Blackholes,or are they Black Stars?

-1628  -  A blackhole defies current math.  Both General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics can come up with infinities that the math just cannot handle.  Maybe a hole does not even form?  Maybe the math cancels out and a Black Star forms instead.?
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---------------------  - 1628  -  Seeing a Blackhole, yes we can?  But, it may be a Black Star.
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-  We cannot see a blackhole by definition no light will ever reach us.  But, can we see a Blackhole’s shadow, a black silhouette against a backdrop of hot glowing gas?  Maybe?
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-  So far, what astronomers have detected is a black spot in the sky that is so massive and is in such a tiny area according to the General Theory of Relativity it “must” be a blackhole.
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-  In the theory blackholes are characterized by only three attributes: mass, charge, and spin.
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-  Astronomers can see the in flowing material before it passes the event horizon of the blackhole.  The energy at the horizon produces heat 20 times more efficiently than nuclear fusion.  The environment near a blackhole is the brightest object in the universe.  Ironically!
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-  The best blackhole to observe is the one at the center of our Milky Way Galaxy.  Called Sagittarius A*it is just 26,400 light-years away.  The horizon’s diameter for this 4,300,000  Solar Mass blackhole is only 55 micro-arc-seconds wide.
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-  This would be like trying to see a poppy seed in Los Angeles viewed from the Empire State building in New York City.
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-  As impossible as this sounds radio telescopes located 5,000 kilometers apart acting as a giant interferometer can resolve down to 100 microseconds.  That is only double what we need.  The radio wavelengths are 3.5 millimeters.  And these wavelengths get blurred by the interstellar gas.  So radio astronomy gets close but not close enough to see what they want.
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-  Astronomers would love to use infrared telescopes.  The shorter wavelengths pass through the dust clouds that hide Sagittarius A*.  However,  to get an angular scale of 55 micro- arc- seconds the telescope would have to be 7 kilometers in diameter.  That is a big infrared telescope.
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-  If we go to millimeter radio waves the telescope would need to be 5,000 kilometers in diameter, about the size of the Earth.  We have radio telescopes all over the planet.  If we could tie them together as a single interferometer the needed angular resolution could be achieved.
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-  There are two very Long Baseline Telescope Arrays in operation today, but, they are limited to the wavelengths above 3.5 millimeters, which corresponds to 100 micro- arcs- seconds resolution.
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-  We need a global interferometer operating at shorter wavelengths, 1.3 millimeters would allow 26 micro -arc- seconds resolution.
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-  A blackhole swallows light coming towards the observer from just behind it.  The light bends back on itself and wraps around the blackhole.  Strong gravitational lensing bends the light from behind resulting in a silhouette.  The silhouette will not be circular because of the fast-moving gas rotating around the blackhole.  This silhouette will allow astronomers to measure the spin and the inclination of the accretion disk.
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-  Sagittarius A*is not the only target for this millimeter interferometer telescope.  M87 is a giant elliptical galaxy 55,000,000 light-years away.  It's mass is 6,600,000,000 solar mass.  It is spouting a jet of material out its poles extending 5,000 light-years across.
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-  M87 is 2,000 times larger than Sagittarius A*.  The orbital period of the inner edge of its accretion disk is 0.5 to 5 weeks, depending on the spin rate.
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-  Astronomers hope to get lucky and observe a bright spot flare up in the accretion disk.  Gravitational lensing will produce multiple images of this spot.  Analysis will provide detailed information about the gravitational field around the blackhole.  Astronomers will use the equations from the General Theory of Relativity to see how well the math matches observation.
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-  We think the massive object at the center of our galaxy is a blackhole, but, could it just be a black star?
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-  We also think massive stars will collapse into smaller blackholes.  A blackhole 3 solar mass would have a diameter of 11 miles.
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-  The diameter we refer to is the event horizon where curve space-time is so intense due to gravity that even light folds back on itself.  Nothing can escape.  Everything falls back to a point where matter density approaches infinity.
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-  That is theory.  What about observation?  Astronomers have discovered many locations where dark objects have masses ranging from 3 to 1,000,000 solar mass.  The diameter of these dark objects ranges from several miles to 620,000 miles.
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-  The math of General Relativity gets us to a point, but, infinities rule out the math working further.  Near the microscopic scale Quantum effects requires different math.  Unfortunately, this math reduces to the energy of a vacuum being infinite as well.
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-  General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics can not deal with infinities that rise with modeling a blackhole.  Maybe Quantum Mechanics effects cancel General relativity effects and a blackhole does not form
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-  Quantum field Theory describes each fundamental particle as a “field” that is flat.  If matter is present the gravity is present and spacetime is curved.
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-  The math says that a solar mass blackhole that is not rotating and not electrically charged has a radius of 3 kilometers (1.86 miles).
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-  The Sun is 435,000 mile radius.  To be a blackhole it would need to be 1.86 miles diameter.  Its temperature would be 60 nano-Kelvin.  This slight temperature is called “Hawking radiation”.  This small amount of radiation would cause the blackhole to eventually evaporate into  outer space.
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-  A large star is composed of 10^55 particles.  A blackhole becomes hotter and evaporation faster as its mass and radius shrink.  After all evaporates , or , explodes , what happens to the information?  When the encyclopedia burns up does the information still reside in the smoke and ashes?  This is a question for Richard Feynman, not me.
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-  If Quantum effects do counterbalance the pull of gravity then maybe a small high density Black Star does form instead of  a Blackhole.  Black Stars would be material bodies with a surface and an interior of dense matter.  A Black Star has no event horizon.  It retains all the information that existed before the its collapse.  An announcement will be made shortly, stay tuned.
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RSVP, with comments, suggestions, corrections. An index of reviews is available.    Some reviews are at:  --------------------     http://jdetrick.blogspot.com -----------
----  email request for copies to:   -------      jamesdetrick@comcast.net  ----------
 ---- https://plus.google.com/u/0/  , “Jim Detrick” ----- www.facebook.com  ----
 ---- www.twitter.com , ---   707-536-3272    ----   Saturday, January 4, 2014  ---
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Government Graphs on Taxes and Spending:

