HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: tomk@netcom.com (Thomas H. Kunich)
Newsgroups: sci.physics.fusion
Subject: Re: Short lived events, can we see their granularity?
Date: 8 Oct 92 20:27:05 GMT
Article-I.D.: netcom.1992Oct8.202705.16046
Organization: Netcom - Online Communication Services (408 241-9760 guest)

In article <9210081701.AA28218@anubis.network.com> logajan@ANUBIS.NETWORK.COM (John Logajan) writes:
>
>But Droege is seeing heat through the lense of thermal-mechanical low pass
>filters.  If the source of the heat is more intense but shorter lived, it
>is likely unseen as such at Droege's thermometers.

The excess heat does not _disappear_ John. All the pulses are still there
but band-broadened from a temperature pulse to a temperature increase.

>For instance, a 200 mw burst for 2 minutes could just as easily have been
>created by a source event that ran at 400mw for 1 minute or 24w for 1
>second, or 24 MegaWatts for one micro-second, or 24 GigaWatts for one
>pico-second.
>
>As the time gets shorter, the event gets hotter.
>
>This has implications for detection.

The only implication is that if you get too big a heat reservoir,
you cannot see the actual pulses.
>
>My Geiger counter cannot distinquish multiple events happening within a
>short period of time.  I don't have the specs of it handy, but let's say
>that two events within less than 1/100th of a second will register as
>one "click."

This is _not_ the same problem. The second event _still_ ionizes the 
gas in the Geiger tube and the resulting current _still_ has to be recharged
by the power supply. If you look at these events as current drain instead
of as a 'click' you can still measure them as separate events after a 
fashion.
>
From: nickh@CS.CMU.EDU (Nick Haines)
Newsgroups: sci.physics.fusion
Subject: Re: The H-Bomb secret is out
Date: 9 Oct 92 20:49:18 GMT
	<mcirvin.718568172@husc8> <1992Oct8.213404.4301@nmt.edu>
	<Oct.9.12.29.53.1992.17169@ruhets.rutgers.edu>
Organization: School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University
Originator: nickh@VOILA.VENARI.CS.CMU.EDU

Benjamin Weiner writes:

   houle@nmt.edu (Paul Houle @ New Mexico Tech) writes:
   >especially if you can shoot one [bomb] off in some place that wouldn't
   >be missed:  Detroit,  Pittsburg,  Plattsburg,  Socorro.

   As a native of Pittsburgh, I object to this.  Better to shoot them
   off in New Mexico ... wait, that's already been tried ;)

But he said "Pittsburg", not "Pittsburgh". I think he must mean that
place near San Francisco. :-)

Nick Haines, another 'burgher (and proud of the `H', which took some keeping).
Newsgroups: sci.physics.fusion,sci.physics
From: crb7q@kelvin.seas.Virginia.EDU (Cameron Randale Bass)
Subject: Re: The H-Bomb secret is out
Organization: University of Virginia
Date: Sun, 11 Oct 1992 06:34:56 GMT

In article <DawFsB3w165w@iowegia.uucp> quest@iowegia.uucp (Steve J. Quest) writes:
>crb7q@kelvin.seas.Virginia.EDU (Cameron Randale Bass) writes:
>
>>       Controversy notwithstanding, fabrication of transuranic elements 
>>       in accelerators pales in comparison with the military-scientific
>>       achievements necessary in constructing atomic weaponry for the 
>>       first time.
>>                               dale bass
>
>
>        I don't necessarily feel that the soviets are "better" 
>than we are, just that given the same money to spend on equipment, 
>they are EQUAL in intelligence as we.  We are not "genetically" 
>superior, only financially superior to other countries.  The 
>soviets have been the originators of many industrial ideas which 
>WE have taken without credit- which is also unfair (e.g. Titanium 
>plating technique on twist-steel drill bits).

     But they did not have the same money, or the same technological
     base.  Half their country was lying in ruins and millions of
     their men were dead.  Immediately before that happened, Stalin
     had managed to kill large numbers of the people necessary to 
     build those weapons.  This 'financially superior' stuff is
     nontrivial, especially when building nontrivial things like
     fusion weapons.

