Clipmarks | JediKnut's 'helium' clips

Physicist Claims First Real Demonstration of Cold Fusion

Tue, 27 May 2008 23:05:06 GMT

clipped by: Silkweaver
clipper's remarks: "Arata and Zhang demonstrated very successfully the generation of continuous excess energy [heat] from ZrO2-nano-Pd sample powders under D2 gas charging and generation of helium-4," Takahashi told New Energy Times. "The demonstrated live data looked just like data they reported in their published papers [J. High Temp. Soc. Jpn, Feb. and March issues, 2008]. This demonstration showed that the method is highly reproducible."

Clip Source: www.physorg.com

To many people, cold fusion sounds too good to be true. The idea is that, by creating nuclear fusion at room temperature, researchers can generate a nearly unlimited source of power that uses water as fuel and produces almost zero waste. Essentially, cold fusion would make oil obsolete.

However, many experts debate whether money should be spent on cold fusion research or applied to more realistic alternative energy solutions.

Now, esteemed Physics Professor Yoshiaki Arata of Osaka University in Japan claims to have made the first successful demonstration of cold fusion.

Last Thursday, May 22, Arata and his colleague Yue-Chang Zhang of Shianghai Jiotong University presented the cold fusion demonstration to 60 onlookers

Evidence for the occurrence of this fusion came from measuring the temperature inside the cell. When Arata first injected the deuterium gas, the temperature rose to about 70° C (158° F), which Arata explained was due to nuclear and chemical reactions.

Tags: energy, clean energy, cold fusion

Can we harness energy from outer space?

Sat, 30 Aug 2008 22:36:41 GMT

clipped by: Mohir
clipper's remarks: While nuclear fusion has already been tested with the hydrogen isotopes deuterium and tritium, those reactions give off the majority of their energy as radioactive neutrons, raising both safety and production concerns. Helium-3, on the other hand, is perfectly safe. It doesn't give off any pollution or radioactive waste and poses no danger to surrounding areas.
helium-3 has two protons but only one neutron. When it's heated to very high temperatures and combined with deuterium, the reaction releases incredible amounts of energy. Just 2.2 pounds (one kilogram) of helium-3 combined with 1.5 pounds (0.67 kilograms) of deuterium produces 19 megawatt-years of energy Roughly 25 tons of the stuff could power the United States for an entire year.

Clip Source: science.howstuffworks.com

People have been searching for clean alternative energy sources for decades to no avail. As soon as one source seems to pass the test, someone uncovers its fatal flaw. Nuclear, wind, solar and hydropower have all been dragged through the mud to some degree. Traditional nuclear fission is too risky, winds aren't consistent, the sun doesn't always penetrate the clouds and hydropower dams disrupt natural environments.

It seems like any workable solution is light-years away -- literally. Some researchers think the answer to our energy needs rests in the stars. From wind turbines on Mars to helium-3 fusion, people are increasingly looking to extraterrestrial sources for the Earth's energy needs.

One of the sources they're looking at is helium-3 to use in nuclear fusion reactions. As opposed to nuclear fission, which splits an atom's nucleus in half, nuclear fusion combines nuclei to produce energy.

Tags: energy, space

Manned Cloud

Wed, 02 Apr 2008 11:21:41 GMT

clipped by: JohnWaterman

Clip Source: www.dezeen.com

Here’s another designer dirigible: Manned Cloud is a flying hotel proposed by French designer Jean-Marie Massaud.

The whale-shaped airship, developed with French national aerospace research body ONERA, will be able to accommodate 40 guests and have a range of 5,000 km.

Manned Cloud will have a cruising speed of 130 km/h and a top speed of 170 km/h. Two two-deck cabin will contain amenities including a restaurant, a library, a fitness suite and a spa. There will also be a sun deck on top of the double helium-filled envelopes.

More on airships in our earlier stories on the Strato Cruiser “lifestyle Zeppelin” and the Aeroscraft ML866 hybrid aircraft.