----------------  #1629  Government Graphs



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-  Taxes are another name for “ other people’s money.”
- Some of this is your money.  See Tom Coburn’s web site to learn about how much is wasted.
-  We are paying 6% on interest on the debt.  And, interest rates are going up.  That is 600% more than we pay to support education at the federal level.
-  The rest of the  dollar is roughly 25% health care, 25% social security, 20% national defense, and 20% welfare and veteran’s benefits.
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--  

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-  If you family income is $52,000 then by comparison you are carrying a $320,000 credit card debt.  You pay $1,000 a month interest on that debt.  And, you are spending $12,000 per year more than you make.  You are a financial disaster !!!!!!!!!!!!!
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---  

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-  The tax increases for Obamacare alone is $500,000,0000,000 over the first 10 years.  An increase of 1,000 times.  Someone needs to set our representatives down at the kitchen table and explain, your salaries will be cut in proportion to your overspending.  You can NOT reduce the debt if you can’t budge it.  You get a raise after the debt is gone and we can again afford it.
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Is the Universe really expanding?

-1627  -  .  Is the universe really expanding?   Maybe the universe is not homogeneous?  Maybe we just happen to live in a giant void in space?  Outside higher density regions may be causing a temporary expansion just for us?
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---------------------  - 1627  -  Is the universe really expanding?
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-   We have only known about an accelerating universe for the last 15 years.  We assumed the expansion was slowing down over time.  We thought that gravity, that universal attractive force, would eventually slow down the massive galaxies that were moving away from each other.
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-  When astronomy witnessed a supernova explosion they dated it to have happen 8,000,000,000 years ago.  That is how long it took for the light to reach us.
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-  When astronomers were able to measure the brightness of supernovae they concluded that the light took 12,000,000,000 years reach us.  The supernovae were dimmer then a decelerating, or even a constant cosmic expansion ,could explain.  For the light to take that much longer to reach us the universe expansion must be accelerating.  Something is needed to drive the acceleration.  A body in motion tends to stay in motion with a constant velocity.  A force is needed to speed it up, slow it down, or, changes its direction.  Something must be providing the force that causes the expansion to be speeding up.  We call this something “Dark Energy“.
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-  We know about the something that would be holding back expansion of the universe.  That is matter and gravity.  Gravity is only an attractive force.
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-  We do not know about something that is a repulsive force.  An anti-gravity, that is pushing expansion faster and faster.
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-  Astronomers assume that universe of the largest scales is homogeneous, it looks the same at any moment in time from all points in all directions.
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-  But, how would our conclusions change if the universe was not homogeneous?  What if different parts of space were expanding at different rates?  What if we happen to be residing in a giant void in space?  Our local expansion would be accelerating faster within the void than it would be elsewhere.
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-  If the universe is full of lumps and voids on the grandest scales than dimmer supernovae, and longer light travel , can be explained without a hypothetical dark energy accelerating expansion.
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-  This idea is counter intuitive.  It is not what we observed  in the Cosmic Microwave Background radiation that is homogeneous to 1 part in 100,000.  It is not what we observe in the uniform distribution of galaxies.  However if we live in a big enough void these observations could still be the same.
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-  The largest observable structures in the universe are galaxy clusters 200,000,000 light-years across.  Beyond that scale the universe appears to be uniform.
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-  Astronomers still like the idea that the galaxies, filaments, and voids we observe originated in the microscopic quantum oscillations at the start of universe and uniformly grew to the proportions we see today.
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-  What we need is more data.
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-  The more supernovae we observe the more accurately we can reconstruct the expansion history of the universe.  Comparing apparent acceleration rates with the red shift of wavelengths and the brightness of the light source with enough sources we could settle this issue.
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-  Another avenue for this research lies in the precise analysis of distortions in the Cosmic Microwave Background.
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-  We calculate the Cosmic expansion by counting of how much matter is in a region of space divided by the volume of that space.  That gives us an average density of matter.  We put that into the theory of relativity equations for gravity and get an average expansion rate.
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-  Applying these equations for volumes a space approximating the entire universe becomes impossibly difficult.
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-  What we need is for data.
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-  We still need to discover the geometry of universe.  Is it flat, spherically shaped, or saddle shaped?  We need to discover the composition of dark matter?  We need to discover the source of antigravity if the acceleration of expansion is real?  We need to be able to measure the gravity waves?  We need to detect primordial neutrinos?  Is the universe really expanding.  Maybe the universe is not homogeneous?  Maybe we just happen to live in a giant void in space?  Outside higher density regions may be causing a temporary expansion justi for us?  An announcement will be made shortly stay tuned
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RSVP, with comments, suggestions and corrections. An index of all reviews is available.    Some reviews are at:  --------------------     http://jdetrick.blogspot.com   -------
,or: email request for copies to:   -------      jamesdetrick@comcast.net  ---------
or: ---- https://plus.google.com/u/0/  ,or,  “Jim Detrick” ------- www.facebook.com ,
 ------ www.twitter.com, or,  707-536-3272    ------   Thursday, January 2, 2014
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Sub-atomic world, there is plenty of room at the bottom?