>        I have to say that no matter WHO is in control, bad as 
>well as good things will happen.  It doesn't seem to make much 
>sense, but to an american Vietnam vet, Ho Che Minh (sp?) was NOT a 
>good fellow- but to the north Vietnameese, he is a hero.  Saigon 
>was renamed after him to prove this is so.  America considered him 
>a terrorist and likened him to Hitler, but to the Viet Cong, he 
>was a god!  By the way, Hitler was loved by HIS people too...

     Relativism of the basest sort.  Am I to take it Hitler is to 
     be equated to Ho Chi Mihn who is equated to Eisenhower?  However,
     how is this related to this newsgroup or anything that
     preceeded it?

>        We refuse to give the Soviets credit for elements 104 
>through 106 (I believe) and if I remember correctly, we have 
>proposed OUR OWN AMERICAN names for these elements should we one 
>day "catch up" and synthesize them ourselves (this may have 
>already taken place however).  American equates with ego, 
>something that is very very hard to swallow..............sq

     I believe that Mr. Carr has given an accurate picture
     of the controversy surrounding the synthesis of these elements, 
     devoid of 'American ego' (though I suspect he is a US citizen
     and I suspect that he, like most of us, has an ego).

                               dale bass
-- 
C. R. Bass                                           crb7q@virginia.edu
Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
University of Virginia
Charlottesville, Virginia                            (804) 924-7926
Newsgroups: sci.physics.fusion,sci.physics
From: houle@nmt.edu (Paul Houle)
Subject: Re: The H-Bomb secret is out
Organization: New Mexico Tech
Date: Wed, 7 Oct 1992 20:18:48 GMT

In article <R373RB5w165w@iowegia.uucp> quest@iowegia.uucp (Steve J. Quest) writes:

>        The actual design of the bomb is simple as I have 
>previously stated.  The only complexity is the procurement of the 
>spent fuel for the jacket, the plutonium for the fissionable core 
>and the tritium for the fusible fuel.  Given the simplicity of 
>reactor design, I for one am suprised that nobody has ever built a 
>small enrichment chamber, enriching natural uranium as 
>hexafluoride gas, and then using this 235 enriched uranium, built 
>a small reactor to breed plutonium for a bomb.  Natural uranium 
>238 absorbs neutrons as well as being split by them- resulting in 
>plutonium 239, which can be extracted chemically.  This plutonium 
>could then be used to build a bomb, or as the core bomb to a much 
>bigger fusion bomb.
>
>        I am actually suprised that nobody has built a "back-yard" 
>nuke in their basement for "neighborhood nuclear 
>superiority"....sq

	This would actually be a pretty amusing home project.  Get several tons
of natural uranium.  Process it into uranium hexaflouride and hope that you
don't spill any nasty chemicals.  Probably would do much better using laser
enrichment in your basement.  (Or maybe steal electricity from the local
baseball stadium to run caultrons).  Maybe you build your own reactor,  which
you can do with natural uranium if you can find heavy water.  Maybe fill your
swimming pool with heavy water,  and use a fire hose from the hydrant across
the street for cooling.  Hope that the neighbors,  the police,  the NRC,  the
EPA and Greenpeace don't think that you're doing anything suspicious.
(Wouldn't you just love to see a supplement to the WASH-1200 report about
the safety concerns of backyard sub-boiling D2O natural uranium reactors
without confinement structures?)

