Earth Hour 2008 Created 16 years ago2008-03-29 14:24:17 UTC by alexb911

Touche' WC. I believe you now, heh.

You DO mean me, correct? Didn't mean to shoot you down or anything, but I'm just saying that there are relatively high efficiency solar energy cells out there. Anyway.. Google...
<3 Google.

.. oops, heh -- Yes, Tetsu0. I cant think of one reason I put WC besides the fact that I didn't read to see who mentioned 40% before hand.

And yes, you've perfect reason to "shoot me down". I dont really care, and I really didn't think 40%'s existed beyond the fact that I didn't want to google.

Yeah. But i didn't mean to "One Up" You i was merely informing that 40% existed. I'm not an asshole on purpose.

It's a tricky argument, that one. I do believe it wont make that much of a difference though. You might say that's the attitude that's holding us back, but at the same time, how does turning them off move us forward.

The amount of times I have heard "Ahhh I won't turn this off, it won't make much of a difference" is insane. If every single one of those people didn't have those sort of doubts and just turned off whatever device it was, than the energy that they would save would be quite alot.

Its just like donating to charity, you would think that your dollar or whatever won't go far but together it makes a huge amount of money.

It's a tricky argument, that one. I do believe it wont make that much of a difference though. You might say that's the attitude that's holding us back, but at the same time, how does turning them off move us forward.

The amount of times I have heard "Ahhh I won't turn this off, it won't make much of a difference" is insane. If every single one of those people didn't have those sort of doubts and just turned off whatever device it was, than the energy that they would save would be quite alot.

Its just like donating to charity, you would think that your dollar or whatever won't go far but together it makes a huge amount of money.

You're still talking about solar power efficiency? Hell, I just meant it as an example, not speaking practically.

If every single one of those people didn't have those sort of doubts and just turned off whatever device it was

That's the problem though, every single one of those people wont. That being said, I dont have lights on just to have them on.

I dont do it to save the earth or anything like that, I just like the prospect of a lessened power bill. On the other hand, little piss off teenagers love to leave lights on because they dont yet know the 'value of money' and therein dont care if they leave lights on in the first place. They aren't working or paying for it, afterall.

You're still talking about solar power efficiency? Hell, I just meant it as an example, not speaking practically.

I just splurged about my passion.
It comes with being an Electrical / Mechanical Engineer.

But I seriously wonder what the problem is that people see in nuclear power. Radiation? Maybe I don't know the whole story, but I HATE the "we'll never be abe to get rid of the radioactive waste" argument. Launch it into space when we're done with it, like everything else. And I'm totally serious about that proposition.

If only some kickass scientist could figure out how to harness radiation to create more energy.. heh

i read something recently about Co2 (the bad stuff creating global warming) being recycled into Co and then being used as fuel.

I totally agree with you WC. And if someone discovers the way to make fusion energy rentable we all will forget about solar panels, oil, and fission energy.

Launch into space? Are you kidding? You have any idea how much that costs? Besides, the amount of junk floating around out atmosphere at the moment is utterly ridiculous. The last thing we need is nuclear waste floating around up there. What happens if it decides to come back down? Nuclear waste dumped everywhere when it comes in for re-entry? Yeah, sounds great to me.

It's okay Ant, they'll just do it liek dis:

Also, I don't know if you remember, but there is no atmosphere in space.

magnetic rail system. The same stuff used on roller-coasters, but on a larger scale. We can just wait until we have a clear shot at the sun, and Boom...
Plus we'll extend the lifetime of our sun by about oh... 3 seconds overall.

Oh snap, you really ruined my shitty edit there.

Anyway...Yeah, I think I had a bit too much fun drawing that.

I watched something on the discovery science channel how a fusion chamber's being built at the moment.. it will use less power than a hair dryer to fire thousands of lasers at a single target to create enough fusion energy to power the entire planets energy needs for 40+ years within a few miliseconds, heh. Granted they dont fuck it up while building it, it will be cool.

Also, lets just hope it works. Even if they can only collect a small portion of the energy released, it does only take a few atoms. They can pick it out of the air we breath if they want, talk about cheap.

That would be unimaginably great, then all they have to do is invent a system for cars to fire once a week to keep the car charged... Once they have that going, its like everything else, technology keeps getting smaller, but stronger!