-1626  -  Richard Feynman’s lecture “ There is plenty of room at the bottom” is being realized today in Stanford U’s Linac X-ray Laser.  His predictions show what the future holds in the sub-atomic world.
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---------------------  - 1626  -  There is Plenty of Room at the Bottom.
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-  The Stanford Linear Accelerator, SLAC was built in 1960 at Stanford University campus.  I visited the facility several times during 1969 to 1971 when I worked at Hewlett-Packard just a short distance away.  The building then was 3,000 meters long.  Highway 280 is built over the top of it.
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-  HP in Palo Alto was manufacturing test equipment using klystrons and backward wave oscillators.  They were used in signal generators and sweep oscillators.  The klystrons in this equipment  fit in the palm of your hand.  The klystrons in SLAC stood as tall as I was.  They were spaced along the electron beam path over the mile from the cathode source to the targets.
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-  At the end of their run the electron beam is directed into several different targets much like a cathode-ray tube directs an electron beam in an old-fashioned TV.  After 50 years of service the linear accelerator has been replaced by the Large Hadron Collider in CERN, Switzerland.
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-  The linear accelerator has been converted into an x-ray laser.  "Undulators" were installed in place of the klystrons in the SLAC tunnel.  The undulators consists of a series of magnets that generate alternating magnetic fields. When electrons move through the undulating fields they wiggle and emit x-rays.   The system is called a Linac Coherent Light Source.
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-  Synchrotrons are closed loops that follow a curved path as the electron beam is bent  around the racetrack.  SLAC accelerator is a straight line. The undulator is 130 meters long.  Electrons and photons travel the same path at nearly the same speed; however, the photons are continually sideswiping the electrons.  This subatomic demolition derby causes electrons to emit x-rays.  If everything is lined up perfectly an extraordinarily bright x-ray beam exits the tube as a free- electron laser.
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-  -The peak intensity of the x-ray beam is  10^18 watts per square centimeter.  The laser can cut through steel.  It's oscillating electromagnetic field is 1,000 times stronger than the fields that hold atoms together.
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-  What do you do with this high power beam?
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-  Say we focus it on a neon molecule:
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-  The illuminated matter reaches a temperature over 1,000,000 Kelvin in less than 1 trillionth of a second.  The neon atom loses all 10 of its electrons.  The electrons surround the nucleus of an atom in onion-like orbital shells.  The outer shells are nearly transparent to x-rays.  The inner shells take the brunt of the radiation.  The electrons shoot off and the atom becomes hollow for a few femtoseconds ( 10^-15 seconds).  Electron's quickly get sucked up to fill the holes.
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-  In solids this state is called a “ plasma”.  The stuff of the Big Bang, supernovae, and neutron stars.  Acting as a kind of strobe light.  The laser has frozen the motion of atoms, capturing high speed images of proteins and viruses, and recording physical and chemical transformations that take less than a trillionth of a second.
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-  Conventional lasers have wavelengths 1,000 times longer and cannot resolve individual atoms.  Just as radar can see a rainstorm that cannot resolve the raindrops.  Because the light is so short and bright it can capture the image faster than the molecule can blow itself up.  Although the laser obliterates the molecule it captures a clear image first.
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-  Recent work has mapped out the structure of proteins involved in sleeping sickness, a fatal disease caused by protozoan parasites.
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 -  Improvements in designs continue.  With pulses as short as 0.1 femtoseconds physicists hope to observe not just atoms , but  electrons within atoms.  Atoms may even be manipulated to create new molecules.  Videos may be created that show how chemical bonds break and new ones form.
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-  This was all predicted by Richard Feynman in his famous lecture “There is plenty of room at the bottom“.  Feynman was challenged with the notion that “you could write the Lord's prayer on the head of a pin“.
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-  He replied that you can write 24 volumes of the Encyclopedia Britannica on the head of a pin.
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-  The head of a pin is one 16th of an inch.  If you can magnify it by 25,000 diameters all the pages of the 24 volumes would fit.  Therefore all we need to do is to reduce the size of the writing by 25,000.  The resolving power of the eye is 1/20 of an inch.  So the little dots in a halftone photo need to be magnified to 8 nanometers, 32 atomwidths across.  One dot would contain 1,000 atoms.  24 volumes would easily fit on the head of a pin.
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-  The Library of Congress holds 9,000,000 volumes.  The whole world holds 24,000,000 volumes of interest.  You would need 1,000,000 pinheads to hold all the world's literature.  That is the area of 3 square yards ,  the size of 35 pages.  A typical library could be carried around on one library card.
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-  “There is plenty of room at the bottom”.