Here are the details from Massaud:

The Blimps are coming

Tue, 10 Jun 2008 17:00:39 GMT

clipped by: wildcat
clipper's remarks: now just imagine a wildcat in a skycat..

Clip Source: blog.wired.com

New Airship Designs Are More Than Just a Lot of Hot Air

It's not going to replace the 747, but it looks like the airships may be making a comeback.

As the search intensifies for transportation not reliant on petroleum-based fuel, several companies are promoting a new generation of airship technology. A British Company called SkyCat is licensing its heavy-lift airship design; and the Zeppelin NT, built with proceeds from the Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin endowment, recently completed its maiden flight.

On its website, the American Blimp Corporation provides a basic explanation of how airships work. Non-rigid airships, known as blimps, are members of the Lighter than Air family of aircraft, a category that also includes hot air balloons. They have no wings and no structure within their envelope, only air and helium, gases which allow an airship to retain its shape and creates buoyant lift.

Tags: blimps, zeppellin, aircraft

Bizarre Advertising around the world

Tue, 18 Sep 2007 09:39:56 GMT

clipped by: pokkets

Clip Source: www.oddee.com

Advertising can be creative and even purposely funny. But the following ads really stand out as being strange, original or just plain bizarre.

Helium balloons tied to a model's skirt (Germany)

Braun Silk-Epil Epilators are best known as razors which give women silky smooth legs for up to four weeks.

Playboy Beach Towel (Argentina)

You'll never sleep alone (Belgium)

World First Aid Day (Canada)

This advertisment was placed in Toronto for World First Aid Day, depicting a woman lying on the floor, as if unconscious and very realistic!

Delivery boy on your door's hole (Peru)

Peep into that hole -"Papa John's" pizza is here.

Sexy Sun Protectors (Argentina)

Durex comdoms comes in all sizes (UK)

A police car, hiding behind a billboard (Turkey)

Dental implants as Bowling pins (Germany)

A Real edible billboard made with 860 pounds of chocolate (UK)

7-Eleven turned into Simpsons' Kwik-E-Marts (USA)

Wash your hands (Canada)

Sources: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4

Tags: advertising, weird, bizarre, amazing, funny

Rememeber the ballooning priest???

Mon, 04 Aug 2008 07:18:50 GMT

clipped by: dakotayii
clipper's remarks: Never, Never try a cheap stunt...........

Clip Source: news.yahoo.com

RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) - The body of a Brazilian priest who floated out over the ocean suspended by hundreds of helium-filled party balloons, has been found off the coast of southeastern Brazil, police have confirmed.

The corpse of Father Adelir Antonio de Carli was spotted by a tugboat at sea near the city of Macae, three months after he disappeared while flying a contraption buoyed by balloons over the Atlantic Ocean in a fund-raising stunt.

"We were almost certain that it was the priest due to various elements, such as the clothes and material used in the balloon trip," Macae's chief of police, Daniel Bandeira, said on Monday. "The DNA only confirmed our suspicions."

The priest disappeared on April 20 after he called friends from his mobile phone to say he was about to crash into the ocean.

He staged the stunt to help raise money for a chapel for truckers in his highway parish.

Tags: news

Is Helium 3 Exploitation China's Hidden Lunar Agenda?

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 01:23:47 GMT

clipped by: Silkweaver
clipper's remarks: UN Treaties in place state that the moon and its minerals are the common heritage of mankind, so the quest to use Helium-3 as an energy source would likely demand joint international co-operation.

Hopefully, exploitation of the moon's resources will be viewed as a solution for the world, rather than an out-moded nation-state solution.

Clip Source: www.dailygalaxy.com

Earlier this year

China has announced plans to map "every inch" of the surface of the Moon and exploit the vast quantities of Helium-3 thought to lie buried in lunar rocks as part of its ambitious space-exploration program.

"There are altogether 15 tons of helium-3 on Earth, while on the Moon, the total amount of Helium-3 can reach one to five million tons."

