“Everything about it would be bad,” says Mark Hammergren, an astronomer at Adler Planetarium in Chicago, beginning with your attempt to scoop it up. Despite the fact that white dwarfs are fairly common throughout the universe, the nearest is 8.6 light-years away. Let’s assume, though, that you’ve spent 8.6 years in your light-speed car and that the radiation and heat emanating from the star didn’t kill you on your approach. White dwarfs are extremely dense stars, and their surface gravity is about 100,000 times as strong as Earth’s. “You’d have to get your sample—which would be very hard to carve out—without falling onto the star and getting flattened into a plasma,” Hammergren says. “And even then, the high pressure would cause the hydrogen atoms in your body to fuse into helium.”
(This type of reaction, by the way, is what triggers a hydrogen bomb.)
Then you’d have to worry about confinement. Freeing the sample from its superdense, high-pressure home and bringing it to Earth’s relatively low-pressure environment would cause it to expand explosively without proper containment. But if it didn’t blow up in your face—or vaporize your face, since the stuff’s temperature ranges between 10,000˚ and 100,000˚F—and you somehow got it to your kitchen table, you’d be hard-pressed to feed yourself: A single teaspoon would weigh in excess of five tons. “You’d pop it into your mouth and it would fall unimpeded through your body, carve a channel through your gut, come out through your nether regions, and burrow a hole toward the center of the Earth,” Hammergren says. “The good news is that it’s not quite dense enough to have a strong enough gravitational field to rip you apart from the inside out.”
It probably wouldn’t be worth the trouble anyway, Hammergren laments. White dwarfs are mostly helium or carbon, so your teaspoonful would taste like a whiff of flavorless helium gas or a lick of coal. But if you’re desperate for a taste of star, you don’t really need to travel 8.6 light-years—your fridge is full of the stuff. Most of the elements that make up our bodies and everything around us were formed in the cores of stars and then belched out into the universe over billions of years. Basically everything you eat was once part of a star. Might we recommend some star fruit?
Ah. The Cold War. How very British we all were about the prospect of being vaporised at any moment by a hydrogen bomb - the threat of nuclear war was nothing more than a passing annoyance to the ordinary British gent in the street..! http://whatliesbeneath.org.uk/Ah. The Cold War. How very British we all were about the prospect of being vaporised... more
The New York Times reports that about 10 percent of electricity generated in the United States comes from fuel from dismantled nuclear bombs, mostly Russian. 'It's a great, easy source' of fuel, said Marina V. Alekseyenkova, an analyst at Renaissance Bank and an expert in the Russian nuclear industry that has profited from the arrangement since the end of the cold war. But if more diluted weapons-grade uranium isn't secured soon, the pipeline could run dry, with ramifications for consumers, as well as some American utilities and their Russian suppliers.
Portfolio Strategy
Buy Into Fossil Fuels
Ken Fisher, 09.02.09, 06:00 PM EDT
Forbes Magazine dated September 21, 2009
Energy-hungry consumers around the globe will be demanding fossil fuels. So be overweight in energy stocks--at least 12% of your equity.
Rich Karlgaard's recent column on energy and the Waxman-Markey carbon trading bill should be required reading for every high school and college kid. They should have to read it three times. Adults should have to prove they've read it before being allowed to vote. The column outlined the harsh reality of renewable energy. In this country 89% of electricity comes from three fuel sources: coal, natural gas and nuclear fission. That fraction won't change dramatically in the next decade. If you want your air conditioner to work in 2014, you'd better hope that more fossil fuel plants get built.
I'm riding down the road in a friend's electric Tesla Roadster. Sounds clean, doesn't it? But we are burning 49% coal, 21% natural gas, 20% nuclear and little else. Wind power? Zip! How will we run Teslas without fossil fuel? We won't. How will emerging markets, with a combined gdp already bigger than America's, grow without more fossil fuel? They won't.
Nuclear power might provide for our needs (and, if you believe in the global warming theory, protect our atmosphere). If the French can get 70% of their electric energy from nuclear safely and cleanly, then we can. But will we? Politically, it will be difficult. Many of the same people screaming that fossil fuel creates global warming are also adamantly against adding clean nuclear power. There are a lot of nuclear reactor applications pending in the U.S., but the permits will be few, and slow in coming.
That situation, and the fact that other energy-hungry countries will also be demanding fossil fuels, tells me you should be overweight in energy stocks. That means at least 12% of your equity in energy companies, and most of that in companies with a fossil fuel emphasis.
