Archive for December 2010

Written by fatih al-farahat in


Better Batteries Bottom Up





This is more battery research and in thiscase they are growing a forest of nano batteries in order to gain in energy density.  No one really knows what the successfulprotocol will ultimately be, so we must push forward on every good idea.

This looks a long ways from been optimized soit is good to see early success in methodology. This is something that could be commercialized into circuit boards and miniaturedevices.

Anyway, the battery rush continues.



Better batteries from the bottom up
Rice University researchers build microbatteries with nanowire hearts

12/9/2010

CONTACT: Mike Williams
PHONE: 713-348-6728



Rice University researchers havemoved a step closer to creating robust, three-dimensional microbatteries thatwould charge faster and hold other advantages over conventional lithium-ionbatteries. They could power new generations of remote sensors, display screens,smart cards, flexible electronics and biomedical devices.

The batteries employ vertical arrays of nickel-tinnanowires perfectly encased in PMMA, a widely used polymer best known asPlexiglas. The Rice laboratory of Pulickel Ajayan found a way to reliably coatsingle nanowires with a smooth layer of a PMMA-based gel electrolyte thatinsulates the wires from the counter electrode while allowing ions to passthrough.

The work was reported this week in the online edition ofthe journal Nano Letters.

"In a battery, you have two electrodes separated by athick barrier," said Ajayan, professor in mechanical engineering andmaterials science and of chemistry. "The challenge is to bring everythinginto close proximity so this electrochemistry becomes much moreefficient."

Ajayan and his team feel they've done that by growingforests of coated nanowires -- millions of them on a fingernail-sized chip --for scalable microdevices with greater surface area than conventional thin-filmbatteries. "You can't simply scale the thickness of a thin-film battery,because the lithium ion kinetics would become sluggish," Ajayan said.
"We wanted to figure out how the proposed 3-D designsof batteries can be built from the nanoscale up," said Sanketh Gowda, agraduate student in Ajayan's lab. "By increasing the height of thenanowires, we can increase the amount of energy stored while keeping thelithium ion diffusion distance constant."

The researchers, led by Gowda and postdoctoral researcherArava Leela Mohana Reddy, worked for more than a year to refine the process.
\
"To be fair, the 3-D concept has been around for awhile," Reddy said. "The breakthrough here is the ability to put aconformal coat of PMMA on a nanowire over long distances. Even a small break inthe coating would destroy it." He said the same approach is being testedon nanowire systems with higher capacities.

The process builds upon the lab's previous research tobuild coaxial nanowire cables that was reported in Nano Letters last year. Inthe new work, the researchers grew 10-micron-long nanowires viaelectrodeposition in the pores of an anodized alumina template. They thenwidened the pores with a simple chemical etching technique and drop-coated PMMAonto the array to give the nanowires an even casing from top to bottom. Achemical wash removed the template.

They have built one-centimeter square microbatteries thathold more energy and that charge faster than planar batteries of the sameelectrode length. "By going to 3-D, we're able to deliver more energy inthe same footprint," Gowda said.

They feel the PMMA coating will increase the number oftimes a battery can be charged by stabilizing conditions between the nanowiresand liquid electrolyte, which tend to break down over time.

The team is also studying how cycling affects nanowiresthat, like silicon electrodes, expand and contract as lithium ions come and go.Electron microscope images of nanowires taken after many charge/dischargecycles showed no breaks in the PMMA casing -- not even pinholes. This led theresearchers to believe the coating withstands the volume expansion in theelectrode, which could increase the batteries' lifespans.

Co-authors are Rice graduate student Xiaobo Zhan; formerRice postdoctoral researcher Manikoth Shaijumon, now an assistant professor atthe Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Thiruvananthapuram,India; and former Rice research scientist Lijie Ci, now a senior research anddevelopment manager at Samsung Cheil Industries.

The Hartley Family Foundation and Rice Universityfunded the research.

Written by fatih al-farahat in


Nuclear Reaction Defies Expectations



All our workhas been focused on naturally occurring fission reactions and living with theconsequences.  Here we have an empiricalresult that questions the present theoretical regime and we need to ask what isnext?