-  Each letter in the alphabet can be coded in seven bits.  Now we can use dots and dashes, ones and zeros, to go in 3 dimensions, not just 2.  We need a cube about 5x5x5 = 125  atoms.  Even allowing 100 atoms per bit all the books in the world could be written in a cube that is 0.027 inches wide.  That is the size of dust that the eye can barely see.
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-  Physicist struggle with these dimensions.  This small world seems so incomprehensible.  Biologists are used to it however.  Biologists work with DNA that contains all the information to construct a human being.  Life evolves from a single cell.  Somehow all the information needed is coded inside that first cell.  A sperm and egg exchange DNA that splits from cell to cell and constructs a brain, eyeballs, the nervous system to the fingers and toes, the personality in a body that is perfectly proportioned and beautiful.  A mystery that has been studied since beginning of time starts with the smallest information at the bottom.
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-  A long chain of DNA molecules uses 50 atoms for each bit of information.
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-  Feynman's challenge in his lectures was to develop an electron microscope that has 100 times more resolving power.  Today's microscope can resolve to one nanometer.  An electron’s wavelength is 1/200 of a nanometer.  So, it should be possible to see individual atoms.
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-  If we could arrange atoms one by one in the way we want.  How small could we make computers?  Could machines be made to put in the bloodstream and perform surgery from inside the body?  Could physicists synthesize any chemical substance that chemists could dream up?
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Stanford University's x-ray laser is the reality coming out of Feynman's predictions. An announcement will be made shortly, stay tuned.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
RSVP, with comments, suggestions and corrections. An index of all reviews is available.    Some reviews are at:  --------------------     http://jdetrick.blogspot.com  
,or: email request for copies to:   -------      jamesdetrick@comcast.net
or: ---- https://plus.google.com/u/0/  ,or,  “Jim Detrick” ------- www.facebook.com,
 ------ www.twitter.com,  or, cell:  707-536-3272    ------   Thursday, January 2, 2014
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What do we do about Renewable Energy?

