DailyDirt: Stuff About Matter, The Stuff We're All Made Of
from the urls-we-dig-up dept
The stuff that matters sometimes depends on chemistry and material science. Occasionally, we forget that all the digital bits we push around every day are stored somewhere in atoms and molecules in our brains and computers. Here are some reminders that matter matters:You got your gold salts in my cinnamon. You got your cinnamon in my gold salts. Gold nanoparticles have never sounded so delicious. [url] German scientists explain why diamond can be machined and polished. Basically, the surfaces of diamonds are not the same as the bulk diamond -- and can be oxidized by diamond grinding. [url] The Sahara Solar Breeder Project uses sand from the desert to make more solar cells -- "From the viewpoints of quality, quantity and chemistry, Sahara sand is hard to beat for use as silicon for solar cells." [url] The current Uranium disposal policy probably isn't sustainable. Reduce, re-use, recycle applies to radioactive materials, too. [url]
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Filed Under: matter
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Really? What's the matter with our memories?
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Re: Thanks!
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I dream of houses that are mobile, produce a great deal of their own energy and have guts, meaning they recycle what you put in them and put out raw materials that can be used for something maybe for feeding fridge size enclosed airponics/hydroponics with nutrients, so people never go hungry, they can go on a diet but not hungry.
The first step to space colonization starts on earth.
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Actually you are going to see energy as a commodity go away over the next few years. The commodity will be energy production capacity. When solar cells and energy storage get to the point where it costs less than $20-$40 USD ($ depending on who you listen to) per Mwh the power grid is no longer financially sustainable. Energy will have to be produced locally to be financially competative.
If you chart out the cost of renewables and technological trends into the future. You see large scale energy production become unsustainable in 5-15 years. 5 years if there is a technological hail mary (unlikely but it may happen), 10 years +-2 if things go as they are now, 15 years with governmnet regulation meant to stop the technology.
This is yet another disruptive technology that will change things in a major way.
"I dream of houses that are mobile, produce a great deal of their own energy .... so people never go hungry, they can go on a diet but not hungry."
Now you are talking crazy talk ... :)
Maybe not with Zyvex's recent creation of single atom precision Silicon layering. Full blow nanotechnology is only 10 - 15 years out. So your "Walking house" that "feeds you", which by the way speaks to mother attachment issues and a need to escape from your current painful situation, is only a couple decades out.
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I often write and comment about disruptive technologies. This is one of the ones I see coming in the energy arena in less than 10 years. I follow and research the alt energy scene. Wind, solar, tidal, etc. A couple months back I was given an custom filled inkjet cartridge and a sheet of overhead transparency paper. I was able to print out a 1.5 watt 8 x 10 inch solar cell. From what I was told the "ink" for the cell cost less than 2 cent. The efficiency sucked, the life span was months, you couldn't get it wet or it stopped working, but it is a beginning.
Now compare this printed solar cell at a ~penny a watt, to a coal plant at a dollar a watt. It wont be a 3/4 drop in price, it will be even greater.
MIT researchers print solar cell on paper
Google search on Printing solar cells
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I don't doubt power will be far cheaper in the future, it's the 10 years I doubt. That is to say, I doubt power will be *generally* available in the US for less than 4 cents per kWh by 2020, though I'm sure there will be some devices capable of that. Again... I hope I'm wrong and you're right. Really cheap clean renewable power will solve a huge number of problems.
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arsenic lifeform science = shabby
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An unsolvable problem...
The only REAL answer is to sacrifice a planet for a dump, like venus, cause its pretty much sucky there already.
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Also...
As a matter of fact, I am currently in the process of ordering some aqua regia, as I have 1.35oz of pure gold, mixed in with jewelry and crap. Although the fumes are toxic, metal precipitation is the most efficient method.
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Re: Also...
That is how people recover gold from cellphones.
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Re: An unsolvable problem...
And a nuclear power plant has a radioactive problem, because they have to collect and store all their waste.
If that was the case for coal power, it would be a much larger problem than with nuclear power.
Do you know a coal power station RELEASES 100 times more nuclear waste into the atmosphere, than a nuclear power station of the same size.. And they have to keep and store all their waste...
How many people do you think have died from the coal and coal power industry...
And how many people in total have been killed by nuclear power generation.
chernoble was the biggest, and the amount of deaths DIRECTLY related to that accident, was about 54..
Compared to the probably hundreds of thousands of people who have died working coal mines, and power stations, and from the pollution effects of the toxic chemicals, radioactive particles, and green houses gases generated from coal power.
Its so stupid for humans in the year 2010 to be still digging shit up from the ground and burning it for their energy requirements.
We are still a Type 1 civilization, in furture generations, they are going to think back on our generation as a bunch of fools and idiots who killed the world..
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Re: An unsolvable problem...
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The other 3 articles are cool though.
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