	Anyway,  let's suppose that you actually get away with this and
pull your fuel rods after you get good burnup...  Say a year.  Now you need to
worry about radiation protection and need to do the Purex process in your
basement (nah,  maybe it's safer to do it in an outbuilding like the garage)
and figure out what you're going to do with all the rest of the actinides and
other waste components (Answer: vent the gases into the atmosphere and keep
the rest in oil drums.  Surround your bomb with the crap so it will at
least spread radiation around if it fizzles)

	When you actually get the plutonium,  you then need to machine it,
which I suppose would also be a pain since the dust and filings produced would
be very poisionous.  Just remember to wear your paper mask and to wash your
hands before you eat.  It might also be a pain to actually machine a
(barely) subcritical sphere from a larger piece of plutonium,  but I think
that this can be accomplished by cutting it out of a cylinder that has
certain dimensions.  Once you've done all this,  without your neighbors
finding out,  the rest would be pretty easy.


-- 
Xref: sparky sci.physics.fusion:2394 sci.physics:16136
From: steinly@topaz.ucsc.edu (Steinn Sigurdsson)
Newsgroups: sci.physics.fusion,sci.physics
Subject: Re: The H-Bomb secret is out
Date: 8 Oct 92 01:39:18 GMT
Organization: Lick Observatory/UCO
NNTP-Posting-Host: topaz.ucsc.edu
In-reply-to: quest@iowegia.uucp's message of 3 Oct 92 21:04:50 GMT

In article <R373RB5w165w@iowegia.uucp> quest@iowegia.uucp (Steve J. Quest) writes:

   steinly@topaz.ucsc.edu (Steinn Sigurdsson) writes:

   > There is apparently a subtlety to fusion bomb design
   > and an inspiration by Ulam was required to get a workable
   > design after some very smart people pondered the problem
   > for 10 years - someone who knows the answer told me that

   Steinn,

	   Why must everyone make everything overly complex!  ;)

	   We as scientists designed the H-bomb back in the fifties, 
 ..


	   The actual design of the bomb is simple as I have 
   previously stated.  The only complexity is the procurement of the 

You have so stated. Do you _know_? I don't, but I know people
who do, they have assured me it is not simple do design a
thermonuclear device - knowing me well enough to be able to
judge my knowledge of nuclear physics and my ability to
figure out unknowns.

	   I am actually suprised that nobody has built a "back-yard" 
   nuke in their basement for "neighborhood nuclear 
   superiority"....sq

Ha! Everybody knows that the second nuclear power was actually
Blacker House (1946) ;-)

*  Steinn Sigurdsson   			Lick Observatory      	*
*  steinly@lick.ucsc.edu		"standard disclaimer"  	*
*  The laws of gravity are very,very strict			*
*  And you're just bending them for your own benefit - B.B. 1988*
Newsgroups: sci.physics.fusion
From: mbk@lyapunov.ucsd.edu (Matt Kennel)
Newsgroups: sci.physics.fusion
Subject: Re: Accepting Results at Face Value
Date: 9 Oct 92 00:16:34 GMT
Organization: Institute For Nonlinear Science, UCSD
NNTP-Posting-Host: lyapunov.ucsd.edu
X-Newsreader: Tin 1.1 PL3

blue@nscl01.nscl.msu.edu writes:
: So where should we go form here?  Launch another multimillion dollar
: research program?  I don't see that 10 million dollars or even 1 million
: dollars can be well spent on cold fusion.

There are plenty of worthwhile ideas in ordinary controlled hot fusion that
are certain to produce 1 billion sigmas of measurable neutrons, radiation,
and ash, gigawatts of fusion power (and maybe some excess), that aren't
getting funded.

I would rather have people work on those first.


--
-Matt Kennel  		mbk@inls1.ucsd.edu
-Institute for Nonlinear Science, University of California, San Diego
-*** AD: Archive for nonlinear dynamics papers & programs: FTP to
-***     lyapunov.ucsd.edu, username "anonymous".
Newsgroups: sci.physics.fusion
From: ames!FNALD.FNAL.GOV!DROEGE
Subject: Help!
Reply-To: ames!FNALD.FNAL.GOV!DROEGE
Organization: Sci.physics.fusion/Mail Gateway
Date: Wed, 7 Oct 1992 20:02:12 GMT

To whom it may concern:

What is a sure fire way to kill the heat output of a cell?  Please put answer
in a plain unmarked envelope if you do not want me to know the source.  You 
can mail it from Japan so that I don't see the Stanford post mark.  