I'm posting this here just to annoy the vast majority of you. You can deny it, try to refute it, or play games with it, but thirty or forty years down the road, you just might wish you'd invested in it.
by the way, the stocks he touts after the last paragraph i quoted here are his SECOND tier picks. his first-tier picks are in MY portfolio with him.
your call....
enjoy!Portfolio Strategy
Buy Into Fossil Fuels
Ken Fisher, 09.02.09, 06:00 PM EDT
Forbes... more
North Korea issued a veiled threat Monday to increase its nuclear arsenal if U.S. officials do not quickly agree to the one-on-one talks that the communist regime is demanding.
The regime's impatience came days after No. 2 nuclear negotiator Ri Gun came away from meetings with Washington envoy Sung Kim without an agreement to hold bilateral talks.
"If the U.S. is not ready to sit at a negotiating table with the (North), it will go its own way," the North's Foreign Ministry said in a statement carried by Pyongyang's official Korean Central News Agency.
The statement did not elaborate, but it was widely seen as a warning that the North will bolster its nuclear stockpile - a brinksmanship tactic that the communist nation has often employed.
In September, the North said it was "weaponizing" plutonium, a key ingredient for nuclear bombs, and succeeded in uranium enrichment, which would give the regime a second way to make atomic bombs. That was also seen as a pressure tactic aimed at getting Washington to agree to one-on-one negotiations.
North Korea has mixed such threats with a series of conciliatory moves, such as releasing two detained American journalists, after months of raising tensions with nuclear and missile tests. The North has also quit the six-nation nuclear disarmament talks - which involve China, Japan, Russia, the U.S. and the two Koreas.
North Korea and the U.S. fought on opposite sides of the Korean War of the 1950s and do not have diplomatic relations. Both nations have tanks and troops on guard at the heavily fortified border dividing the two Koreas.
Pyongyang claims it must develop atomic weapons to defend itself against nuclear threats from the U.S. The regime has long sought direct negotiations with Washington saying it was because of U.S. nuclear threats that the country develop nuclear bombs.
Washington has denied it has any intention of attacking the North. But Defense Secretary Robert Gates assured Seoul last month that Washington was prepared to unleash all military capabilities - including its nuclear might - to defend the longtime ally.
Pyongyang's main Rodong Sinmun newspaper blasted Gates' remarks, saying the U.S. is trying to provoke a nuclear war on the Korean peninsula.
The paper said in a commentary carried by KCNA that the North's "nuclear deterrent will be bolstered" if the U.S. refuses to switch its "policy of aggression" toward the North.
On Monday, the North's ministry also said that "meaningful progress" on a nuclear-free Korean peninsula is possible - "if the hostile relations between the (North) and the U.S. are settled and confidence is built between them."
Washington has maintained that it is willing to engage North Korea in bilateral talks - if they lead to the resumption of the stalled six-nation disarmament talks.
North Korea's Ri, who was in the U.S. at the invitation of private organizations, said discussions with the U.S. envoy were "useful," South Korea's Yonhap news agency reported. Still, both KCNA and State Department officials in Washington said no decision had been made on holding bilateral talks.
The North agreed in 2007 to disable its nuclear facilities - as a step toward its ultimate dismantlement - in exchange for energy aid and political concessions. Pyongyang halted the process and later abandoned the pact after receiving most of the promised energy aid and concessions.
The standoff led to Pyongyang conducting its second nuclear test and banned missile tests earlier this year.
Radioactive debris has been found in canyons that drain into the Rio Grande, but officials at the Los Alamos National Laboratory say there's no health risk.
More than 60 years after scientists assembled the nuclear bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, lethal waste is seeping from mountain burial sites and moving toward aquifers, springs and streams that provide water to 250,000 residents of northern New Mexico.
Isolated on a high plateau, the Los Alamos National Laboratory seemed an ideal place to store a bomb factory's deadly debris. But the heavily fractured mountains haven't contained the waste, some of which has trickled down hundreds of feet to the edge of the Rio Grande, one of the most important water sources in the Southwest.
Every so often seems that Italy can wake up from its heavy slumber. These days the story of Stefano Cucchi led to a general awareness on a basic principle in a state of law: that a person should not die in jail without reason. Images of the murder of Camorra in Naples have shown to all the mundane simplicity with which mafia kills in the street in broad daylight. http://inaltreparole.net/en/resistance/risvegliitalia301009.htmlEvery so often seems that Italy can wake up from its heavy slumber. These days the... more
Just hours after Iranian President Ahmadinejad agreed to accept an IAEA deal to enrich uranium out of the country, they suddenly backed out. The plan had been to take Iran's nuclear stockpile and send it to Russia to be enriched. It's disappointing for those concerned about Iran's plans for its enriching uranium - though I don't think it's particularly surprising.
I was thinking about how long Iran has been playing this game, and it brought to mind this Supernews gem: Iran: Deal or No Deal?
