>> ^BansheeX:The real problem is the the ignorant opposition to nuclear in this country....


There's no ignorance about it: nuclear is dirty and the people that own and run the plants are cheap.

Nuclear is more money for a special interest cabal that doesn't give a damn about anything but their own profits.

Solar, wind, geothermal - that's where we need more development.

No, not pollution, not a natural occurrence , Could this be HAARP focused upon a specific area of the globe??.....Could the epicenter, about 500km away from where these lights appeared, prior to the Sichuan Earthquake, have been the location of China's main centers for designing, making and storing nuclear arms ????...Think so, perhaps.
Red and green light emitted from oxygen atoms is a constituent of the light seen at the poles. Atmospheric nitrogen also plays a role. Solar winds are the prevailing catalyst for brilliant auroral displays....
Was this an artificial geomagnetic occurrence, a blast of solar wind, or some benign, regular phenom in this area of the globe??? Kind of.Maybe.Perhaps.
Is HAARP or the patents associated with the dynamics of the apparatus involved capable of producing a variety of effects, which Nikola Tesla described as being wholly possible back in the 30s-40s? Did the military and the elite financiers shut Tesla down, when he would not stop talking about free energy and a new era of prosperity and evolution for humankind? Has the Dept. of the Navy, the air force, Raytheon done anything in recent years, to facilitate peace and prosperity for all, or for but a few, of their friends, family, cronies and sympathetic assholes??? Is China in the way of the European stranglehold over world economies that they have held for centuries??
Do you speak Chinese??? Better fucking learn, because these folks are pissed, and there's more of em than anybody....

Next stop, WW3, the natural order of things in a world where kings still play chess, the masses have their heads planted firmly in their own bullshit too smart, lazy, or fucking stupid to see they are the pawns, and where chaos, in all her glory, still reigns supreme, regardless of assholes and imbeciles....

Believe it or not, QM, but us Democrats drive cars, just like you.

That's what makes the Democrat position all the more insane. "You" don't like wars "over oil" yet you thwart any attempts at energy independence.

We don't make it impossible to explore, we just have limits on how much we think we should destroy the environment (I know, you don't believe in that, either), to go after minimal amounts of oil.

Capitalists make the best stewards of the environment. The soviet union had massive natural riches yet had to import wheat. Their consumers had no voice (or freedom). They were one huge environmental disaster.

Don't take my word on that, take the Bush DOE report from 2007 saying it wouldn't have any impact until 2030, and even then, it wouldn't have much impact since price is based on a global oil market (and OCS oil wouldn't substantially change the global suppply).

Yeah, I'm aware some things take time. Otherwise why plant today when it'll take 30 years for a large shade tree to grow?

But we're bastards who want $300/barrel oil because, well, we like to see the third world starve while oil companies make record profits. That does sound very hippy-ish, and not at all Republican.

Well, one of "your" boys in Congress recently let slip he'd like to "nationalize" the country's oil. The same idiots who can't run the Post Office are somehow going to run the nation's oil supply? Laughable, contemptible and illegal.

If we'd have had our way, you'd be driving an electric car by now, and the debate would be over how much of our energy budget goes to solar & wind electricity versus coal and nuclear, and you could bitch at us for trying to make the air clean, instead of burning coal like the gods of Capitalism intended.

The electric car? You mean the one with the batteries that cause all kinds of pollution just to manufacture? The one that has to be plugged in so coal-fired plants can work overtime? Solar, wind, hydrogen are all long-term shifts. There's still billions of barrels of oil in the ground.

I'm not bitter over oil companies making a profit. They earn those profits providing a commodity people need. They reinvest those profits and find MORE oil which keeps prices low. Those profits do more good in their pockets than the vests of squandering socialists.

"Bastards" was probably a bit unfair. Keebler elves like Kook-cynic make me want to throw out all the E.L. Fudge in the hizzle.

>> ^quantumushroom:
Why are no-drill democrats worried about the price of oil? They're the ones making it impossible to explore for more oil.
They would make it $300-a-barrel if they could. Bastards.

Believe it or not, QM, but us Democrats drive cars, just like you.

We don't make it impossible to explore, we just have limits on how much we think we should destroy the environment (I know, you don't believe in that, either), to go after minimal amounts of oil.

