Article

2009-09-08 Science & Technology

Archived material is restricted to Rantburg regulars and members. If you need access email fred.pruitt=at=gmail.com with your nick to be added to the members list. There is no charge to join Rantburg as a member.

Posted by Bobby 2009-09-08 05:22|| || Front Page|| [11132 views ] Top

#1 Spent $ 60m since 1991. No BlackLight 1.0 no beta? More money needed or no prototype until 2010? Sounds like a project only a university based, computer software developer could love.

Posted by Besoeker 2009-09-08 05:48|| 2009-09-08 05:48|| Front Page Top

#2 Harvesting the money from the gullible.

Where's the "Oh No Not this sh1t again" picture?

Posted by Bright Pebbles 2009-09-08 07:18|| 2009-09-08 07:18|| Front Page Top

Posted by badanov 2009-09-08 07:47|| http://www.freefirezone.org]">[http://www.freefirezone.org] 2009-09-08 07:47|| Front Page Top

#4 the former chairman of Morgan Stanley - nuff said.

Posted by 3dc 2009-09-08 07:55|| 2009-09-08 07:55|| Front Page Top

#5 Because finance people know all about physics...

Posted by 3dc 2009-09-08 07:55|| 2009-09-08 07:55|| Front Page Top

#6 Just more hair-shirt environmentalism - the little people must suffer for their sins!

Posted by Spot">Spot 2009-09-08 08:15|| 2009-09-08 08:15|| Front Page Top

#7 could someone please explain 3 things?

1) What exactly is Dark Matter? i.e does it have mass?
2) What exactly is Dark Energy?
3) What is it about Dark Energy & Dark Matter that is so different from the old concept of aether that Mich & Morl were supposed to have debunked?

This sounds like more cold fusion to me.

Posted by AlanC">AlanC 2009-09-08 08:42|| 2009-09-08 08:42|| Front Page Top

#8 Of course, there could be more cold dark baryonic matter out there than people think.

Posted by Thing From Snowy Mountain 2009-09-08 09:09|| 2009-09-08 09:09|| Front Page Top

#9 Now, if we could harness the energy from all the bullshit spouted by snake oil salesmen and politicians, we would have unlimited and renewable energy!

Posted by DarthVader 2009-09-08 09:17|| 2009-09-08 09:17|| Front Page Top

#10 10. Come over to the Dark Side, Luke!

Posted by Fred 2009-09-08 09:42|| 2009-09-08 09:42|| Front Page Top

#11 AlanC 1) Somehow or another there seems to be extra mass around that is neither glowing nor blocking light. It's been suspected for over a century--stars orbiting in a galaxy move faster than they ought to based on estimates of the amount of visible matter. That might just mean that we didn't understand gravity at large distances, of course.
Recently studies of light-bending by colliding galaxies show separation of the dark and normal matter distributions. Normal matter from each galaxy interacted (friction) and moved more slowly but the dark matter didn't interact (much?) and flew on through, resulting in separation. You can reconstruct where the mass is from how light from more distant galaxies is bent, and there are blobs of mass where there are no stars. It looks like something is really there, and we're not simply looking at modifications of gravity.
Theories of the expansion of the universe seem to require more matter too, but direct experimental results seem more compelling than theories.
2) Nobody knows. Whatever it is it doesn't interact very strongly with light. That means it isn't charged, and it also hasn't a structure that is easily excited by low energy light. (eg, not neutral hydrogen)
3) It isn't spread uniformly through the universe, but clumps (gravitationally) around galaxies.

There are a few interesting results (the DAMA experiment series on the positive side--others negative) looking for the dark matter particles. They are very hard to detect, and I can't think of any way of harnessing them or easily extracting energy.

FWIW, the study of cold fusion is based on reasonable physics: the probability of fusion goes up if you can increase the density of hydrogen. The probability isn't very high, but it is measurable, and Jones (betrayed by Pons and Fleischmann) had gotten some reasonable-looking numbers; consistent with a slightly increased nuclear overlap and nowhere near the level needed to harness for energy production. (Jones has since gone nuts and is a truther.)

Posted by James">James 2009-09-08 10:06|| http://idontknowbut.blogspot.com]">[http://idontknowbut.blogspot.com] 2009-09-08 10:06|| Front Page Top

#12 What I want to know is: Can it power my warp-engine prototype? I tried cold fusion but all it did was tie all the turbans within an 8,000 mile radius in a knot.

Posted by gorb 2009-09-08 10:21|| 2009-09-08 10:21|| Front Page Top

#13 "The only answer is to return to the caves as hunter-gatherers."

I used to know some feminists that said that the phrase 'hunter-gather' was sexists since women were the gatherers. They wanted the phrase to be 'gather-hunters'.

Posted by lord garth 2009-09-08 10:33|| 2009-09-08 10:33|| Front Page Top

#14 Blacklight's technology sounds a lot like the much derided cold fusion experiments.

There was definitely something in cold fusion, although exactly what wasn't clear.

Blacklight already have 5,000 and 50,000 watt prototypes. So it doesn't sound completely fraudulent.

Posted by phil_b 2009-09-08 10:48|| 2009-09-08 10:48|| Front Page Top

#15 "...it can't be completely fraudulent"

Unless you've checked the rig yourself, I wouldn't say that; I suspect they're completely fraudulent myself.