-1625  -  What do we do about Renewable Energy?  Californians unrealistic expectations for renewable energy are ineffective.  The transition off fossil fuels needs a couple generations not government promoting short-term wishful thinking.  Here are the facts about the real costs in a real long-term investment needed for energy alternatives.
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---------------------  - 1625  -  What do we do about Renewable Energy?
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-   -  California Democrats and Environmentalists envisioned 33% of America's energy would be using renewable sources by the year 2000.  Missed that one!  Then in 2008 Al Gore claimed the transformation will occur in 10 years.  Missed out one!  As of 2012 use of fossil fuels has declined one percentage point from 88% to 87%.
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-  Total renewables represent 9.39% of US energy but only 3.3% of this is "new renewables“.  Of the 97,000,000,000,000,000 BTU, (10^15), or, 10,300,000,000,000,000  joules, (10^16), of U.S. energy the major renewables are hydroelectric and wood-burning.  3.25% and 2.04%.  Yes, wood-burning from lumber operations is 2.04 % of US energy consumption.
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------------------  Ethanol or biofuels is 2%
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------------------  Wind is 1.19%
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-----------------  Solar is 0.16 %
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 -  The biggest transition today is not to solar and wind, but,  to natural gas created by technologies in horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking".
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-  In the U.S. coal consumption dropped by 20%
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-  Crude oil consumption down 7%.
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-  But, natural gas is up by 14%.
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-  Coal still generates 33% of U.S. electricity.
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-  In a 19th-century our energy came from wood, charcoal, and straw.  Coal started its transition in 1840 but did not reach of its 50% share until 1960 in the US.
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-  France reached the 50% point with coal in 1875
-  Japan in 1901
-  Russia in 1930
-  China in 1965
-  India in 1970
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-  The transition from coal to oil began in 1915.  Oil did not surpass coal until 1964.
Natural gas is the new energy transition from oil.  In Russia  natural gas surpassed oil in 1984.   In the UK it surpassed oil in 1999.
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-  Natural gas transitions started in 1930 it reached 25% of the world's energy in 1985.
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-  Each of these transitions takes 2 to 3 generations, 50 to 75 years.  Unless there is a real "spoiler" like inexpensive nuclear power, or, massive energy storage capacity for wind and solar, expect these renewables to take at least another 20 years before they effectively transition out of fossil fuels.
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-  The only effective massive energy storage capacity today is pumping water up to reservoirs to be released through electric turbines.  The process is a net loss in energy.  But, it is necessary because the wind doesn't always blow and the Sun doesn't always shine.
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-  California Democrats and Environmentalists need to resist picking winners and losers.  Politicians need to let the free market work finding the right innovations that will succeed in the long term.  Government can help by funding a variety of research and development activities not knowing which one is going to succeed.
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-  Stop the "social engineering" with unnecessary subsidies.  Let prices reflect the real costs, including long-term environmental and health costs.  The reality check must be long-term and “total” costs.  The total return-on-investment will likely be in improved "efficiency" with existing technologies and not always with new innovations.
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-  There is a limited supply of petroleum products.  Regardless of how long they last prices are going up.  Solar is the fundamental source of energy.  Why not tap it directly.  Solar energy striking the planet for 40 minutes is equivalent to the world's total energy consumption for an entire year.  The 250,000 square miles in the Southwest receives 4,500,000,000,000,000,000  BTU's a year.  Converting just 2.5% of this energy is equivalent to all of  U.S. consumption in 2006.
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-    To fully utilize a solar energy source we need direct current transmission lines to get electricity to where it is used.
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-  We want electricity prices at 5 cents per kilowatt hour.
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-   Solar, wind, biomass, geothermal should all be developed.  The cost to taxpayers is estimated at $400 billion over 40 years, ($10 billion per year on average), to be at 100% renewables by the year 2050.
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-  If we can reach the 5 cents per kilowatt hour goal , 300 coal-fired power plants and 300 natural gas plants would obsolete themselves at these prices.
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-  Solar cells are thin film substrates.  The cheapest is cadmium tethoride.  To meet the goal solar cells would need to be 14% efficient in electricity conversion and be installed at  $1.20 per watt capacity.  Today the cost is about $4.00 per watt.
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-  To get 3,000 gigawatts of power we need 30,000 square miles of photovoltaic arrays.  Sounds like a lot but that is less land than today is used for coal plants and coal mining.  The main area of progress needed is to get greater efficiencies and get costs lower.  Excess energy would need to be stored in compressed air underground caverns.
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------------------------  U.S  Fuel Consumption  -----------------------------------------
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--------------------------------- ----  2007  ---- 2050 without plan  ----  2050 with plan
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- Oil 10^9 barrels  ----------------  6.9 -------------10.9  --------------------2.7  -----
- Gas 10^12 ft^3  ----------------  22.2--------------35.4  ------------------11.4  -----
- Coal 10^9 tons  -----------------  1.2 --------------1.9  ---------------------0.5  -----
- Carbon Dioxide  10^9 tons  ---  6.9 ------------10.9  ---------------------2.7  -----
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-  -  The U.S. desperately needs to modernize its electric grid.  Government run utilities need to compete with private run innovators.  The U.S. needs 22,700 miles of new transmission lines, a 14 percent increase.  There are 160,000 miles of high-voltage lines existing currently.  More lines will keep voltage stable across the system because electricity can be continuously rerouted to where it is being used.
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-  More lines can route electricity to storage in batteries.  Every garage with an electric car could be storage for electricity.  We could use flywheels, compressed air chambers, water pumped up to higher reservoirs, molten salt tanks, and other innovations to store electric power.
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-  Transferring power at higher voltages will also improve efficiency:
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-------------  A 100 mile at 345 kilovolts  -----   loses 19.8 megawatts due to heat.
-------------  A 764 kilovolt line  ----------------------   loses 3.45 megawatts.
------------  A 1100 kilovolt line  ---------------------   loses 1.91 eight watts.
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-  Direct transmission lines are best for point-to-point transmission.  DC is like a closed pipe.  AC, alternating current, follows the path of least resistance buzzing along random wires and trickling down streams of water.  DC lines can take underwater routes.  San Francisco uses a 53 mile line along the bottom of San Francisco Bay.
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-  DC has an advantage on long lines.  It has a disadvantage on short lines because converter stations are needed to convert back to AC.
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-  -  A totally different energy storage is to heat molten salt during the day.  Extract the heat creating steam during the night.  The system works only on 24 hour cycle.
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-  Putting this all together for 100 percent renewable energy:
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----------------------   2.9  terawatts  --------  solar power plants  -----
----------------------   7.5  terawatts  --------  compressed air storage-----
----------------------   2.3  terawatts  --------  solar mirror power -----
----------------------   1.3  terawatts  --------  solar on buildings -----
----------------------   1.0  terawatts  --------  wind --------------------
----------------------   0.2  terawatts  --------  geothermal -------------
----------------------   0.25  terawatts  -------- biomass ----------------
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------------------------------------  100%  --------------- renewable energy.
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-  Solar thermal uses sunrays to generate steam to drive turbines.  It takes two years to build one of these systems.  It takes 15 years minimum to build a nuclear power plant.  That is difference of seven cycles of innovation.  A better investment opportunity involves more innovation.  The more cycles we have the faster we innovate.
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-  The problem with corn ethanol as a biofuel is the more  you make, the higher the cost of feedstock.  Not a good competition to have.  However, cellulose ethanol uses cornstalks and many other plants that do not compete with food crops.  Innovation is needed to commercialize these processes.
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-  -  A single car puts 4 tons of carbon dioxide in the air every year.  If we could paint roofs white we could increase reflected light by 10 percent and offset  150 billion tons of carbon dioxide.  That is equivalent to taking every car off the road for 50 years.
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-  Greater reflection means less absorption.  Buildings would use less air-conditioning.  The trick is to replace roofs,  installing new roofs, with materials having high solar reflectance which cost the same.
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----------------------------  White roofs?   How about rusty roofs?
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-  -  Rust can be used as a solar cell.  Photovoltaic solar cells use silicon-based materials never thinking of iron oxide.  Silicon is 15 to 20 %efficient in converting sunlight to electricity.  Rust on glass is only 3.6 % efficient.
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-  Solar cells are not a fuel for cars.  Electricity has to be stored in expensive lithium ion batteries.  The better choice with 170 times more energy per pound is to convert photovoltaic cells into hydrogen fuel.  Use  electrolysis that splits water into hydrogen and oxygen ,  H2O.
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-  Silicon atoms need 1.11 electron volts to energize and electron.-  Splitting water requires 1.23 electron volts to free electron.  Iron oxide produces 2.1 electron volts, more than enough voltage and it is dirt cheap.
-
-  Problem: Iron oxide does not conduct electricity very well.  To solve this add a thin layer of titanium dioxide.  The next trick is to make the rust layer thin enough to allow electrons to escape, say 20 nanometers thick.  Thinner is better.  Problem:   A 20 nanometer layer absorbs only 18 percent of the photons.  If it is 1,000 nanometers thick it absorbs nearly 100 percent.  Thicker is better.
-
-  -  A 30 nanometer compromise is only 4.9 % efficient.  Solution: It's cheap.  Use a lot of it.  Acres could be dedicated to electrolyze filtered wastewater.  Problem: Separating hydrogen and oxygen is effectively creating a bomb.
-
-   Maybe fields of rust could make electricity during the day and hydrogen fuel during the night?  Are we entering the age of rust?