Tom Droege
Newsgroups: sci.physics.fusion
From: crb7q@kelvin.seas.Virginia.EDU (Cameron Randale Bass)
Subject: Re: The H-Bomb secret is out
Organization: University of Virginia
Date: Sun, 11 Oct 1992 07:00:33 GMT

In article <XayFsB6w165w@iowegia.uucp> quest@iowegia.uucp (Steve J. Quest) writes:
>jac@ds8.scri.fsu.edu (Jim Carr) writes:
>
>> Now I begin to question your sincerity.  People have done this. 
>> Quite a few, in quite a few different places.  And in each case, 
>> they were able to make simple order-of-magnitude estimates of 
>> exactly how big a "basement" or "back yard" they needed to do this 
>> work, especially the enrichment of U-235 and chemical separation 
>> of Pu-239.  I suggest you do the same.  If your answer does not 
>> come out to be about the size of a small town  ;-)  try again. 
>> 
>
>Jim,
>
>        Enrichment of large (ton) quantaties of U235 for reactors 
>DOES take a diffusion chamber the size of a small town, in fact 
>the one they built for the early enrichment was at that time the 
>largest single building ever built.  Now, I didn't say someone 
>would need tons of U235, just a little over 3 kilos (to be sure 
>and have a bit extra).

     Au contraire mon ami.  Enriching *one ounce* to weapons grade
     by gaseous diffusion takes a plant the size of a small town.  
     You don't do better by only having to do a little.  Also,
     the natural abundance of U-235 is about 0.7%.  Even if you
     only want 3 kilos of product, you're talking many tons of feedstock.
     You might want to invest in a calutron.  The only problem is that 
     you'll need a rather large electrical substation nearby since those
     babies really draw the juice, and you'll have to wait quite a 
     while for your 3 kilos.

     I don't think that you seem to recognize that you are talking about
     *industrial* processes.  These are things that cannot, by their
     very nature, fit in your basement.  Do you think that you could
     cast and build a tractor in your basement?  How about your vaunted
     transmission?

                               dale bass
-- 
C. R. Bass                                           crb7q@virginia.edu
Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
University of Virginia
Charlottesville, Virginia                            (804) 924-7926
Newsgroups: sci.physics
From: alison@wsrcc.com (Alison Chaiken)
Subject: Re: The H-Bomb secret is out
Organization: W S Rupprecht Computer Consulting, Fremont CA
Date: Fri, 9 Oct 1992 04:01:35 GMT

The spy who helped out the Russian bomb project was Klaus Fuchs, who
was at Los Alamos during the Manhattan project and fled to Mexico
during the '50's, right before the Rosenbergs were arrested.  The way
I've heard the story, Fuchs was the real Soviet information source
about the H-bomb, but his handler set up the Rosenbergs as patsies in
order to give Fuchs some cover. [Sources: _Physics Today_ article
about Fuchs, about 1987, and _The Making of the Atomic Bomb_ by
Richard Rhodes.  Fuchs is also mentioned in Feynman's second book.]

The Rosenbergs may not have given any valuable information away, but
they _were_ disloyal, so I for one don't feel bad about their
execution.  I'm only sorry the Walkers won't meet the same fate.
-- 
Alison Chaiken 				alison@wsrcc.com
(510) 422-7129 [daytime] 		or chaiken@cmsgee.llnl.gov
(510) 422-7300 [FAX]
Live fast, die young, leave a long publication list.
Newsgroups: sci.physics
From: crb7q@kelvin.seas.Virginia.EDU (Cameron Randale Bass)
Subject: Re: Religion & Physics Don't Mix (?)
Organization: University of Virginia
Date: Fri, 16 Oct 1992 18:08:30 GMT

