Recent content by Jess H. Brewer

We've already BEEN to the Moon quite a few times, starting in 1969(!), but we didn't stay long because we had to carry all our food, water and air. In the ensuing 46 years we may have learned a few things, but the technology required to build a colony in space was already old back then. What...

I guess that's so. Classically K = L^2/2I so if I is huge K is tiny. Sorry!

Your second sentence makes a false assertion that because the radius is large there is no kinetic energy. If there is angular momentum, there is kinetic energy. I didn't get past that error.

Hmmm, I hadn't thought of that. Should work fairly well with other Forum sites too!

That's the problem with the standard Forum architecture, IMNSHO. People open Fora & Threads for idiosyncratic and esoteric purposes; a few people may respond; and then the threads go dead, but they hang around like lipofuscin molecules in cells, cluttering up the works and providing the...

I just spent the better part of an hour searching for an appropriate thread in Feedback & Announcements, and finally gave up. I might eventually open an entire new thread devoted to this topic, but I probably won't. Perhaps this is not the place for me; I find the process of hunting through...

No, there's no point in making a big issue of one particular expired thread; that would be like pushing on the short end of a long lever. It's not just PF, it's the whole Internet -- any problem not resolved within a short (and getting shorter) time dissolves into the sea of ennui. Perhaps...

Yep, that's what happened. <mutter><grumble>I'm disappointed that DaleSpam felt 2 years was too long a run for a Forum on Muon Catalyzed Fusion -- a topic that has been lingering at the cutting edge of physics for over half a century. This policy positions PF closer to Twitter than to Phys...

Thanks, but I've always been recalcitrant about taking good advice from experts. This has led to occasional examples of the creative power of ignorance, which I cherish almost enough to compensate for all the dumb mistakes to which it also led. (Besides, although I love Card's ideas, I don't...

Hi, I'm a retired (since 2011) Physics prof from the University of British Columbia. I originally set out to get a PhD in Physics to increase my credibility as a science fiction writer, but I discovered a field* that was so cool it was like being a character in my own SF novel. In short, I got...

Yes, experiments all confirm that sticking is THE problem. Best so far is 200 or so fusions before the muon sticks to an alpha. Temperature is largely irrelevant. The alpha has kinetic energy far in excess of anything you will produce thermally at any compression; that's why the muon...