on the fact that yes indeed, a black hole could be generated by the events at Geneva, there was uproar. Two scientists from Hawaii were first on the scene, filing a suit to stop the activity until an improved safety report could be produced. Needless to say, science prevailed and the law suit was thrown out.
Another theory that has been born from the goings on at Geneva is the arrival of people from other universes through a wormhole. Fanciful at best, these sorts of rumours are best suited to a Pullman novel, along with the idea that millions of other universes co-inhabit the same space in time. Whilst these ideas may well appeal to the more fantastically minded people out there, the chances are that anti-matter is, in fact, as boring as the study of neutrons and electrons.
Not to worry, the world 's single greatest mind, Stephen Hawking, is putting his money on the Higgs boson not actually existing. Quite literally, he has a 100GBP wager with an unnamed friend that the God particle will not be found. If he is right, we could quite possibly be looking at not only the most expensive and ambitious science experiment ever, but also the most pointless.
However, this said, I would like to leave you with one final thought: The World Wide Web was also created by those clever chappies at Cern as a means of communicating with each other more easily. When they had perfected it, they gave it away. For free. Something to think about? I think so.
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