In article <1992Oct16.134321.25800@sei.cmu.edu> firth@sei.cmu.edu (Robert Firth) writes:
>In article <1992Oct15.180132.2769@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU> crb7q@kelvin.seas.Virginia.EDU (Cameron Randale Bass) writes:
>
>>     In as much as the religious beliefs are not falsifiable, they are 
>>     not science.
>
>Mu.  Adopting the familiar persona of net gadfly, let me point out that
>this seems to be a highly condensed syllogism:
>
>	Unfalsifiable beliefs are not science
>	Religious beliefs are unfalsifiable
>	----
>	Religious beliefs are not science
>
>(It's called Barbara, if I remember aright.)
>
>Now, I'll grant the major premise immediately; I think we all agree
>that Popper makes a convincing case for it in his Logic of Scientific
>Discovery (aka Logik der Forschung).
>
>But what about the minor premise?  Are all religious beliefs unfalsifiable?

     I'd probably alter the second premise to read:

        "Certain religious beliefs are unfalsifiable"

     So, the conclusion should read

        "Such unfalsifiable beliefs are not science"

     which is simply the first premise again.
     I'll grant that certain religious beliefs may be falsifiable.
     However, does it matter for the purposes of physics?  The difference
     is that the beliefs need not be falsifiable.

                             dale bass

-- 
C. R. Bass                                           crb7q@virginia.edu
Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
University of Virginia
Charlottesville, Virginia                            (804) 924-7926
From: jac@ds8.scri.fsu.edu (Jim Carr)
Newsgroups: sci.physics
Subject: Re: a question about water waves
Date: 16 Oct 92 22:27:33 GMT
Reply-To: jac@ds8.scri.fsu.edu (Jim Carr)
Distribution: usa
Organization: SCRI, Florida State University

There is an extremely good exposition about water waves in the Berkeley 
Physics series ("Waves" -- vol. 3 of the series).  Good experiments 
to go along with the discussion and problems, too.

--
J. A. Carr                                    |  "The New Frontier of which I  
jac@gw.scri.fsu.edu                           |  speak is not a set of promises
Florida State University  B-186               |  -- it is a set of challenges."
Supercomputer Computations Research Institute |   John F. Kennedy (15 July 60)
From: 17158DA@MSU
Newsgroups: sci.physics
Subject: Nobel Prize
Date: 13 Oct 92 16:45:39 GMT
Organization: Michigan State University

Someone once told me that the Nobel Prize is awarded to all sciences except
one, and that one science was excluded because Nobel's wife had an affair
with a scientist in that particular science.  I thought this person had
told me the science was physics, but after perusing this bulletin board and
noting all the Nobel Prize headings, I realize that I was wrong.  My first
question is, was this person pulling my leg, or was he telling the truth?  And
secondly, if he was correct, what science is excluded?
Thanks!
-Donna
From: phs503e@vaxc.cc.monash.edu.au
Newsgroups: sci.physics
Subject: Question
Date: 16 Oct 92 13:53:58 +1000
Organization: Computer Centre, Monash University, Australia


What color is liquid carbon?

Newsgroups: sci.physics
From: bhoughto@sedona.intel.com (Blair P. Houghton)
Subject: Re: TIME HAS INERTIA AND REACTION TO PROVOCATION  
Organization: Intel Corp., Chandler, Arizona
Date: Wed, 14 Oct 1992 23:53:33 GMT

In article <abian.719027964@pv343f.vincent.iastate.edu> abian@iastate.edu (Alexander Abian) writes:
>  
>     I declared and declare that:

You are a pillock.

>   Also, I like my statement below which follows Darwin's statement:    
>
>
>      THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES BY MEANS OF NATURAL SELECTION, OR THE
>      PRESERVATION OF FAVOURED RACES IN THE STRUGGLE FOR LIFE.
>                                             C. DARWIN  (1859)
>      
>     
>      THE FUTURE OF SPECIES BY MEANS OF RATIONAL ALTERATION OF COSMOS,        
>      OR THE PRESERVATION OF INTELLIGENT RACES IN THE STRUGGLE FOR LIFE.
>                                              A. ABIAN  (1992)  

These may be statements (in the Quaylean sense) but they
aren't sentences.  So, what are they supposed to mean?

