RTFA: http://blog.wired.com/cars/2008/05/in-a-city-built…

“There’s thousands of cars and you’re just flying by,” said one of the group, called RichToTheIE, by phone on Wednesday. “It’s an amazing feeling.”

The renegade rides are a radical off-shoot of the popular - and often controversial - Critical Mass rides held each month in cities around the world as cyclists grow increasingly vocal in asserting their rights to the road and extolling the environmental and societal benefits of ditching your car in favor of a bike.

Such rides are usually limited to downtown areas, but Crimanimalz are taking them to the freeways of Los Angeles to prove that riding a bike is faster than creeping through bumper-to-bumper traffic.

I love this idea! We all saw it in the intro of Office Space, where the protagonist races an old man with a walker… and loses due to the traffic. Switching lanes repeatedly only seems to make things worse.

Coming out of the Bay Area, I can vouch for this kind of traffic… and at the same time, I can vouch for the amazing time savings of bike travel. So, I totally love this stuff:

The thing is, I totally believe it when they say they’re biking faster than freeway traffic. …and local gas prices hit $4.35 (for the expensive stuff). I can only imagine the arguments for justifying the status quo, but let’s face it: a good idea is a good idea, and one that saves you money and time is a fucking fantastic idea.

Get a bike with smooth tires, a helmet, a good lock, and a bike pump. This will cost less than a tank of gasoline.

RTFA: http://www.steorn.com/forum/comments.php?Discussio…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tknwdltnB6s

It has been replicated, or so it would appear.

I have been following the development of this concept for two weeks now, and I am encouraged to see that others have been able to achieve the same results. Pretty amazing…

RTFA: http://www.steorn.com/forum/comments.php?Discussio…

@Al,(so much for pivots, I guess. At these speeds we would probably need springs “pulling” in the opposite direction just to overcome the centrifugal forces … sigh)OK. I’m now calling this the Alsetalokin effect. Might as well give Nick some recognition too.Back to business. I have been looking at the fields in my head, yeah tripping a bit, if you will. There are a couple things I’d like to see you try to improve on the effect:1) As I’ve already mentioned, smaller, lighter, bearings should allow you to horizontally align stator and rotor magnets and to get a cleaner field interaction and allow the stator magnets to respond quicker to the changing magnetic fields.2) I think you should build a new base with a 12-stator configuration. The effect you discovered may not require the odd/even ratios so essential to my initial concept. I think a more symmetrical configuration may allow you to get 2 stators going in sync, maybe even more. A 12-stator base will allow you to try things with 2, 3, 4, 6, and 12 stator configurations. With the rotor size you are using, I currently think 4 stators might be the best choice. With more stators, I think they might be too close together (although with lower mass stators you might be able to get more out of it with these dimensions).3) Smaller stator magnets might also help with reducing mass and improving stator response. You might try :http://www.kjmagnetics.com/proddetail.asp?prod=D42DIA orhttp://www.kjmagnetics.com/proddetail.asp?prod=D48DIA4) And then there is the possibility that the sharper edges on cubical magnets might actually enhance the effect, so you might want to consider them as well (square mount holes in round stators?). Say something like:http://www.kjmagnetics.com/proddetail.asp?prod=B444B

Okay. This is either the greatest Alternate Reality Sci-Fi I have experienced yet, or there is something totally cool going on at the Steorn forum.

BoingBoing linked the following video:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=PIvZJ9xGutI

This video is either a fascinating physical phenomenon, or it is a hoax. Given that most of the action in the forum has taken place over the last two weeks, and given the endlessly long history of previous hoaxes, there’s good reason to be a skeptic. For example, I’d like to see the bottom of the unit.

Nevertheless, this is totally neat looking, and great science fiction in the event that it is an elaborate hoax.

[EDIT 2008-01-22]
The “Alsetalokin effect” has been replicated! No one has created a compelling explanation for the acceleration of the rotor, but there are now several videos on YouTube regarding it!

http://youtube.com/watch?v=tknwdltnB6s

There is no claim that energy is created through this effect (it’s obvious that a lot of energy goes in to start the process) but this is a totall novel effect, none-the-less.

[/EDIT]

RTFA: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stellar_engine

One of the simplest examples of stellar engine is the Shkadov thruster (named after Dr. Leonid Mikhailovich Shkadov who first proposed it), or a Class A stellar engine.[1] Such an engine is a stellar propulsion system, consisting of an enormous mirror/light sail - actually a massive type of solar statite large enough to classify as a megastructure, probably by an order of magnitude - which would balance gravitational attraction towards and radiation pressure away from the star. Since the radiation pressure of the star would now be asymmetrical, i.e. more radiation is being emitted in one direction as compared to another, the ‘excess’ radiation pressure acts as net thrust, accelerating the star in the direction of the hovering statite.[2] Such thrust and acceleration would be very slight, but such a system could be stable for millennia. Any planetary system attached to the star would be ‘dragged’ along by its parent star. The sun: power = 3.85*1026 W, force = 1.28*1018 N, mass = 1.99*1030 kg, acceleration = 6.45*10-13 m/s2. 1000000 years = 3.16*1013 s, velocity = 20 m/s.