We havelearned what we have learned by hurling neutrons mostly at speeds sufficient toovercome the electrostatic potential of the target.  Now we have an unusual alternative outcomethat is unpredicted in our modeling.

There couldbe a whole range of very low probability events in play that could completelyreshape our knowledge of the detail.  Oneshould not think that what we have is anything more than a good approximationto the empirical data that is likely to run foul of the facts as has justhappened.

Cold fusion,by the way, is a strong hint.

Theelectrostatic fields are not necessarily continuous or mathematically convenientand many good questions have never been asked let alone answered in thelab.  I thought cold fusion was anapparatus able to ask and answer some of those questions.  Other similar apparatus need to befabricated.

Wouldn’t itbe lovely to be able to move a low speed neutron along an axis to directcontact with an elemental nucleus at a specified location?  If we ever pull that off, then perhaps weknow something that can be trusted about the nucleus.

Nuclear reaction defies expectations

Dec 10, 2010 

Inside the ISOLDE experimental hall at CERN

http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/44571



A novel kind of fission reaction observed at theCERN particle physics laboratory in Genevahas exposed serious weaknesses in our current understanding of the nucleus. Thefission of mercury-180 was expected to be a "symmetric" reaction thatwould result in two equal fragments but instead produced two nuclei with quitedifferent masses, an "asymmetric" reaction that poses a significantchallenge to theorists.

Nuclear fission involves the splitting of a heavynucleus into two lighter nuclei. According to the liquid-drop model, whichdescribes the nucleus in terms of its macroscopic quantities of surface tensionand electrostatic repulsion, fission should be symmetric. Some fissionreactions are, however, asymmetric, including many of those of uranium and itsneighbouring actinide elements. These instead can be understood by also usingthe shell model, in which unequal fragments can be preferentially created ifone or both of these fragments contains a "magic" number of protonsand/or neutrons. For example, one of the fragments produced in many of thefission reactions involving actinides is tin-132, which is a"doubly-magic" nucleus, containing 50 protons and82 neutrons.

The latest work, carried out by a collaboration ofphysicists using CERN's ISOLDE radioactive beam facility,investigated the interplay between the macroscopic and microscopic componentsof nuclear fission. It used what is known as beta-delayed fission, a two-stepprocess in which a parent nucleus beta decays and then the daughter nucleusundergoes fission if it is created in a highly excited state. This kind ofreaction allows scientists to study fission reactions in relatively exoticnuclei and was first studied at the Flerov Laboratory in Dubna, Russia,about 20 years ago, although the Dubna measurements did not reveal themasses of the fragments produced.

Firing protons at uranium

The experiment at ISOLDE involvedfiring a proton beam at a uranium target and then using laser beams and amagnetic field to filter out ions of thallium-180 from among the wide varietyof nuclei produced in the proton collisions. These ions then became implantedin a carbon foil, where they underwent beta decay and some of the resultingatoms of mercury-180 then fissioned. Silicon detectors placed in front of andbehind the foil allowed the energies of the fission products to be measured.

The researchers were expecting the fissionreaction to be symmetric, with the mercury-180 splitting into two nuclei ofzirconium-90, a result thought to be particularly favoured because these nucleiwould contain a magic number of neutrons (50) and a "semi-magic"number of protons (40). What they found, however, was quite different. Theenergy of the fission products recorded in the silicon detectors did not peakat one particular value, which would be the case if only one kind of nuclei wasbeing produced in the reactions, but instead showed two distinct peaks centredaround the nuclei ruthenium-100 and krypton-80.

Collaboration spokesperson Andrei Andreyev of the University ofLeuven, Belgium, (and currently at the University of West of Scotland) saysthat this asymmetric fission was unexpected because the observed fragments donot contain any magic or semi-magic shells. His colleague, theorist Peter Möller ofthe Los Alamos National Laboratory in the US had in fact devised a model ofthe nucleus that predicted that mercury-180 would undergo asymmetric fission.But he wasn't able to explain why that is, having plotted a three-dimensionalpotential energy surface for the fission of mercury-180 and then identified aminimum in that surface, but he couldn't identify which of the three variableswere responsible for that minimum.