And, as we've seen, "rational alteration of the cosmos" does
not inexorably lead to "the future of species".  It's much
more likely that we'll make a grand sociological
mistake--certainly for eminently rational reasons--and nuke
all land-dwelling, mammalian life out of existence, than
that we'll develop our factor inputs and economic efficiency
to the point that we can effect any sort of alteration of
any astronomically significant feature of the universe.

What THAT means is that there's little chance, unless the
human race grows to a size far larger than this solar
system can reasonably support for the time necessary to
succeed, for us to devise (through sheer number we increase
our probabilities to discover the means) and implement (all
wealth, all progress, all growth comes from human endeavor
and the natural resources of the universe) technology that
can move a planet such as Venus from its orbit to the
Earth's.

	THE FUTURE OF CRACKPOTS BY MEANS OF RATIONAL INTERCONNECTION
	OF WRITING INSTRUMENTS, OR THE PRESERVATION OF UNIVERSITIES
	IN THE STRUGGLE FOR FEDERALLY GUARANTEED STUDENT-LOAN LIENS.
						BLAIR. P. HOUGHTON (1993)

				--Blair
				  "Here's one you might
				   be able to handle:
				   What's two and two?"

P.S.  Iowa State has a bitchin' wrestling team, so they
shouldn't be judged in this particular vacuum.
From: exuptr@exu.ericsson.se (Patrick Taylor)
Newsgroups: sci.physics
Subject: Re: Black Holes, Hawking Radiation, and Entropy
Date: 14 Oct 92 23:10:04 GMT
Distribution: sci
Organization: Ericsson Network Systems, Inc.
X-Disclaimer: This article was posted by a user at Ericsson.
              The opinions expressed are strictly those of the
              user and not necessarily those of Ericsson.

In article <ZOWIE.92Oct14134224@daedalus.stanford.edu> zowie@daedalus.stanford.edu (Craig "Powderkeg" DeForest) writes:

>The problem arises thus: one may consider the action of the black hole
>as a scattering experiment.  We start with a myriad of incoming
>particles, say several trillion copies of the _Encyclopaedia_
>_Britannica_ [and maybe a star or two], and end with a heck of a lot
>of diverging photons, with the photon energy in each expanding
>spherical shell distributed according to the blackbody radiation law
>for the temperature of the B.H. when that shell was emitted.

I can only come up with one thing.  If you compressed several trillion
copies of Encyclopedia Brittanica to a BH, at least you would not lose any 
_useful_ information.

 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
    "This must be Thursday.  I never could get the hang of Thursdays"
                                                       - Douglas Adams
  - Patrick Taylor                                       (Arthur Dent)
    Ericsson Network Systems
    exuptr@exu.ericsson.se                       "Don't let the .se fool you"
    or exuptr@ZGNews.Lonestar.Org, exu.exuptr@memo.ericsson.se
Newsgroups: sci.physics
From: slee@hyper.hyper.com (Thomas Slee)
Subject: Re: 1992 Nobel Prizes: a prediction
Reply-To: slee@hyper.UUCP (Thomas Slee)
Organization: Hypercube Inc.
Date: Thu, 8 Oct 1992 19:17:17 GMT

In article <138426@lll-winken.LLNL.GOV> chaiken@cmsgee.llnl.gov (Alison Chaiken) writes:
>Every year for the last 5 years or so I have predicted in this group
>the winners of the physics and chemistry prizes.  So far I have an
>unblemished record of being wrong every year.     Here are my
>predictions for 1992:
>
>Chemistry: Roy Smalley and Donald Huffman, for C60 discovery

Seems to me that if C60 is being thought of then H. W. Kroto should
be in the list.  Also, if Huffman, why not Kratschmer?  I think
I see a case of the well-known "non-Americans don't count" syndrome
here: only Americans suggested from international partnerships.  

You should be aware that I have a case of the equally-well-known
small-country-paranoia-about-Americans-scooping-Nobels syndrome.

			Tom Slee