Nice! Barring the current issues with human “death,” this would make it a lot easier to communicate with other life forms. Simply drag your star, and the solar system with it, to a reasonably small light-distance near to the life to communicate with. …Time dilation… The act of taking a long nap - what’s several hundred million years? The sun has a good - what - 2 or 4 billion left before it goes “red giant,” right? “We” can just find another stellar engine when the current one (Sol, “the Sun”) is used up.

RTFA: http://uclue.com/index.php?xq=724

I have read through the comments, and references, including those provided
by Koomey (and Slashdot!), and I am happy to say that David Sarokin’s
original answer still comes out on top. Here is how I would phrase the
results;

The best estimate of how much electricity the global internet uses (in
2007) is 868 billion kwhs, or 5.3% of world electricity usage. Given the
many unmeasured variables in this calculation, the actual answer might be
less, more, or exactly the same. Until a more current estimate is compiled,
this estimate remains the best estimate. If you have a more current or
differently calculated estimate, I will be most happy to seriously
entertain it. Simply suggesting that this estimate is incorrect won’t
displace it as the best estimate we have.

RTFA: http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa025&ref=…

The two reactors at the South Texas nuclear power plant, an hour southwest of Houston, last year churned out 21.37 billion kilowatt-hours. By 2015, its majority owner, New Jersey-based NRG Energy, hopes to at least double that capacity if it gets permission to build two more reactors on the site. The company filed the first application on Monday for a new nuclear power plant - two advanced boiling-water reactors - in more than 30 years.
“It is a new day for energy in America,” David Crane, NRG president and chief executive officer, said after making the application. “Advanced nuclear technology is the only currently viable large-scale alternative to traditional coal-fueled generation to produce none of the traditional air emissions,” including the greenhouse gases responsible for climate change.

Texas.

RTFA: http://www.physorg.com/news110194718.html

This burst appears to have originated from the distant Universe and may have been produced by an exotic event such as the collision of two neutron stars or the death throes of an evaporating black hole,” said Duncan Lorimer, Assistant Professor of Physics at West Virginia University (WVU) and the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO). The research team led by Lorimer consists of Matthew Bailes of Swinburne University in Australia, Maura McLaughlin of WVU and NRAO, David Narkevic of WVU, and Fronefield Crawford of Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. The astronomers announced their findings in the September 27 issue of the online journal Science Express.

Huh? Blast of energy in the middle of the Pacific - that sounds familiar, but I thought there were treaties against it.

RTFA: http://www.lightsoutsf.org/

Lights Out San Francisco is a citywide energy conservation event on Oct. 20, 2007. On this night, we invite the entire city of San Francisco to install one compact fluorescent light bulb (CFL) and turn off all non-essential lighting for one hour.

Neat. We don’t really have any lights to turn off, though… but we do draw 420 watts when the office is kicking! (I blame the 20-inch CRT)

RTFA: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20631051/

The design results in fuel efficiency.

RTFA: http://nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=109910&org=olpa&from=news

Scientists for the first time have observed elusive oscillations in the suns corona, known as Alfvén waves, that transport energy outward from the surface of the sun.

Alfvén waves are fast-moving perturbations that emanate outward from the sun along the pathways of magnetic fields, transporting electrodynamic energy. Although they had been detected beyond the sun, they had never before been viewed within the corona, the outermost layer of the suns atmosphere.

By tracking the speed and direction of the waves, researchers will be able to infer basic properties of the solar atmosphere, such as the density and direction of magnetic fields. The waves may provide answers to questions that have puzzled physicists for generations, such as why the suns corona is hundreds of times hotter than the surface.

Holy Periodic Fission, Batman!

RTFA: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pyofhLYYVC8

This stove is a partial oxidation gas generator stove. It produces Hydrogen, Carbon Monoxide, Methane and other cracked organic compounds. The same principle is in our books on gasification of wood for engines and cars. Yes, you CAN run a car off this type of system and over 1 million vehicles did this during WWII… it can still work today

This is just one demonstration out several. A hydrogen-crazy group of chemists are putting together a fascinating series of publications, research, and experiments. This technology is about a century old, but was perhaps ahead of its time.

RTFA: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sterling_engine

In the family of heat engines, ‘Stirling engine’ defines a closed-cycle regenerative hot air engine, though the term is often used incorrectly to refer generically to a much wider range of hot air engine types. In this context, “closed-cycle” means that the working fluid is permanently contained within the system, whereas “open-cycle” engines such as internal combustion engine and some steam engines, exchange working fluid with their suroundings as part of the cycle; “regenerative” refers to the use of an internal heat exchanger - the regenerator - which greatly improves the engine’s potential efficiency. There are many possible implementations of the Stirling engine, the majority of which fall into the category of a reciprocating piston engine. The Stirling engine is traditionally classified as an external combustion engine, though heat can equally well be supplied by non-combusting sources such as solar or nuclear energy. A Stirling engine operates through the use of an external heat source and an external heat sink, each maintained within a limited temperature range, and having a sufficiently large temperature difference between them.

This engine is very versatile because it only requires a heat difference to work. It is a closed system, unlike internal combustion engines, which is just another reason this engine is really cool.