-  The whole scenario is dependent on energy return -on- investment.  We need a liquid fuel with a return -on- investment of at least 5%.  These numbers in the table below show the % ROI using the total costs from mining and drilling to the transportation and burning of liquid fuels.
-
-------------------------  Oil   ---------------  69 million barrels / day  -------  16%  ROI
--------------------  Sugar Ethanol   -------  0.4 million barrels / day  -------  9%  ROI
----------------------  Tar Sands   ----------  1.6 million barrels / day  --------  5%  ROI
--------------------  Heavy CA Oil   -------- 0.3 million barrels / day  -------  4%  ROI
--------------------  Corn Ethanol  ---------  1.0 million barrels / day  -------  1.4%  ROI
-
-  You can see it is hard to beat cheap oil.  But, as we run out of this precious resource we are forced into other alternatives.
-
-  Compare these return-on-investments with creating electric power:
-
------------------  Hydroelectric   ------  3.5 petawatt hours-------  40%  ROI
--------------------  Wind   --------------  0.3 petawatt hours-------  20%  ROI
--------------------  Coal  ----------------  8.7 petawatt hours-------  18%  ROI
----------------  Natural Gas  ------------ 4.8 petawatt hours-------  7%  ROI
-------------------  Solar ----------------  0.03 petawatt hours-------  6%  ROI
-----------------  Nuclear ----------------  2.8 petawatt hours-------  5%  ROI
-
-  Hydroelectric is by far the best alternative, but, we do not have much high water left.  And mother nature’s rains raise the water to reservoirs, but, if there is not rain we have to pump the water to higher levels at a net loss of energy.  But, that may still be a good alternative to solve the intermittent power generation of wind and solar.
-
-  Another comparison is to the amount of miles driven using a gig joule of energy:
-
-----------------  Gasoline  -----------------------  3,600 miles
-----------------  Ethanol  ------------------------  2,000 miles
-----------------  Tar Sands Oil  -----------------  1,100 miles
-----------------  Heavy CA Oil  -------------------  900 miles
-----------------  Corn Ethanol  --------------------  300 miles
-----------------  electric grid  -------------------  6,500 miles
-
-  You can see gasoline is hard to beat.  As we run out of cheap oil we have to keep using more expensive alternatives.  You can not beat the electric grid for the best return on investment.
-
-  Free enterprise with opportunities for individual success, widely distributed, and short cycled is the best scenario.  Limited government should stick to funding “ basic” research and regulations should be those required for worker and consumer safety.
-
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RSVP, with comments, suggestions and corrections. An index of all reviews is available.    Some reviews are at:  --------------------     http://jdetrick.blogspot.com  
,or: email request for copies to:   -------      jamesdetrick@comcast.net
or: ---- https://plus.google.com/u/0/  ,or,  “Jim Detrick” ------- www.facebook.com,
 ------ www.twitter.com  or cell:  707-536-3272    ------   Monday, December 30, 2013

How Powerful are Cosmic Rays?

-1624  -  How powerful are Cosmic Rays.  How often do they reach Earth?  What new discoveries have discovered the source of the high energy Cosmic Rays?
--------------

-

---------------------  - 1624  -  How powerful are Cosmic Rays?
-
-   Cosmic rays are high-energy particles traveling at near light speed that shower Earth on a continuous basis.  These rays are not rays it all they are particles like protons that are the nuclei of hydrogen atoms.  But, they could be any element nuclei even iron nuclei.
-
-  When cosmic rays enter the upper atmosphere they collide with air molecules.  These collisions create a shower of more fundamental particles and lighter particles rain down to the surface of the earth.  Protons, neutrons, pions, muons, electrons, positrons, neutrinos, anti-neutrinos, gamma rays, are all falling on our heads.
-
-  Where do these cosmic rays come from?
-
-  It is hard to tell.  They are electrically charged particles that can enter Earth's magnetic field and begin spiraling in loops that hide their trajectory.  A charged particle moving through a magnetic field experiences a force at right angles to its direction of motion. ( This is how an electric motor works.)   This causes the trajectory to spiral.  When these rays are detected it is impossible to tell which direction they were coming from.  ( See review # 541 that calculates the radius of the spiral of a cosmic ray entering the Earth's magnetic field.)
-
-  -------------   Recent discoveries have found the source of high energy particles:
-
-  It is supernovae explosions that act as particle accelerators boosting the speed of these charged particles up to near light speed velocities.
-
-  Inside the supernovae shockwave exploded material piles up and collides with the particles in the interstellar space.  Protons are boosted up to 9,700,000 miles per hour.  The speed of light is 670, 633,500 mph.   That is 1.4% the speed of light.
-
-  The speed boost comes from the positive electric charge of the proton crossing over the magnetic field boundary formed by the shockwave.  The result can be that the proton zips back and forth on repeat occasions gaining in speed each trip.  Eventually it escapes at cosmic-ray velocities up to 90% the speed of light, 600,000,000 miles per hour.
-
-  Protons, hydrogen nuclei, make up to 90% of the cosmic rays detected on Earth.  Negative electrons and positive charged heavier element nuclei make up the remaining 10%.
-
-------------------  How the discoveries were made?
-
-  The elusive cosmic rays got tracked through secondary collisions.  When a proton collides with another proton sitting in interstellar space the collision creates a neutral pion.  The pion decays into two gamma rays at precisely  67,500,000 electron volts.
-
-  These collisions became energy signatures of the path of cosmic rays.  Using this method astronomers have concluded that the supernovae explosions are the source of high energy cosmic rays.
-
-  Astronomers are still studying the details of how the charge particles interact with the magnetic field in the shockwave to accelerate particles to such high energy levels.
-
-  -  Most cosmic rays pass through the Earth without touching anything.  Their kinetic energy is 1/2 * mass * (velocity)^2 .  Most cosmic rays have energies that vary  from 10,000,000 to 10,000,000,000 electron volts.
-
------------------------------------  KE  =  ½ M*v^2
-
-  10 cosmic rays pass through your thumb every minute.  If you were an astronaut above Earth's atmosphere then 500 would passthrough your thumb every minute.  An astronauts body would get 5,000 hits per minute or up to a maximum of 5,000 every second.  You can see why space travelers will need special protection to avoid harmful exposure to this radiation.
-
-  There are high-energy cosmic rays that have 100,000,000,000,000,000,000  electron volts.( 10^20)  They strike a square mile of Earth every 39 years.  But, the Earth has a lot of square miles.
-
---------  How much energy is 10 ^20 electron volts?
-
-   A flashlight is 1 electron volt.  A television CRT is 1,000 electron volts.  A nuclear reactor is 1,000,000 electron volts.  A particle accelerator is 1,000,000,000,000 electron volts. (10^12).   A supernovae 10^15.  A galactic Blackhole  1,000,000,000,000,000,000 electron volts (10^18).  A cosmic ray source unknown is  100,000,000,000,000,000,000  electron volts ( 10^20).
-
-------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------------------
(1) I have many other reviews on Cosmic Rays #1568, 1496, 1377, 1163, 810, 763, 709, 687, 541, 26. available if you want to learn more.
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RSVP, with comments, suggestions and corrections. An index of all reviews is available.    Some reviews are at:  --------------------     http://jdetrick.blogspot.com  
,or: email request for copies to:   -------      jamesdetrick@comcast.net
or: ---- https://plus.google.com/u/0/  ,or,  “Jim Detrick” ------- www.facebook.com,
 ------ www.twitter.com  or cell:  707-536-3272    ------   Wednesday, December 25, 2013
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Comets are dirty snowballs. How much water?