'Beautiful experimental achievement'

Phil Walker of the University of Surreyin the UK, who is not a member of the collaboration, describes the research asa "beautiful experimental achievement" that has "an impressivetheoretical outcome". He says that the result will be mainly of interestto academics but believes that it might just have practical implications."Much of our energy generation depends on nuclear fission," he pointsout, "and if we want to make reactors safer and cheaper we need to be ableto trust the basic theory of the fission process. I would say that the theoryhas been found to be sadly lacking, and it needs to be fixed."

Andreyev agrees. "I hope that as a result ofour paper theorists will start to think about this problem and tell us what ishappening," he says. "For the moment we don't know."

The research appears in Physical Review Letters.

Aboutthe author

EdwinCartlidge is a science writer based in Rome

Written by fatih al-farahat in


Bulgarian Sun Temple Eight Millenia Old





The structure of the temple orobservatory or whatever one calls a measuring device was produced throughplanned excavation.  This is a methodwell within the capabilities of all primitive societies and I must presume thatit was commonly used.  This is merely adiscovered and more importantly, a recognized site.

I think that we can presume thatjust about everywhere throughout Europe atleast were there existed a common culture of cattle raising and forest soils,that something like this was available to every tribe.  We have already seen plenty of examples ofwood henges and a turf henge is no departure at all. 

Obviously used as a ceremonial siteto confirm the solstices and plausibly other important dates to an agriculturalcommunity, a cycle of gatherings would readily provide the workforce tomaintain and rebuild such sites.

At least no one is challenging theastronomical significance of Stonehenge anymore when we keep finding similarstructures all over Europe with the exact samealignments.  There are obviously a lotmore as yet undiscovered.  At least nowwe know to check the soils.

8000 year-old Sun temple found in Bulgaria

In Archaeology
December 16, 2010

http://www.discoveryon.info/2010/12/8000-year-old-sun-temple-found-in.html

The oldest temple of the Sun has beendiscovered in northwest Bulgaria, near the town of Vratsa,aged at more then 8000 years, the BulgarianNational Television (BNT) reported on December 15 2010.


The Bulgarian 'Stonehenge' is hence about 3000years older than its illustrious English counterpart. But unlike its morerenowned English cousin, the Bulgarian sun temple was not on the surface,rather it was dug out from under tons of earth and is shaped in the form of ahorse shoe, the report said.


The temple was found near the village ofOhoden. According to archaeologists, the prehistoric people used thecelestial facility to calculate the seasons and to determine the best times forsowing and harvest. The site was also used for rituals, offering gifts to theSun for fertility as BNT reported.


This area of Bulgaria waspreviously made famous because remnants of the oldest people who lived in thispart of Europe were found.


Archaeologists also found dozens of clay and stone disks in the area of thetemple.

"The semantics of the disks symbolise the disk of the Sun itself, whichmeans that this is the earliest ever temple dedicated to the worship of the SunGod, discovered on our lands," archaeologist Georgi Ganetsovski told theBNT.

Written by fatih al-farahat in


Black Swans for 2011





The hardest trick is to predict the onset of a black swan event.  Yet I have been pretty good at it for asingle reason.  The serious black swansare able to take advantage of preexisting conditions in the market and acceleratethem

I anticipated the market meltdown in 1987 which was completely unexpectedat the time.  I understood that themarket before 9/11 was specifically vulnerable to such an event (it did notreally affect the market itself but the signals were red flagging) and was notsurprised but stunned at how large the event itself and the reactionbecame.  I also anticipated the crisis of2008, but that one was patently obvious to all but the willfully blind.

This writer tries to list several prospective black swans, most of whichare not.  In the list, please payattention to Chinaconstruction, national defaults, and fossil fuel production.  The rest are not significant enough for thepresent.  My first comment unbelievably isthat they are not important enough, although they certainly can createheadlines.