That piece was produced in 2006. Over three years ago. It's kind of disheartening to see what looks like the same game playing out, but with a few different players. No more Bush or Condoleeza Rice, and Putin is now the Prime Minister of Russia, not the President. But it's hard not to watch this and see Iran doing the same things today. Is there another card up the Obama Administration's negotiating sleeve? Let's hope so.
Russia will spend $600 million on a nuclear-powered spacecraft
to take men to Mars, and beyond. Is it safe?
Cleantech Society - Disturbing Events http://tinyurl.com/ylqwdgn
Colorado U.S. Sen. Mark Udall Wednesday took his boldest step yet on the road to a national nuclear renaissance as part of a program designed to combat global warming. He introduced the Nuclear Energy Research Initiative Improvement Act of 2009 in a lengthy speech on the Senate floor in which he acknowledged he was likely stepping on an environmental landmine.
"For some, news that a Udall is speaking favorably about nuclear power will come as a stark - and perhaps unpleasant - surprise. But I also believe public and expert opinion on the risks and benefits of nuclear power has changed," Udall said, referencing the 1979 Three Mile Island power plant meltdown and the industry's struggle to improve its public image in the ensuing three decades.
Iraq has started lobbying for approval to again become a nuclear player, almost 19 years after British and American war planes destroyed Saddam Hussein's last two reactors, the Guardian has learned.
The Iraqi government has approached the French nuclear industry about rebuilding at least one of the reactors that was bombed at the start of the first Gulf war.
The government has also contacted the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and United Nations to seek ways around resolutions that ban Iraq's re-entry into the nuclear field.Iraq has started lobbying for approval to again become a nuclear player, almost 19... more
VIENNA (Reuters) - Iran ignored a U.N. deadline on Friday to respond to an international draft deal for it to cut an atomic stockpile the West fears could be used for weapons, and challenged the basis of the pact.
Iranian officials said they would give an answer only next week to the U.N.-drafted deal, which has been accepted by the other parties -- Russia, France and the United States.
They also said Tehran preferred to acquire enriched uranium abroad rather than send out its own for processing into fuel for nuclear medicine, as Western powers said it tentatively agreed to at Geneva talks on October 1 on ways to defuse growing confrontation over its disputed atomic aspirations.
....
The U.N. nuclear agency said it had been told by Iran that it was considering the proposal "in depth and in a favorable light," but needed until the middle of next week to take a position -- flouting the IAEA's Friday deadline for responses.
It said International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Mohamed ElBaradei hoped Iran's reply "will equally be positive, since approval of this agreement will signal a new era of cooperation" after seven years of standoff.
....
(more in full article - but really, who didn't see this coming? What do you guys think - is it imortant for them to abandon nuclear development of anything but power etc? And should other countries [ie not just Middle East] be disarming and disposing of the weapons as well? I think this world would be better off if no one had these blasted things.)VIENNA (Reuters) - Iran ignored a U.N. deadline on Friday to respond to an... more
Negotiators in Vienna have produced a draft agreement on exporting Iran's enriched uranium. The countries involved have been given until Friday to ratify the proposals.
Under the draft deal, most of Iran's stockpile of low enriched uranium would be shipped out of the country for processing into fuel to make medical isotopes in a research reactor in Tehran.
Negotiators were unable to clinch a final agreement after more than two days of talks in the Austrian capital, apparently because the Iranian delegation, led by the ambassador to Vienna, did not have the authority to sign a far-reaching deal about which there was no consensus in Tehran.
Announcing the draft deal, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) director, Mohamed ElBaradei, said it represented a balanced approach, offering to provide Iran with fuel for making medical isotopes, while building international confidence in Iran's intentions by shipping much of its enriched uranium out of the country.Negotiators in Vienna have produced a draft agreement on exporting Iran's enriched... more
TEHRAN (Mobixone.com) – Iran will never abandon its “legal and obvious” right to nuclear technology, Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said on Tuesday, adding that Tehran had no plan to halt its disputed uranium enrichment work.TEHRAN (Mobixone.com) – Iran will never abandon its “legal and obvious” right to... more
A Washington Post report published Sunday is drawing a wave of cheers across the Internet for revealing what is being hailed as "the truth" about Iran's nuclear program.
Specifically, the report states that Iran is incapable of producing a nuclear bomb within the next six to eight years, turning on ear repeated claims in media that Iran is only a short time away from possessing such a weapon.