-1623  - Comets are dirty snowballs.  As a comet approaches the Sun how much water is evaporated?  How fast is the evaporation occurring?  What is the total amount of water lost as the comet loops around the Sun?
-
-

-
-  Comet exploding over Russia, 2013.
-
-
---------------------  - 1623  -  Comets are dirty snowballs.
-
-  As the comet approaches the Sun it produces a long tail stretching millions of kilometers through space.  The tail is produced by gases and frozen solids being heated up and leaving the nucleus of the comet.
-
-  Several times each year the night sky experiences meteor showers, shooting stars, streaks of light flashing across the sky.  From grains of sand to baseball size ,  meteors burn up in the atmosphere.  These debris that the Earth passes through as it orbit’s the Sun are the trail of the tail of the comet.
-
-  Temple-1 Comet looped around the Sun in June, 2005.  As the comet approached the Sun the amount of water gas being released was measured.  The table below shows the tons of water evaporation as a function of days away from the perihelion when the comet loops around the Sun passing at its closest point.
-
-------------------------

 -
-  Note that water evaporation peaks before the comet reaches the Sun.  The peak is somewhere close to loosing 160 tons per minute , or 230,400 tons of water per day.
-
--  The trajectory of the comet is an ellipse.
-
-  The best fit for the water loss is a quadratic equation.
-
------------------  y  =  tons of water per minute evaporation
-----------------   x  =  days before perihelion
-
-------------------  y  =  -0.0167 x^2  - 1.33x  + 140
-
-  Where does the  rate of evaporation peak as the comet loops closest to the Sun?  At the peak of the trajectory the slope of the evaporation curve is zero.  The slope passes from positive to negative going through zero slope at the peak.
-
-  A plot of this data for tons / minute as a function days before the comet circles the Sun is made:
-
----------------

-  To find the slope, or rate of change, we differentiate the equation:
-
-------------------  y  =  -0.0167 x^2  - 1.33x  + 140
-
---------------------  dy  /  dx  =  -0.0334x  -  1.33
-
---------------------  When the slope is zero, x  =   1.33 / .0334  =   39.8 days.
-
-   There is a second way you can determine the peak of the curve.  Simply note the days that intercept the x axis and divide by 2.   ( -140  +60 )  /  2  =  - 40 days.  The peak is half way in between the intercepts.
-
-  Therefore, when the comet is about 40 days away from the Sun the evaporation reaches its peak.  What is the rate of evaporation at this point?
-
-  Substituting the 40 days back into the quadratic equation:
-
------------------------  y  =  -0.0167 * (- 40)^2  - 1.33(-40)  + 140
-
-------------------------  y  =  166.5  tons per minute.
-
-  There are 1,440 minutes in a day
-
-  At peak evaporation the rate is 239,760 tons per day.
-
-  If that level of evaporation lasted the full 200 days the total water evaporation would be 47,952,000 tons.
-
-  However, the evaporation rate is not constant ;  it begins at zero increases to 166 tons per minute then returns to zero again as it leaves the Sun behind and goes into the deep freeze.
-
-  To find the total weight of evaporation over the 200 days it takes to loop around the Sun we need the integral of the function to determine the area under the curve from - 120 days to + 40 days.
-
--------------------   y  =  -0.0167 x^2  -1.33 x  +140
-
------------------  Integral y dx  =  -0.167 x^3 /3  - 1.33 x^2/2  + 140 + C
-
-------  Integral  y dx from -120 to +40  =  (-5.57*10^-3) * (- 120)^3   - (0.665)*(-120)^2
            + 140 (-120)       + (5.57*10^-3) * (40)^3    + (0.665)*(40)^2   - 140 (40)
-
--------  Integral  y dx   =  (-5.57*10^-3) * (- 1.72 *10^6)    - (0.665)*(1.44*10^4)
           - 16,800       + (5.57*10^-3) * (6.4*10^4)    + (0.665)*(1600)   - 5600
-
-  Integral  y dx   =  (+9580)    - (9576)  - 16,800       + (356)    + (1064)   - 5600