China is converting internal currency into nonproducing capital stock in the form of housing and is using it as a stimulusprogram to sustain the development of the economy.  I hope that there are better solutionsdeveloping, but we can live with this. In the meantime Chinacontinues to own a ton of UScurrency which is been converted into assets as quickly as they can which isgreat for the global dollar cased economy. It is not going to stop soon, although inflation is chewing things upnow.

Spain et al will be patched in the same way the rest was patched.  Again, the money has long since been spentand the printing press is covering the losses.

Energy is the big story and it is not known which way the press will runwith it.  A major loss of conventionalproduction would cause a price burst that will give us a rerun of 2008 of agentler nature.  The real story is thatwe can use fresh oil production to keep the US on an oil diet for some years tocome, but this is not obvious yet.  Mostimportant all that new production is coming on stream internally and we areabout to begin displacing imported oil in its entirety over the next decade asexternal production continues to face serious declines.

So yes, these are all plausible sources of market shocks during 2011, butnot in the form of a serious black swan unless we have a major oil production crisissomewhere.  That could be a sharp loss inSaudi production.  I still do not thinkthe vulnerability is that particularly high.

The big black swan would be for Focus Fusion to announce a major economic successin the production of fusion energy at an obviously cheap price structure.  Such could be rolled out at great speed andthe entire global energy industry becomes terminally obsolete.  Equally plausible is the ultracapacitor businessemerging this year making the E car truly viable.  Both are now possible and increasinglyprobable.  Both are capable of replacingand dominating their sectors extremely fast. Everything else is a side show.

On the front of bad black swans, we really have nothing to worry abouteconomically, because all the excess is sorting itself out.  It could be better and much faster but it isat least sobering and perhaps we can avoid a repeat for another eighty years orperhaps forever.  We remain on track toestablish a modern middle class global civilization and we are already past thefifty percent mark and are now starting to quickly chew up the balance.  We may reach the ninety percent mark insideof as little as twenty years and by that I mean everywhere at the same level asChina today.

Politically is another issue.  Ithink that Iranis ready to collapse and end its problem. I also think North Korea is presently terminal.  No one else particularly matters and willdisappear in the mopping up that will take place over the next two decades.  That leaves us with the question of how thosetwo plan to die.  Obviously all arefocused on arranging a soft landing for both.

As an aside, ongoing Islamic economic failure is steadily undermining Islamicextremism and we are now experienced in confronting it.  They will continue to trash around for sometime longer until they grow tired of been the ditch diggers to the rest of theworld.

In whole I am an optimist for the coming year and think that we willcontinue to muddle along quite well.



Ten Black Swans for 2011

By Christian A. DeHaemer| Thursday, December 30th, 2010

On April 17, 1793, three French soldiers brokeinto the tomb of Michel de Nostredame, a man we know as Nostradamus.
Legend has it that one man, a Corporal Adelaide,picked up the skull in an attempt to gain the power of the long dead seer.
His fellow soldiers bore witness that his eyesopened wide as he gained full knowledge, then was immediately struck down andkilled by an errant bullet, fired from the nearby riots.
A plaque around the neck of the corpse read 1793.
It is by channeling the ghost ofNostrodamus — as if drinking blood from the very skull itself — that Igive you my Black Swans for 2011.

BlackSwans
For those of you who don't know, Black Swans areunpredictable events that destroy prediction models.
After 20 years in the derivatives industry, NassimTaleb created the BlackSwanTheory to explain:
  • The disproportionate role of high-impact, hard to predict, and rare events that are beyond the realm of normal expectations in history, science, finance, and technology.
Thenon-computability of the probability of the consequential rare events usingscientific methods (owing to their very nature of small probabilities).

The psychological biases that make people individually and collectively blindto uncertainty and unaware of the massive role of the rare event in historicalaffairs. In other words, you can't create a mathematical certainty in themarket. Long Term Capital Management taught us that. Computer models and baseprobabilities on bell curves... Yet it's the three percent on either end thatmakes all their algorithms fail. And by the very nature of statistics, an eventthat's 1% likely to happen willhappen— if you wait long enough. Today I bring you ten events that couldbe that unpredictable, disruptive long shot for 2012.