Don't take my word on that, take the Bush DOE report from 2007 saying it wouldn't have any impact until 2030, and even then, it wouldn't have much impact since price is based on a global oil market (and OCS oil wouldn't substantially change the global suppply).

But we're bastards who want $300/barrel oil because, well, we like to see the third world starve while oil companies make record profits. That does sound very hippy-ish, and not at all Republican.

If we'd have had our way, you'd be driving an electric car by now, and the debate would be over how much of our energy budget goes to solar & wind electricity versus coal and nuclear, and you could bitch at us for trying to make the air clean, instead of burning coal like the gods of Capitalism intended.

netrunner:the passion for alternative energies, changes in consumptive habits, and some horrible economic collapse the likes of which blah blah blah, would be better directed towards the affecting herders, those who have created this thing called the world economy, the currencies,and a long look inna mirror, ye who use their systems, yet complain of their antics' results-

All that is needed to be done is to alter the current paradigm...free and/or more efficient use of available energies are here, it is merely hidden, muted, discouraged, etc....

ShakaUVM-"IS" the answer?...What of the alternatives to both oil and conventional-tech nuke plants, to solar, wind, or water??? Are you aware that these are not already available?? Knowledge is power, and those who have their interests in oil, are running one powerful cabal-hidden, man-lock and key, need to know-

In my opinion, electric is the only viable long term solution. There are several cars in development right now (including the Tesla which is rolling out their first batch) that have good enough range for a day's worth of city driving, and recharge in a few hours. If we get the power from solar, wind, or nuclear power plants, we can cut oil out of the loop. As opposed to ethanol, which is hotly contested in terms of efficiency, electric motors are proven to be very cost effective.

No, I mean we're not being taxed enough for using fossil fuels. And at the same time, the USA is subsidizing energy industry directly, and giving them tax breaks, and spending billions on a defense budget that involves protecting strategically crucial oil reserves far from the USA. These subsidies probably outweigh the oil taxes.

In reply to this comment by MarineGunrock:
>> ^jwray:
The U.S. should just place a large tax on all fossil fuel consumption, effectively forcing the industry to switch to nuclear/wind/solar/hydro/tidal. A hydro plant with a large reservoir that can regulate its rate of water passage could load-balance with a solar/wind plant.
It makes perfect sense to tax all consumption of fossil fuels, to internalize the negative externalities of fossil fuel use. The regressivity of this tax could be nullified by a flat refund similar to this year's economic stimulus package.


You mean you don't think that we are already being taxed on it?

Saying that we should all switch to clean technologies is a very idealistic statement, yes it should be done, but it won't be done in the short term. I personally believe that nuclear power is right now the best short term alternative to continued consumption of fossil fuels, with a long term plan of switching to cleaner technologies.

Nuclear power can be readily tapped into over the power grids and is substantial enough to supply entire cities, this not true for the various techs like solar, wind and so on. More development is needed in those areas. As for nuclear waste, it is a problematic issue but the waste produced is less readily influential on the environment if stored and disposed off correctly. I have read papers on research to actually break down the waste into something else. Other then that I wouldn't mind sending off a rocket or two to burn up around the sun (just an idea).

But even then we are replacing one sort of pollution for another, instead of smoke stacks or nuclear waste we would have large wind generation farms, large tidal wave areas in the sea, or large fields of concentrated solar generators.

However all these technologies still rely on a fossil fuel process for components, so what we term clean technology isn't really because various components are derived from fossil fuels, if not for power in their manufacture then for the manufacture of various parts like plastics and so on.

Wow, it's not a fair comparison to make between Nuclear energy and Clean energy (solar, wind, waves). Of course we SHOULD switch to clean energy as soon as possible, but at this moment you can't just replace everything else with it - it is simply not efficient enough.

The comparison that must be made is between fossil fules (coal, oil) and Nuclear energy. The amount of nuclear waste is far less damaging than the damage from fossil pollution.

>> ^jwray:
The U.S. should just place a large tax on all fossil fuel consumption, effectively forcing the industry to switch to nuclear/wind/solar/hydro/tidal. A hydro plant with a large reservoir that can regulate its rate of water passage could load-balance with a solar/wind plant.
It makes perfect sense to tax all consumption of fossil fuels, to internalize the negative externalities of fossil fuel use. The regressivity of this tax could be nullified by a flat refund similar to this year's economic stimulus package.


You mean you don't think that we are already being taxed on it?

