The WOW Science Thread

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pharvey
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Re: The WOW Science Thread

Post by pharvey »

As good a place to post as any.....

This is quite something and a very interesting read...

"A Chinese entrepreneur who took just 19 days to build a 57-storey tower says he has triggered a construction revolution. And his dreams soar far, far higher.

On the outskirts of Changsha in southern China stands a new tower. Its size is modest by Chinese standards.

At a mere 204m it's less than a third of the height of Shanghai's tallest. Its blocky glass and steel form may be unlikely to win any architectural beauty awards.

But what is startling is the speed at which it was built. A time-lapse video shows it shoot up at the rate of three storeys per day. "


Full Article: - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt ... fda5015115

:cheers: :cheers:
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Re: The WOW Science Thread

Post by Bristolian »

I believe it's also somewhat misleading. From what I see the assembly of the building, on site, can be very quick but only if the factory is ahead of the game and can deliver the pre-assembled modules to the building site on schedule and in order. If one model is wrong the whole construction is delayed.

The factory must either keep up or build modules in advance which adds to the total time to build.

The idea is not new. Prefabricated houses were common after WWII as a method of replacing the housing stocks.

I hope that they have it right this time as many of the prefabricated houses in the UK suffered badly over the years and became almost unsellable without major and costly modifications.

Still very interesting, particularly in climates where outdoors building is limited to short seasons.
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Re: The WOW Science Thread

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Is this not similar to the huge condo on your right as you cross the flyover en-route to Pranburi?

I believe they've built loads of similar units in Udon Thani as well.
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Re: The WOW Science Thread

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^ Just watched a very interesting documentary on National Geographic regarding the Rosetta/Philae Lander mission (a little different from previous documentaries I've seen on the subject) - well worth a watch (if you can download). Even if the whole space travel/exploration is not of interest to you, you have to marvel at the achievement.

"Rosetta: Comet Landing"

:cheers: :cheers:
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Re: The WOW Science Thread

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"The Stratolaunch Will Soon Be the Largest Plane in the World"

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https://www.yahoo.com/autos/s/stratolau ... 41433.html
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Re: The WOW Science Thread

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Elon Musk certainly comes up with some interesting concepts!! Will interesting to see if this actually gets any further than the test stage - and what it's going to cost!!

Winning Hyperloop Design Revealed by MIT Engineers

"Designs for passenger pods that could travel through airless tubes have been revealed by a team from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The Hyperloop is a conceptual transport system in which passenger pods could be fired through vacuum tubes at more than 600mph (1,000km/h).

The MIT team came first in a SpaceX competition to design pods that could be tested in a prototype tube.
The team will now have the opportunity to build and test its design in the US."


Full Story: - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-35481976

:cheers: :cheers:
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Re: The WOW Science Thread

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"Germany makes landmark fusion power achievement as W7-X reactor fires up for real

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Our dreams of nuclear fusion are drawing ever nearer thanks to a scientific leap forward in Germany. On Wednesday, a team of researchers at Max Planck Institute in Greifswald switched on the Wendelstein 7-X stellarator for the very first time with a little help from Chancellor Angela Merkel. It was a fitting honor for Time Magazine’s Person of the Year, as Merkel herself is a physicist. With temperatures reaching 80 million degrees Celsius, the stellarator successfully generated its first hydrogen plasma, bringing us closer to nuclear fusion power.

Nuclear fusion, which involves the combination of two lighter atomic nuclei into one heavy nucleus, generates a massive amount of energy that physicists believe can be harvested as an incredibly clean energy source.

The $435 million device will be instrumental in scientists’ attempts to test the potential of a fusion reactor, and its operation yesterday is just the beginning of further work that will determine its “suitability for use in a power plant.” When Merkel pressed a button yesterday, the stellarator generated “a 2-megawatt pulse of microwave” which “transformed a tiny quantity of hydrogen gas into an extremely hot low-density hydrogen plasma.” This, scientists say, allows for the “separation of the electrons from the nuclei of the hydrogen atoms.”

Related: Russia plans to build its largest data center on top of a nuclear power plant

As exciting as these latest developments are, scientists say that they’re only the tip of the iceberg in their experiments. This initial phase is expected to last through mid-March. Afterwards, researchers will look to create an environment that allows for “higher heating powers, higher temperatures, and longer discharges lasting up to ten seconds,” Professor Thomas Klinger, the project lead says. It is anticipated that the full tests will take around four years to complete, whereupon scientists will be able to sustain discharges that last 30 minutes with heating power of 20 megawatts. It is only at that point that they’ll be able to completely determine whether the Wendelstein 7-X can actually reach its optimization targets.

“It’s a very clean source of power, the cleanest you could possibly wish for,” said John Jelonnek, a physicist at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology whose team is responsible for the huge microwave ovens that will transform the hydrogen into plasma. “We’re not doing this for us but for our children and grandchildren.” "

https://www.yahoo.com/tech/germany-make ... 53294.html
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Re: The WOW Science Thread

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"China Close To Creating ‘Artificial Sun’ That Could End Reliance On Fossil Fuels

Chinese scientists have managed to create a hydrogen gas that is three times hotter than the sun.

The artificial solar energy could eventually be used as an inexhaustible source of power, ending reliance on fossil fuels and solving the world energy crisis.

Chinese boffins created the gas in a huge magnetic fusion reactor at the Institute of Physical Science in Hefei.

Invented by Soviet scientists in the 1950s, the Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) features a massive metallic doughtnut-shaped chamber twisted into a figure of eight.

Researchers were able to use the reactor to produce temperatures of 50 million Kelvins (49.999 million°C) and maintain them for 102 seconds.

The core of the sun is believed to around 15 million Kelvins.

Although a previous experiment by German scientists claims to have produced temperatures hotter than this, it was unable to sustain them for as long.

While the news is an important breakthrough, it could still take decades to perfect the process so that it can be used as a constant power source. "

https://news.yahoo.com/china-close-to-c ... .html?nf=1
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Re: The WOW Science Thread

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