1. Chinareal estate bubble pops
Hedge Fund Manager Jim Chanos said thefollowing about China onCNBC:
Construction is 60-plus percent of GDP, comparedto exports of 5 percent... The problem is that consumption as a percentage ofChinese economy has declined in the last 10 years, from 40 to 35 percent. It’sall real estate...When construction is 60 percent of your economy, and you arebuilding lots of things that people don’t need, the state may let this get outof control... It’s hard to manage this type of bubble.
China BusinessInsider estimates there are 64million vacant homes in China.If the Chinese real estate bubble pops, commodities such as copper,iron, and moly will crater.
2. Spain defaults
High national debt, high inflation, highunemployment, plummeting housing prices, and a second round of bankfailures coupled with political mismanagement sends Portugal into insolvency, followed quickly by Spain.
This overwhelms the EU's 440 Euro bail-out fundand sends U.S. Treasuryyields into the negative as investors flee to safety.
3. Decadeof natural gas
The U.S. Department ofEnergy (DOE) more thandoubled its estimate of unproved, technically recoverable shalegas reserves from 347 trillion cubic feet to 827 trillion cubic feet forits 2011 Annual Energy Outlook. This means lower natural gas prices —and twice the production for shale gas.
Furthermore, you should expect an additionaltwenty percent increase in U.S. naturalgas production through 2035 than was predicted last year.
The national leadership won't take advantage ofthe opportunity to end our dependency on imported oil due to the combinedlobbies of big petroleum and green energy.
In any event, natural gas storage facilitiesand pipelines will continue to grow until there is a global network of portsand facilities to transport natural gas in much the same way we transport oil.Right now, natural gas is around $4 in Texasbut $12 inJapan. Obviously, there are opportunities here.
4.Uranium companies surge
Last year, I predicted uranium would surge to $90a pound.
That didn't happen. Instead, it went from $40 to$65. I predict uranium in the $90s again based on the continued building ofnuclear plants around the world.
If you'd listened to my prediction last year andbought uranium miners, you'd have doubled your money:
5. Chinaclings to dollar, riots ensue
China links its currency to the dollar. The dollar isin a state of decline as a policy move to inflate away U.S. debt.
This means that everything in China is goingup in price. The official rate in China is 5.1% for November — butfood inflation is running at 11.7%. The last time food prices jumped in 2007,there were riots at supermarkets.
6. Farmland jumps in price
According to a survey by the Chicago FederalReserve Bank: “Farmland in Iowaincreased in value by 13 percent between the fall of 2009 and fall 2010. Oursurvey for Indianashows that farmland values since 1985 have gone up about 270 percent, or 5.5%per year."
Farmland prices are increasing at more than twice the historical average.This will continue, despite the fact that all other real estate prices arefalling, and create a bubble. Farmers will overextend themselves, crop priceswill fall, and we'll have a raft of farm foreclosures.
Willie Nelson and John Cougar will go on tourfor Farm Aid VII. The national leadership will continue to squeeze food pricesthrough subsidies for ethanol... After all, you can't be president without astrong showing in the Iowacaucus.
7. Dowhas four 10% correction in 2011 — ends the year up 9.7%
Volatility is down to pre-crisis levels. Bernankehas set a paperweight on his laptop number pad. It is adding zeros to thenational debt as fast as his Lenovo will allow.
Last year I wrote: “No one is talking about anextended bull market... The money that is currently being produced by theTreasury and hoarded by the banks could flow to equities and launch anotherbubble."
I predicted Dow 20,000. This didn't happen —but the DJIA did climb18% on pure liquidity from the Fed.
Judging by how few bargains there are out there,I'd say that the market has gotten ahead of itself. The Bernank will continuewith its flood of cash, but expect a lot of mixed signals and volatility...
8. TheYear of the Electric Car
Look for EVs to sell out this year. The NissanLEAF, the Chevy Volt, and the Fisker Karma will hit the ground rolling, givingearly adopters all sorts of smug happiness.
Charging stations are springing up in downtownseverywhere. You will be able to buy them at Best Buy. The Geek Squad willhook them up in your garage.
9. Deadtech revival
Old companies like Intel (NASDAQ: INTC)(which had its best year ever), Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO), IBM (NYSE: IBM) and Corning (NYSE: GLW) willbreak out of their ten-year sideways range based on the revival of businessspending. These companies are all trading at small P/E ratios and sitting onlarge amounts of cash... Intel has $20 billion; Cisco has $38billion.
10. FidelCastro dies
Cuban Dictator Fidel Castro finally kicks thebucket. His brother Raúl makes overtures by allowing free speech andreleasing all political prisoners. He seeks to open trade talks with the United States.
The State Department continues to spurn alladvancements. Leaders in both parties do nothing because you can't be presidentwithout Florida, and you can't win Florida without theCuban vote.
Have a great New Year,