The U.S. should just place a large tax on all fossil fuel consumption, effectively forcing the industry to switch to nuclear/wind/solar/hydro/tidal. A hydro plant with a large reservoir that can regulate its rate of water passage could load-balance with a solar/wind plant.

It makes perfect sense to tax all consumption of fossil fuels enough internalize the negative externalities of fossil fuel use. The regressivity of this tax could be nullified by a flat refund similar to this year's economic stimulus package.

The current taxes on oil etc in the USA are far too low.

>> ^MycroftHomlz:
You can't treat Mira with the same math and logic as a comet, because it produces its own energy.

I wasn't thinking of it like a comet, which does not emit energy (does it?). A comet's tail is created from material being stripped away by solar wind, and is visible because of reflected sunlight, correct?

The question about velocity was not a lack of understanding of basic physics, but a lack of a good description of Mira's linear velocity relative to the material through which it's passing. The wiki article only vaguely mentions it in passing, and notes its radial, not angular, velocity in the sidebar. Thanks for the nasa link, though, as that answers it exactly. It's linear velocity is roughly 130 km/sec, which translates to a distance of roughly 13 light years in 30000 years. Cool - that was the easy part.

But apparently I'm not getting my main question across very clearly. I understand that stars use fusion to generate the energy they are emitting. But the distal end of that tail is 13 light years away from the star and has been emitting UV radiation for over 30000 years. My question is not about the amount of energy released, but the rate at which it is being released. Are you suggesting that excited hydrogen atoms are taking over 30000 years to return to a low energy state without undergoing any other interaction after the star has passed?

A vast amount of energy is transferred to the interstellar hydrogen gas in a fairly short amount of time as Mira zooms by, but then the hydrogen is taking 30000 years to release that energy? That's what I'm not understanding. I mean, if hydrogen atoms can store that much energy for that long, then I'd recommend one of you smart physicist types start looking into hydrogen based batteries!

The sun gives off high-energy charged particles (also called ions) that travel out into space at speeds of 300 to 1200 kilometres per second. A cloud of such particles is called a plasma. The stream of plasma coming from the sun is known as the solar wind. As the solar wind interacts with the edge of the earth’s magnetic field, some of the particles are trapped by it and they follow the lines of magnetic force down into the ionosphere, the section of the earth’s atmosphere that extends from about 60 to 600 kilometres above the earth’s surface. When the particles collide with the gases in the ionosphere they start to glow, producing the spectacle that we know as the auroras, northern and southern - From virtual finland

"'To Beg The Question' means using what you are trying to prove. Not making you want to ask the question."

noted...fixed my comment. Guess I need more sleep...and to think I was just chastising a 12-year-old on Youtube for bad spelling and grammar.

Scientific Fact...don't get me started. You can find clues, you can find evidence, you can't find fact. If you weren't there to witness something happening, it cannot be claimed as fact. Before you argue "with such reasoning, one wouldn't be able to prove anything that happened before, say 1900, since no one (very few) are alive that were alive before then.", let me counter with this. People were there, and they wrote it down. Many people witnessed many things. The important things were written down, painted, photographed, etc., and correlated by others.

Yes, it's a fact that scientists have found this connection. And it supports the THEORY. But it also supports theory that God is like Nissan.

There is evidence to support a young universe as well as an old one. Halos in granite come to mind: http://www.halos.com/. As well as moon dust. Scientists calculated that the moon was so covered with dust, that the astronauts should have sank when they landed...but they didn't. The perceived amount of collected dust supports a MUCH younger moon. I doubt solar wind and even most meteor impacts could create enough force to "blow it away."

I'm not saying that evolution and the related theories (big bang, 10 billion year old universe, etc.) are philosophical beliefs...I hold the position that, though often people are both, supporting intelligent design doesn't make you Christian. /////edit, just realized I didn't finish my thought...Intelligent Design is just another theory.

jwray - you obviously have no clue about standard energy consumption terminology, the kW-hr is a commonly used metric for power consumption of consumer electronics http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watt_hour Not exactly a watt per hour, but probably what he meant.

As for nuclear, it is a good candidate for a SAFE short term power solution, but it still consumes fuel and leaves waste, and really should be used as a transitory power source until a good renewable infrastructure can be built up (including solar, wind, water...heart?)

Back on topic, pretty interesting, particularly for those with the space to use them.