"The regime's most likely path to the bomb begins in Natanz, in central Iran, the site of the nuclear facility where over the past three years about 1,500 kilograms of uranium gas has been enriched to low levels," Joseph Cirincione wrote. "Iran could kick out U.N. inspectors, abandon the Non-Proliferation Treaty and reprocess the gas into highly enriched uranium in about six months; it would take at least six more months to convert that uranium into the metal form required for one bomb. Technical problems with both processes could stretch this period to three years. Finally, Iran would need perhaps five additional years -- and several explosive tests -- to develop a Hiroshima-yield bomb that could be fitted onto a ballistic missile."A Washington Post report published Sunday is drawing a wave of cheers across the... more
In the past several years, there has been much contest over the Iranian nuclear program and the west has repeatedly rebuked any efforts made by Iran to step into the nuclear age. Now it seems that the previous efforts for Iran to enrich their uranium at home have been unsuccessful and Iran must ship their low-enriched uranium to other nations for further refinement. Several years back there was an article linked from Current regarding new techniques created in Iran using newly-modeled centrifuges which would highly enrich uranium... What happened?! It seems that now they must ship their uranium, which is to be used for medical research, to foreign nations. This is not entirely bad for Iran's stature with the west, the International Atomic Energy Agency monitors the facilities in the nations Iran is shipping their Uranium to, thus legitimizing the Iranian nuclear program.
These steps taken by Iran seem to be nullified by the States and their political figures, who for years have chastised Iran, it's leaders, and its nuclear program. The United States have pushed for threatening sanctions to be placed on Iran by the IAEA and the UN, and it seems they have not lightened up even now. Though the Iranians have been forced to ship their uranium to other facilities, this has placed them in the light of the IAEA inspectors and allowed other nations to see their level of development. The States have not relented in their onslaught of attempted discreditation, but several other nations have stepped up and taken up the slack in the Iranian program, putting many American fears to rest. The latest attempt of the States' has been criticism over a second national facility, this one built in secret. The Iranian defense was the need to have a second facility to fall back on if it came to the West wiping out the primary facility. The States didn't buy it, but several third parties agree that this facility is merely a secondary facility with no hidden agenda, merely a backup facility, built out of legitimate fear of Western reprisal. However, now that Iran must ship away most of their uranium, it is tracked all the way by the IAEA, nothing therefore can be hidden or operated in secret or aggresively - merely an honest attempt at nuclear technology.
There are many questions to be asked and answered in the coming years of the fledgling Iranian Nuclear Program, but for the time being, this development seems to be a positive note in the struggle to compete technologically with the west - and I most certainly do not hint at weaponization!
What are your thoughts on the Iranian Nuclear Program? Have the States been too harsh in their criticisms of Iran over these circumstances? What happened to Iran's new-type centrifuges?In the past several years, there has been much contest over the Iranian nuclear... more
Tomorrow the U.S. will meet with Iran to seal the deal that could take the country's uranium away. Michael Adler on why the moment is the ultimate test of Obama's engagement policy.Tomorrow the U.S. will meet with Iran to seal the deal that could take the country's... more
PNND Global Coordinator Alyn Ware to Receive
Right Livelihood Award
Alyn Ware, Global Coordinator for the Parliamentarians for Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament, will receive the 2009 Right Livelihood Award in recognition of "his effective and creative advocacy and initiatives over two decades to further peace education and to rid the world of nuclear weapons".
Click for More....PNND Global Coordinator Alyn Ware to Receive
Right Livelihood Award
Alyn Ware,... more
"In 1957, my mentor, second Soka Gakkai president Josei Toda, issued a historic call for the abolition of nuclear weapons. His speech, which denounced nuclear weapons as an absolute evil, contains three themes of particular relevance for today: the need for a transformation in the consciousness of political leaders; the need for a clearly shared vision toward the outlawing of nuclear weapons; and the need to establish “human security” on a global scale.
I believe it is possible to lay the foundations for a world without nuclear weapons during the next five years, and to this end would suggest a five-part plan. I call on:
1. The five declared nuclear-weapon states to announce their commitment to a shared vision of a world without nuclear weapons at next year’s NPT Review Conference and to promptly initiate concrete steps toward its achievement.
2. The United Nations to establish a panel of experts on nuclear abolition, strengthening collaborative relations with civil society regarding the disarmament process.
3. The states parties to the NPT to strengthen nonproliferation mechanisms and remove obstacles to the elimination of nuclear weapons by the year 2015.
4. All states to actively cooperate to reduce the role of nuclear weapons in national security and to advance on a global scale toward the establishment of security arrangements that are not dependent on nuclear weapons by the year 2015.
5. The world’s people to clearly manifest their will for the outlawing of nuclear weapons and to establish, by the year 2015, the international norm that will serve as the foundation for a Nuclear Weapons Convention (NWC)."
Click For Full Proposal"In 1957, my mentor, second Soka Gakkai president Josei Toda, issued a historic call... more
Tens of thousands of nuclear workers are seriously ill or dying from their exposure to radioactive and hazardous materials -- and they are not being compensated for their illnesses despite promises from the federal government.Tens of thousands of nuclear workers are seriously ill or dying from their exposure to... more