Christian DeHaemer
Editor, Energy and Capital

Written by fatih al-farahat in


Better Batteries Bottom Up





This is more battery research and in thiscase they are growing a forest of nano batteries in order to gain in energy density.  No one really knows what the successfulprotocol will ultimately be, so we must push forward on every good idea.

This looks a long ways from been optimized soit is good to see early success in methodology. This is something that could be commercialized into circuit boards and miniaturedevices.

Anyway, the battery rush continues.



Better batteries from the bottom up
Rice University researchers build microbatteries with nanowire hearts

12/9/2010

CONTACT: Mike Williams
PHONE: 713-348-6728



Rice University researchers havemoved a step closer to creating robust, three-dimensional microbatteries thatwould charge faster and hold other advantages over conventional lithium-ionbatteries. They could power new generations of remote sensors, display screens,smart cards, flexible electronics and biomedical devices.

The batteries employ vertical arrays of nickel-tinnanowires perfectly encased in PMMA, a widely used polymer best known asPlexiglas. The Rice laboratory of Pulickel Ajayan found a way to reliably coatsingle nanowires with a smooth layer of a PMMA-based gel electrolyte thatinsulates the wires from the counter electrode while allowing ions to passthrough.

The work was reported this week in the online edition ofthe journal Nano Letters.

"In a battery, you have two electrodes separated by athick barrier," said Ajayan, professor in mechanical engineering andmaterials science and of chemistry. "The challenge is to bring everythinginto close proximity so this electrochemistry becomes much moreefficient."

Ajayan and his team feel they've done that by growingforests of coated nanowires -- millions of them on a fingernail-sized chip --for scalable microdevices with greater surface area than conventional thin-filmbatteries. "You can't simply scale the thickness of a thin-film battery,because the lithium ion kinetics would become sluggish," Ajayan said.
"We wanted to figure out how the proposed 3-D designsof batteries can be built from the nanoscale up," said Sanketh Gowda, agraduate student in Ajayan's lab. "By increasing the height of thenanowires, we can increase the amount of energy stored while keeping thelithium ion diffusion distance constant."

The researchers, led by Gowda and postdoctoral researcherArava Leela Mohana Reddy, worked for more than a year to refine the process.
\
"To be fair, the 3-D concept has been around for awhile," Reddy said. "The breakthrough here is the ability to put aconformal coat of PMMA on a nanowire over long distances. Even a small break inthe coating would destroy it." He said the same approach is being testedon nanowire systems with higher capacities.

The process builds upon the lab's previous research tobuild coaxial nanowire cables that was reported in Nano Letters last year. Inthe new work, the researchers grew 10-micron-long nanowires viaelectrodeposition in the pores of an anodized alumina template. They thenwidened the pores with a simple chemical etching technique and drop-coated PMMAonto the array to give the nanowires an even casing from top to bottom. Achemical wash removed the template.

They have built one-centimeter square microbatteries thathold more energy and that charge faster than planar batteries of the sameelectrode length. "By going to 3-D, we're able to deliver more energy inthe same footprint," Gowda said.

They feel the PMMA coating will increase the number oftimes a battery can be charged by stabilizing conditions between the nanowiresand liquid electrolyte, which tend to break down over time.