Posted by Thing From Snowy Mountain 2009-09-08 10:55|| 2009-09-08 10:55|| Front Page Top

#16 James, thank you for the answer. Unfortunately the only thing I can derive from it is that I need to drink more.

The following is an e-mail from a NASA physicist when I asked a similar question. Maybe you can make some sense of it. I would love to have the money to buy a professional phyicist (or two) to answer all my wacko questions....maybe if I win the lottery.

With respect to the curvature of space/time in the universe as a whole,
> the total warping of space/time comes not only from the "normal" mass,
> but from the total mass-energy density of the universe. When that total
>
> energy density is calculated, if it is exactly equal to a certain
> critical density, then space/time is "flat" or "Euclidean". Currently,
> that is thought to be the case -- that our universe is right at the
> critical density and hence is "flat". In calculating this total energy
> density, even massless particles like photons contribute, because they
> still have energy, even though they have zero mass. Similarly, the dark
>
> energy, whether it is a cosmological constant or some other strange
> particle or field, makes a positive contribution to the energy density
> (currently the dark energy contribution is estimated to be ~72% of the
> critical energy density of the universe, and the sum of everything --
> normal matter, dark matter, radiation, dark energy -- comes out to 100%
> of the critical density to within the observational uncertainties).
>
> What is so strange about the dark energy, whatever it is, is that it
> appears to have a negative pressure (unlike ordinary matter and
> radiation), producing a sort of "tension" in the universe that makes the
>
> expansion of the universe accelerate, as though there is a "negative
> gravity" acting to push everything apart faster and faster, rather than
> a net "positive gravity" that we are used to, that would tend to slow
> down the expansion.
>
> Note that the discussion above refers to the large-scale structure and
> curvature of space/time in the universe as a whole. Near discrete
> massive objects like our sun, or other stars, or black holes, their
> "normal" positive gravity dominates their local surroundings, so you get
>
> the kind of local space-time curvature effects that are the fundamental
> elements of general relativity (and that have stood up to ever more
> precise observational tests!).
>
> If you think this is all pretty strange, we couldn't agree with you
> more!

Posted by AlanC">AlanC 2009-09-08 10:57|| 2009-09-08 10:57|| Front Page Top

#17 That might just mean that we didn't understand gravity at large distances, of course.

Are you adding time-dialation due to speed of the Galaxy's approach?

Posted by Redneck Jim 2009-09-08 13:02|| 2009-09-08 13:02|| Front Page Top

#18 Sorry, typo on my part; all my notes were wrt Dark Matter, not Dark Energy.

"Dark Energy" is a little less well attested experimentally. You need it to make the current theories of the universe's expansion work out right, and they measure a change in the expansion rate that seems to act like a pressure (due to some unseen energy?); but the required dark energy fraction of the total energy is so huge that I get skeptical. On the other hand there's obviously _something_ there already that we don't understand, so maybe "dark energy" isn't so improbable an add-on.

Posted by James">James 2009-09-08 13:32|| http://idontknowbut.blogspot.com]">[http://idontknowbut.blogspot.com] 2009-09-08 13:32|| Front Page Top

#19 Redneck,
The too-fast star orbits in a galaxy might mean that we don't know gravity well enough (hence the MOND theories), but things like the bullet cluster seem to point to the presence of something substantial but unseen.

Posted by James">James 2009-09-08 13:41|| http://idontknowbut.blogspot.com]">[http://idontknowbut.blogspot.com] 2009-09-08 13:41|| Front Page Top

#20 Re: #6:

Dostoevsky sez:

"It is NOT that one must suffer for someone,
It is simply one MUST suffer."

Posted by borgboy 2009-09-08 14:10|| 2009-09-08 14:10|| Front Page Top

#21 And non-of them want to talk about almost particles...
Those that have less than E= M*C**2 energy.

I'm a little short so I don't exist but if you screw up around me (like get near a spinning blackhole) and I can steal some and then I can exist.... and you never existed...

It's all magic.

Posted by 3dc 2009-09-08 15:39|| 2009-09-08 15:39|| Front Page Top

#22 Oil and coal are matter, and they're dark. Lets just go with those.

Posted by Mike N. 2009-09-08 15:44|| 2009-09-08 15:44|| Front Page Top

#23 I'm going with odd socks myself. They must build up somewhere.

Posted by Bright Pebbles 2009-09-08 16:57|| 2009-09-08 16:57|| Front Page Top

#24 " The concept involves shifting electrons in hydrogen molecules into a lower orbit, releasing energy in the process."
This is done in a "fridge."

Posted by Grunter 2009-09-08 17:21|| 2009-09-08 17:21|| Front Page Top

#25 The 'other' Dark Matter Power.

Posted by Procopius2k 2009-09-08 22:48|| 2009-09-08 22:48|| Front Page Top

23:55 USN, Ret.
23:54 trailing wife
23:48 USN, Ret.
23:44 USN, Ret.
23:37 remoteman
23:26 trailing wife
23:24 Old Patriot
23:17 Old Patriot
22:53 Frank G
22:48 Procopius2k
22:39 trailing wife
22:26 JosephMendiola
22:20 JosephMendiola
22:14 JosephMendiola
22:01 Broadhead6
22:00 logi_cal
21:45 Thing From Snowy Mountain
21:39 Frank G
21:35 Frank G
21:19 Woozle Uneter9007
21:14 Adriane
21:10 texhooey
21:04 Rambler in Virginia
20:59 Eric Jablow