-  Integral  y dx   =  (+10,970) + (-32,160)
-
-  Intergal y dx  =  - 21,190 tons/ minute *days
-
----------------  1,440  minutes /  day
-
---------------   30,513,600 tons of water evaporation.
-
-  Therefore, the comet experienced 30 million tons of water evaporation in its loop around the Sun.
-
-  To avoid doing the integration of a quadratic equation this a good excuse to work with logarithms.  With a log-log plot the function becomes a straight line.  The equation for a straight line is simply:
-
------------------------------  y  =  mx  + b
-
-  The ( x,y) end points of the straight line are ( 0.48,1.74)  and ( 1.30,1.78)  with a constant negative slope.
-
---------------------------  “m”  =  slope  =  rise over run  =  (1.74-1.78) / 1.3-0.48)  =  -0.05
-
----------------------------  “b” = the y intercept when x  =  zero  =  1.86
-
-------------------------  “Lx “ is the log of x, days
-
------------------------

  -----------------------  
-
-
--------------

-
-
--------------------------  “Ly” is the log of y,  tons per minute
-
-  Because the slope is constant we can write the equation for this straight line as:
-
-----------------------  y - 1.74  /  x - 0.48  =  -0.05
-
---------------------  y  = - 0.05x +1.76
-
-  The slope is negative  and the y intercept is positive, so the equation for the straight line  changes to:
-
-  The great thing about logarithms is they greatly simplify complex calculations.  Logarithm is simply another name for “exponent”.  You can simply look at the log-log plot and estimate the area of a rectangle to equal the area under the curve ( straight line).
-
--------------------  rectangle area  =    1.76 by 0.82  =  2.58
-
--------------------  10^1.76 * 10^0.82  =  57.5  *  6.6  =  380
-
-  Because these are exponents to multiply length times height to get the area you add the exponents.
-
-------------------  10^2.58  =  380 tons / minute
-
----------------------  1440 minutes per day
-
-----------------  547,472  tons for total water evaporation over the 140 day loop around the
Sun.
-
------------------  Total evaporation is 76,646,000  tons
-
-  To try to get a closer estimate represent the trapezoid as a smaller rectangle and a right triangle:
-
-----------------  rectangle area =  1.74 by 0.82 =  2.56
-
----------------  triangle area  =  ½  *  0.02  *  0.82  =  0.008
-
----------------  Total area  =  2.57
-
------------------  10^2.16  =  372 tons / minute
-
---------------  Total  =  535,000tons of water evaporation over the 140 day loop around the Sun.
-
-------------  Total evaporation is 74,900,000 tons
-
-  Conclusions:  The max rate of evaporation is 47,920,000 tons, we know the total must be less than this.
-
--------------------  Integration of the quadratic equation    ----   30,513,000 tons
-
---------------------  Integration of the linear equation    ------   45,320,000 tons
-
--------------------  Estimating the area of the rectangle  -------   76,646,000 tons
-
-------------------  Estimating the area of the trapezoid  ---------  74,900,000  tons
-
-  The best answer is 35 million tons.  Temple-1 mass is 79,000,000,000  tons so this is only 0.044% of its mass.  The comet is 4.7 miles long and 3 miles wide.  It orbits the Sun every 5.5 years.  Has a density of 0.62 grams/cm^3.  Discovered in 1867 and has been visited by two spacecraft, “ Deep Impact” and “ Stardust”.
-
-------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------------------
-  (1)  See Review #1292  “ Using calculus to measure the mass of a comet”
-  (2)  Comet Hartley-2  had a mass measured at 290,000,000 tons.
-  (3)  Comet ISON  24,000,000 tons.
-  (4)  The log-log plot is far from a straight line.  So, integrating that line is not a very close approximation to the parabola curve.  But, just for drill:
-----------------------  y  =  - 0.016 x^2  + 1.86
-
-----------  Integral y dx from 0.47 to 1.74  =  - 0.016 x^2 / 2  + 1.86 x  + C
-
--------- dx  =   0.008 * (1.74)^2   + 1.86 (1.74)  +0.008 * (0.47)^2  -  1.86(0.47)  +  C
-
---------------------  y dx  =  2.35
-
-------------------10^2.35  =  225 tons / minute * 1440 minutes / day  =  323,714 tons per day * 140  =  45,320,000 tons.
-
-  (5)    The quadratic equation y = -0.0167x^2  - 1.33x + 140
comes from:                               y  =  (x+140) ( -x + 60) / 60
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
RSVP, with comments, suggestions and corrections. An index of all reviews is available.
   Some reviews are at:  --------------------     http://jdetrick.blogspot.com
,or: email request for copies to:   -------      jamesdetrick@comcast.net
or: ---- https://plus.google.com/u/0/  ,or,  “Jim Detrick” ------- www.facebook.com,
 ------ www.twitter.com  or cell:  707-536-3272    ------   Monday, December 23, 2013
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