"Helium-3 is considered as a long-term, stable, safe, clean and cheap material for human beings to get nuclear energy through controllable nuclear fusion experiments,"

If we human beings can finally use such energy material to generate electricity, then China might need 10 tons of helium-3 every year and in the world, about 100 tons of helium-3 will be needed every year.

The equivalent of a single space shuttle load or roughly 25 tons could supply the entire United States' energy needs for a year.

With China's announcement, a new Moon-focused Space Race seems locked in place.

The harvesting of Helium-3 on the could start by 2025.

Tags: energy, space exploration, thermo nuclear fusion

10 Lamps I Want In My House

Sun, 18 May 2008 22:15:36 GMT

clipped by: Sheroug

Clip Source: adamfuhrer.wordpress.com

Alien Abduction Lamp

Trojan Arc Lamp

Paperclip Lamp

Pipe Lamp

Retro Lamp

Zebra Lamp

Gravity Lamp

“front has a concept design for a new lamp called the gravity that goes totally soft when you’re not in the room and then when you walk in automatically wakes up, gets upright, and starts illuminating your world”

Solar Lamp

Helium Balloon Lamp

Mario Mushroom Lamp

Tags: lamp

Fusion 2.0 - soon at a powerplant nearby

Mon, 19 May 2008 09:50:25 GMT

clipped by: Silkweaver

Clip Source: www.cosmosmagazine.com

Fusion could one day generate limitless cheap energy from little more than water, while emitting no greenhouse gases. We look at its promise as the ultimate power panacea for a warming world.

A total of €10 billion (about A$16.7 billion) has been earmarked for the construction and initial operation of ITER, a giant fusion reactor. It will generate a cloud of super-hot plasma in which isotopes of hydrogen will fuse to form helium, releasing vast amounts of energy.

If successful, the project will realise a dream that has preoccupied physicists for many decades: the harnessing of the power that drives the Sun. The potential is, to say the least, immense.

Fusion plants could one day generate billions of watts of power, entirely replacing 19th century coal and 20th century gas, oil and nuclear fission, and all without producing any carbon dioxide or long-lived radioactive waste.

It’s the ultimate power panacea for a warming world.

Tags: energy, fusion, iter

Hubble Survey Finds Missing Matter

Wed, 21 May 2008 10:07:56 GMT

clipped by: Silkweaver

Clip Source: www.physorg.com

Although the universe contains billions of galaxies, only a small amount of its matter is locked up in these behemoths. Most of the universe's matter that was created during and just after the Big Bang must be found elsewhere.

Now, in an extensive search of the local universe, astronomers say they have definitively found about half of the missing normal matter, called baryons, in the spaces between the galaxies.

This important component of the universe is known as the "intergalactic medium,"

Baryons are protons, neutrons, and other subatomic particles that make up ordinary matter such as hydrogen, helium, and heavier elements. Baryonic matter forms stars, planets, moons, and even the interstellar gas and dust from which new stars are born.

Astronomers caution that the missing baryonic matter is not to be confused with "dark matter," a mysterious and exotic form of matter that is only detected via its gravitational pull.

Tags: astronmomy, astrophysics

Ads in 'Clouds' Shaped Like Corporate Logos

Sat, 10 May 2008 20:16:56 GMT

clipped by: wildcat
clipper's remarks: terrible idea...

Clip Source: www.sci-tech-today.com

One expert said the idea sounds catchy, but wonders how Flogos will fare against a backdrop of controlled airspace, environmental sensitivity and concerns over legal liability in case something goes wrong, like a pilot being distracted by a swarm of floating tomahawks above an Atlanta Braves game.

Picture the Manhattan skyline filled with Nike swooshes. Or the golden arches of McDonald's gently drifting over Los Angeles.

A special-effects entrepreneur from Alabama has come up with a way to fill the sky with foamy clouds as big as 4 feet across and shaped like corporate logos -- Flogos, as he calls them.

Francisco Guerra, who's also a former magician, developed a machine that produces tiny bubbles filled with air and a little helium, forms the foam into shapes and pumps them into the sky.