The team is also studying how cycling affects nanowiresthat, like silicon electrodes, expand and contract as lithium ions come and go.Electron microscope images of nanowires taken after many charge/dischargecycles showed no breaks in the PMMA casing -- not even pinholes. This led theresearchers to believe the coating withstands the volume expansion in theelectrode, which could increase the batteries' lifespans.

Co-authors are Rice graduate student Xiaobo Zhan; formerRice postdoctoral researcher Manikoth Shaijumon, now an assistant professor atthe Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Thiruvananthapuram,India; and former Rice research scientist Lijie Ci, now a senior research anddevelopment manager at Samsung Cheil Industries.

The Hartley Family Foundation and Rice Universityfunded the research.

Written by fatih al-farahat in


Nuclear Reaction Defies Expectations



All our workhas been focused on naturally occurring fission reactions and living with theconsequences.  Here we have an empiricalresult that questions the present theoretical regime and we need to ask what isnext?

We havelearned what we have learned by hurling neutrons mostly at speeds sufficient toovercome the electrostatic potential of the target.  Now we have an unusual alternative outcomethat is unpredicted in our modeling.

There couldbe a whole range of very low probability events in play that could completelyreshape our knowledge of the detail.  Oneshould not think that what we have is anything more than a good approximationto the empirical data that is likely to run foul of the facts as has justhappened.

Cold fusion,by the way, is a strong hint.

Theelectrostatic fields are not necessarily continuous or mathematically convenientand many good questions have never been asked let alone answered in thelab.  I thought cold fusion was anapparatus able to ask and answer some of those questions.  Other similar apparatus need to befabricated.

Wouldn’t itbe lovely to be able to move a low speed neutron along an axis to directcontact with an elemental nucleus at a specified location?  If we ever pull that off, then perhaps weknow something that can be trusted about the nucleus.

Nuclear reaction defies expectations

Dec 10, 2010 

Inside the ISOLDE experimental hall at CERN

http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/44571



A novel kind of fission reaction observed at theCERN particle physics laboratory in Genevahas exposed serious weaknesses in our current understanding of the nucleus. Thefission of mercury-180 was expected to be a "symmetric" reaction thatwould result in two equal fragments but instead produced two nuclei with quitedifferent masses, an "asymmetric" reaction that poses a significantchallenge to theorists.

Nuclear fission involves the splitting of a heavynucleus into two lighter nuclei. According to the liquid-drop model, whichdescribes the nucleus in terms of its macroscopic quantities of surface tensionand electrostatic repulsion, fission should be symmetric. Some fissionreactions are, however, asymmetric, including many of those of uranium and itsneighbouring actinide elements. These instead can be understood by also usingthe shell model, in which unequal fragments can be preferentially created ifone or both of these fragments contains a "magic" number of protonsand/or neutrons. For example, one of the fragments produced in many of thefission reactions involving actinides is tin-132, which is a"doubly-magic" nucleus, containing 50 protons and82 neutrons.

The latest work, carried out by a collaboration ofphysicists using CERN's ISOLDE radioactive beam facility,investigated the interplay between the macroscopic and microscopic componentsof nuclear fission. It used what is known as beta-delayed fission, a two-stepprocess in which a parent nucleus beta decays and then the daughter nucleusundergoes fission if it is created in a highly excited state. This kind ofreaction allows scientists to study fission reactions in relatively exoticnuclei and was first studied at the Flerov Laboratory in Dubna, Russia,about 20 years ago, although the Dubna measurements did not reveal themasses of the fragments produced.

Firing protons at uranium

The experiment at ISOLDE involvedfiring a proton beam at a uranium target and then using laser beams and amagnetic field to filter out ions of thallium-180 from among the wide varietyof nuclei produced in the proton collisions. These ions then became implantedin a carbon foil, where they underwent beta decay and some of the resultingatoms of mercury-180 then fissioned. Silicon detectors placed in front of andbehind the foil allowed the energies of the fission products to be measured.

