05 JUN 2017 by ideonexus
Reading Fiction is to Temporarily Believe Nonsense
The weather bureau will tell you what next Tuesday will be like, and the Rand Corporation will tell you what the twenty-first century will be like. I don't recommend that you turn to the writers of fiction for such information. It's none of their business. All they're trying to do is tell you what they're like, and what you're like—what's going on—what the weather is now, today, this moment, the rain, the sunlight, look! Open your eyes; listen, listen. That is what the novelists say. But ... 1 
notes
notes09 SEP 2016 by ideonexus
Childhood Fascination with What Adults Consider Mundane
If you know kindergartners, you know that a thread on the carpet can become one of the most fascinating objects on the face of the earth. The child will pick it up and run her fingers the length of it, scrutinizing every centimeter of that thread. She might hold it up in the sunlight to get a better look and then lay it on her lap to continue the intense observation of the thread. Those who are sitting close to the thread scientist may notice this intriguing object and want in. So they’ll ... 1 notes
notes19 FEB 2015 by ideonexus
Growing a Forest Rapidly
1. First, you start with soil. We identify what nutrition the soil lacks.
2. Then we identify what species we should be growing in this soil, depending on climate.
3. We then identify locally abundant biomass available in that region to give the soil whatever nourishment it needs. This is typically an agricultural or industrial byproduct — like chicken manure or press mud, a byproduct of sugar production — but it can be almost anything. We’ve made a rule that it must come from... 1 notes
notes26 FEB 2014 by ideonexus
The Problem of Energy
As a child, I read Friday by Robert A Heinlein, which portrayed a future in which energy needs are addressed by energy storage devices called "Shipstones", which are described as a way to pack more kilowatt-hours into a smaller space and a smaller mass than any other engineer had ever dreamed of. To call it an "improved storage battery" (as some early accounts did) is like calling an H-bomb an "improved firecracker."
In the novel, the Shipstone's eponymous inventor realised "that the problem... 1 notes
notesIsn't that is isn't plentiful. The sky is raining energy. It's that we have to collect it into buckets for use.
These are partial direct quotes, the direct quote is from a hacker news comment.
10 DEC 2013 by ideonexus
Vitamins Come from Living Things
Every vitamin is made by living cells — either our own, or in other species. Vitamin D is produced in our skin, for example, when sunlight strikes a precursor of cholesterol. A lemon tree makes vitamin C out of glucose. Making a vitamin is often an enormously baroque process. In some species, it takes 22 different proteins to craft a vitamin B12 molecule.
While a protein may be made up of thousands of atoms, a vitamin may be made up of just a few dozen. And yet, despite their small size, v...
1 They are part of our universal chemistry from our common origins.
21 JUN 2013 by ideonexus
How Plants and Animals Survive in Their Environment
Plants and animals are separated by about 1.5 billion years of evolutionary history. They have evolved their multicellular organization independently but using the same initial tool kit the set of genes inherited from their common unicellular eucaryotic ancestor. Most of the contrasts in their developmental strategies spring from two basic peculiarities of plants. First, they get their energy from sunlight, not by ingesting other organisms. This dictates a body plan different from that of ani...
1 Animals spend energy to maintain an internally consistent state, while plants change their state in response to the environment.
23 JUN 2012 by ideonexus
If We Do Not Find an Alternative to Oil...
The power of man to do work—one man-power—is, in its purely physical sense, now an insignificant accomplishment, and could only again justify his existence if other sources of power failed. ... Curious persons in cloisteral seclusion are experimenting with new sources of energy, which, if ever harnessed, would make coal and oil as useless as oars and sails. If they fail in their quest, or are too late, so that coal and oil, everywhere sought for, are no longer found, and the only hope of ...Folksonomies: alternative energy oil
Folksonomies: alternative energy oil
1 notes
notes...we will see a return to the galley-slaves rowing ships when it runs out.
30 JAN 2012 by ideonexus
Trees are Made of Air
By blending water and minerals from below with sunlight and CO2 from above, green plants link the earth to the sky. We tend to believe that plants grow out of the soil, but in fact most of their substance comes from the air. The bulk of the cellulose and the other organic compounds produced through photosynthesis consists of heavy carbon and oxygen atoms, which plants take directly from the air in the form of CO2. Thus the weight of a wooden log comes almost entirely from the air. When we bur... 1 notes
notesSounds much like the Richard Feynman quote.
28 JAN 2012 by ideonexus
The Importance of Surfaces
I would like to start by emphasizing the importance of surfaces. It is at a surface where many of our most interesting and useful phenomena occur. We live for example on the surface of a planet. It is at a surface where the catalysis of chemical reactions occur. It is essentially at a surface of a plant that sunlight is converted to a sugar. In electronics, most if not all active circuit elements involve non-equilibrium phenomena occurring at surfaces. Much of biology is concerned with reacti... 1 notes
notesSurfaces are where are the interesting scientific stuff is taking place.
01 JAN 2012 by ideonexus
Dyson Spheres
The
mathematician Freeman Dyson, of the Institute for Advanced Study, offers a
scheme in which the planet Jupiter is broken down piece by piece, transported to
the distance of the Earth from the Sun, and reconstructed into a spherical shell – a
swarm of individual fragments revolving about the Sun. The advantage of Dyson's
proposal is that all of the sunlight now wasted by not falling upon an inhabited
planet could then be gainfully employed; and a population greatly in excess of that
which...Folksonomies: extraterrestrials solar power
Folksonomies: extraterrestrials solar power
A hypothetical sphere surrounding a star, harnessing all of its power.