The Walt Disney Co. will use one of the machines next month to send clouds shaped like Mickey Mouse heads into the air at Walt Disney World in Orlando, Fla., Guerra said.

Tags: ads, in the clouds

20 Year Journey For a 15 Minute Fall

Sat, 24 May 2008 13:34:59 GMT

clipped by: debbyski

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

He has spent two decades and nearly $20 million in a quest to fly to the upper reaches of the atmosphere with a helium balloon, just so he can jump back to earth again. Now, Michel Fournier says, he is ready at last.

He intends to climb into the pressurized gondola of the 650-foot balloon, which resembles a giant jellyfish, and make a two-hour journey to 130,000 feet. At that altitude, almost 25 miles up, Fournier will see both the blackness of space and the curvature of the earth. He will experience weightlessness.

Then he plans to step out of the capsule, wearing only a special space suit and a parachute, and plunge down in a mere 15 minutes.

If successful, Fournier will fall longer, farther and faster than anyone in history. Along the way, he can accomplish other firsts, by breaking the sound barrier and records that have stood for nearly 50 years.

Man flies 193 miles in lawn chair

Tue, 10 Jul 2007 18:33:06 GMT

clipped by: Newfman

Clip Source: www.cnn.com

Story Highlights
Man uses 105 helium balloons for lift, plastic bags of water for ballast
Kent Couch, 47, flew 25 mph while wife, dog followed in car below
In 1982, Larry Walters flew lawn chair three miles above Los Angeles
Next Article in U.S. »

BEND, Oregon (AP) -- Last weekend, Kent Couch settled down in his lawn chair with some snacks -- and a parachute. Attached to his lawn chair were 105 large helium balloons.

With instruments to measure his altitude and speed, a global positioning system device in his pocket, and about four plastic bags holding five gallons of water each to act as ballast -- he could turn a spigot, release water and rise -- Couch headed into the Oregon sky.

Nearly nine hours later, the 47-year-old gas station owner came back to earth in a farmer's field near Union, short of Idaho but about 193 miles from home.

"When you're a little kid and you're holding a helium balloon, it has to cross your mind," Couch told the Bend Bulletin.

Tags: science

Universe's first star born tiny, grew huge: study

Fri, 01 Aug 2008 11:27:50 GMT

clipped by: Deepti
clipper's remarks: The processes churning inside the stars synthesized the universe's first heavy elements. In dying, these stars may have blasted this stuff back into space to become building blocks of future stars and planets composed of many more elements

Clip Source: www.reuters.com

The first object to brighten the dark, primordial universe after the Big Bang was the tiny seed of a star that rapidly grew into a behemoth 100 times more massive than the sun

This first generation of stars apparently lived hard and died quickly. While our sun may live 5 billion years, this first generation of stars likely lasted only a slim fraction of that -- about 1 million years

Scientists think the universe was born in a Big Bang explosion 13.7 billion years ago and has been expanding ever since. But they have struggled to understand how the first stars formed in the aftermath of this cataclysm

Japanese and U.S. astronomers ran a sophisticated computer simulation that showed how some of the hydrogen and helium gases strewn throughout the young universe came together to form the first generation of stars

While none of the stars survive today, their influence remains

Tags: star, huge, big bang, universe, study

You’ve got mail – from the Queen

Thu, 31 May 2007 03:21:32 GMT

clipped by: wiccantexan

Clip Source: www.msnbc.msn.com

LONDON - A 4-year-old British boy who released a balloon with a message hoping to find a pen pal in a foreign land ended up having a correspondence with Queen Elizabeth II.

Tom Stancombe let go of his helium balloon in Hampshire, west of London, but rather than flying across to France or half way around the world, it ended up just 20 miles away, landing inside Windsor Castle, the Daily Mail reported.

The queen instructed her personal assistant to reply and so the monarch and the boy, helped by his parents, exchanged a series of letters, mostly about the fact that one of the boy's ancestors, an artist, had works in the royal art collection.

Tags: mail, letter, queen, britain, england, british, child, pen pal