Did I also note that these thousands of lasers radiate a point that these atoms are kept at. This radius just happens to be about a football field in length, so no =D

Also, it's laced with lots of systems geared at cooling. Such a device would melt a car, heh.

It's mans nature to progress. It's mans nature to be greedy. It's mans nature to be spoiled. Hardly anyone who 'got' it, wants to turn that in. You what I'm trying say? The majority of todays people isn't willing to turn away, lets take a example, their car. The majority of todays people isn't willing to take the bike instead of the car to travel to their jobs.

Man rather wants to progress than to take a step back and delay the destruction of earth (delay, because nature warms the earth up aswell.... volcanos, that kinda stuff) for our children of tomorrow. It's a fact.

I came up with a very stupid idea that could probably never work several years ago. If nuclear fission splits atoms, then use nuclear fusion on the waste to put them back together, and get more energy. Then put the waste from that reaction into a fission reactor and get more energy, and so a never ending cycle begins.
I wasn't drunk at the time, 'cause I was 12, so I don't know what drove me to come up with such a dumb idea.

I think that nuclear power is the way of the future. Nowadays with all the safety precautions in nuclear powerplants, the chances of a meltdown are rather slim. Although Chernobyl was a horrible accident and people in Australia were saying that there was nuclear material from the Chernobyl incident there, I cant help but think if that is true then how come the reactor meltdowns that were almost as serious as chernobyl in the USSR that were covered up never seemed to cause a spike in radioactive pressure. And also TJB that was a dumb idea, shame one you

What happens if it decides to come back down? Nuclear waste dumped everywhere when it comes in for re-entry? Yeah, sounds great to me.

I said launch it into space, not into our outer atmosphere.

yeh TJB, it sounds like it could work, but that does mean we could create infinite energy. By the laws of natural physics, such a thing is impossible. A single particle can only hold so much, I imagine.

If the universe is infinite, then there is an infinite amount of energy contained in the universe, in which case his idea would be possible.. The only problem would be finding a way to constantly draw unused energy from the infinity of space.
But I believe the universe is not infinite. What you are suggesting isn't infinite energy, but rather, the ability to create energy from nothing. Its a simple situation of the law of coservation of energy. Essentially, your proposition is to have a battery that fully recharges itself by using its own electricity as the power source. Now say you wanted to use this battery to power a hand held fan. For the battery to power both the fan and the recharging of the battery by itself, new energy would have to be created from nothing, because you are constantly losing the energy that you used to power the recharger to the fan. There is only so much energy there to begin with. You can't just put more energy in without a second source of power. There inlies things like solar power, etc.

yeah but universe isn't infinite =) it wouldn't exist if it was infinite =)

I've always believed that, physically, the universe is limited, but "loops" itself from our 3D perspective near the edges because of three-dimensional restrictions. Introduce the higher dimensions, and you would be able transcend into different universe just like you would walk from room to room in your house

There's an infinite amount of possible "space", but not enough crap to fill it up.

Well that's contradictory thinking. If there's an infinite amount of space, who's to say there is not an infinite amount of matter contained in this infinite amount of space? If it keeps going, there's really no reason to believe that matter simply stops somewhere.

Sure there is. Matter is considered anything that has mass. The vaccum of space has no mass, we get to travel through it freely. Scientists have already determined that the universe is in a heirarchy of gravity and we're arranged into a huge bubble like structure. Past that bubble, nothing is there, although the universe is slowly expanding out into that nothingness around the bubble. If there is "infinite matter", it's not here. It might exist, just not in this dimension or whatever the hell you'll call it.

Matter doesn't stop, what matter is here has always been here and it's just slowly expanding outward. So, no it hasn't "stopped", it's just not 'there' yet.

If you could cite something that'd be great. Any theory will do, because I've never heard of this "bubble of matter".

The only problem would be finding a way to constantly draw unused energy from the infinity of space.

They tried that on stargate once. It didn't work.

A "bubble" is technically the structure of the universe larger than a filament. Like clusters and superclusters, just bigger.

They tried that on stargate once. It didn't work.

I lol'd.

I wasn't serious about that idea, although I suppose it might work, but the fuel would get used up as it gradually gets converted into energy.

I don't think that power is important as the food we throw away, while the hungry in Africa (Asia too) die.

Heh, I'm hungry, and live in Africa. Though I'm hungry as in I-want-a-hamburger hungry.

We did that power saving thing here too, considering we are having a huge power crisis. We have power rationing, along with water rationing. Eish.