The researchers were expecting the fissionreaction to be symmetric, with the mercury-180 splitting into two nuclei ofzirconium-90, a result thought to be particularly favoured because these nucleiwould contain a magic number of neutrons (50) and a "semi-magic"number of protons (40). What they found, however, was quite different. Theenergy of the fission products recorded in the silicon detectors did not peakat one particular value, which would be the case if only one kind of nuclei wasbeing produced in the reactions, but instead showed two distinct peaks centredaround the nuclei ruthenium-100 and krypton-80.

Collaboration spokesperson Andrei Andreyev of the University ofLeuven, Belgium, (and currently at the University of West of Scotland) saysthat this asymmetric fission was unexpected because the observed fragments donot contain any magic or semi-magic shells. His colleague, theorist Peter Möller ofthe Los Alamos National Laboratory in the US had in fact devised a model ofthe nucleus that predicted that mercury-180 would undergo asymmetric fission.But he wasn't able to explain why that is, having plotted a three-dimensionalpotential energy surface for the fission of mercury-180 and then identified aminimum in that surface, but he couldn't identify which of the three variableswere responsible for that minimum.

'Beautiful experimental achievement'

Phil Walker of the University of Surreyin the UK, who is not a member of the collaboration, describes the research asa "beautiful experimental achievement" that has "an impressivetheoretical outcome". He says that the result will be mainly of interestto academics but believes that it might just have practical implications."Much of our energy generation depends on nuclear fission," he pointsout, "and if we want to make reactors safer and cheaper we need to be ableto trust the basic theory of the fission process. I would say that the theoryhas been found to be sadly lacking, and it needs to be fixed."

Andreyev agrees. "I hope that as a result ofour paper theorists will start to think about this problem and tell us what ishappening," he says. "For the moment we don't know."

The research appears in Physical Review Letters.

Aboutthe author

EdwinCartlidge is a science writer based in Rome

Written by fatih al-farahat in


Bulgarian Sun Temple Eight Millenia Old





The structure of the temple orobservatory or whatever one calls a measuring device was produced throughplanned excavation.  This is a methodwell within the capabilities of all primitive societies and I must presume thatit was commonly used.  This is merely adiscovered and more importantly, a recognized site.

I think that we can presume thatjust about everywhere throughout Europe atleast were there existed a common culture of cattle raising and forest soils,that something like this was available to every tribe.  We have already seen plenty of examples ofwood henges and a turf henge is no departure at all. 

Obviously used as a ceremonial siteto confirm the solstices and plausibly other important dates to an agriculturalcommunity, a cycle of gatherings would readily provide the workforce tomaintain and rebuild such sites.

At least no one is challenging theastronomical significance of Stonehenge anymore when we keep finding similarstructures all over Europe with the exact samealignments.  There are obviously a lotmore as yet undiscovered.  At least nowwe know to check the soils.

8000 year-old Sun temple found in Bulgaria

In Archaeology
December 16, 2010

http://www.discoveryon.info/2010/12/8000-year-old-sun-temple-found-in.html

The oldest temple of the Sun has beendiscovered in northwest Bulgaria, near the town of Vratsa,aged at more then 8000 years, the BulgarianNational Television (BNT) reported on December 15 2010.


The Bulgarian 'Stonehenge' is hence about 3000years older than its illustrious English counterpart. But unlike its morerenowned English cousin, the Bulgarian sun temple was not on the surface,rather it was dug out from under tons of earth and is shaped in the form of ahorse shoe, the report said.


The temple was found near the village ofOhoden. According to archaeologists, the prehistoric people used thecelestial facility to calculate the seasons and to determine the best times forsowing and harvest. The site was also used for rituals, offering gifts to theSun for fertility as BNT reported.


This area of Bulgaria waspreviously made famous because remnants of the oldest people who lived in thispart of Europe were found.


Archaeologists also found dozens of clay and stone disks in the area of thetemple.

"The semantics of the disks symbolise the disk of the Sun itself, whichmeans that this is the earliest ever temple dedicated to the worship of the SunGod, discovered on our lands," archaeologist Georgi Ganetsovski told theBNT.