Topic: Scientific Irresponsibility...

[jayvt3]

you know maybe it's just that i'm a neolithic misanthrope but these guys in my opinion ought to be shut down.  and if that don't work...kill them.  yep plain and simply kill them.  take them out into the desert bullet in the back of the head and for all the anti-gunners i'd use piano wire.  why?  it's not the fact they "don't" know how they did it but the fact they did it AGAIN several times?!!?!?!   just to see if they could do it again???   in my opinion these geeks showed absolutely regard for safety just to get 15 minutes of fame and now somewhere in the head of some ted kaczinsky wannabe is the design for a new kind of weapon.

Here's the link for the story

http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20060308/sc_space/recordsetforhottesttemperatureonearth36billiondegreesinlab

[FPF-Tobin Dax]

then how about guys like these who know what they are doing hurts people, but they keep doing it?

http://www.909shot.com/HgNo/msds.pdf

Scroll down about a tenth of the page to the yellow emergency overview section and read the warnings. Roll up your sleeve for your flu shot? That's what's in it.

[Skawpya]

The irresponsibility is less that did this repeatedly ((only they would have ended up dead if safety precautions had failed)), but that did not get very vague about what was used to make this happen, thus allowing anyone to try it themselves, not just those trusted with such a potential weapon

[GE-Raven]

I fail to see any weapons potential here.  Unless you can think of a portable way to get that kind of containment feild, GIGANTIC amounts of elctricity, and a method with which to deliver it into the midst of the enemy. 

Keep in mind every lightening bolt is hotter than the surface of the sun... and people have been less than 5 yards from a strike and suffered no burns.

When you are talking about that kind of heat... it doesn't transfer well.  It keeps burning up the medium through which it transfers.  :-)

GE-Raven

[jayvt3]

for GE-Raven:  The original Manhattan Project was took up I believe 3 floors of the building in which it was devised.  In a few short months we had the Fat Man and the Little Boy.  Weapons potential is in it.  Good God man there is weapons potential in a can of whipped creme.  Ever read the warning on the side???  The gas inside is flammable.

for Tobin:  I understand what you are trying to equate this too and I agree in part.  I have suffered and continue to suffer from the Anthrax serum series of shots that I was forced to take while on active duty with the Army.  Their neds to be accountability.  Not to stock holders and boards of directors but hard and swift justice needs to be metted out. 

for Skawpya:  It's principles.  That is what separates the Salks and Einstiens from the Mengles and *Ammash's.

*Huda Salih Mahdi Ammash was the woman in charge of Saddam Husayn's WMD program.

I hate sound like the old hard ass flight leader from TopGun but rules are in place for a reason.  They are not to "box" us in but to insure safety.  Yes maybe if there was an "accident" that only the responsible ones would have been reduced to their component elements but what about the poor schmuck security guard three floors up working extra hours to save up to buy a gift for her/his kids/parents?  What about the "damn too bad they were there" cleaning people? 

In a nutshell you could sum my arguement as this.  A person has a gun pointed at your head.  That person knows that the gun is empty and cannot kill you.  To prove they pull the trigger.  The catch is they don't tell you its unloaded.

Here are some maxims that I have been instilled with.
With great power comes great(er) responsibility.   
Those that are given much, much is expected. 
Men are not potatoes.*

*From a lesson on Command Ethics at the Army War College.

[Dracho]

When they were building the first A-bomb, and did the first chain reaction in Chicago, they weren't sure they'd be able to turn it off, once started, and some of the physicists theorized they'd burn away the atmosphere and start a solar fusion chain reaction.

But they did it anyway.

[Bonk]

The Z-Machine poses no danger whatsoever.

Does this look dangerous?

http://www.sandia.gov/media/z290.htm

Do a little reading... :
http://www.dynaverse.net/forum/index.php/topic,163363483.msg1122670201.html#msg1122670201

Look into the unpublicised antimatter containment efforts if you are interested in end-of-world scenarios. If you find anything out I'd bet your life would be in danger. <dons tinfoil hat>

Remember the Superconducting Supercollider that was cancelled in the US? (cancelled, yeah right, militarised I say...)

CERN in Europe had to take on an equivalent project for public scientific research once the american one was mysteriously cancelled.


Here's one for you jayvt3, ought to keep you busy for a while... hehe...   

http://www.exitmundi.nl/

[FRA.E.Kehakoul_XC]

Did it anyways...., yea ,clearly shows what kind of jerks are usualy in power positions.

[762_XC]

There were some pretty amusing end of the world scenarios associated with trying to create quark-gluon plasma up at BNL. Needless to say, we are still here.

Mini black holes! Oh noes!!11!

[jayvt3]

for bonk:  tiger cubs look cute too.  just ask Siegfried and Roy.  the end of the world doesn't bother me (funny site though gives me great storylines for a trek novel I'm working on).  it's gonna happen today tomorrow next week or whenever the Big Guy in the Sky says so.  What does bother me is the jeopardizing of the lives and livelyhood of people.  i should warn you that you're talking to a guy that believes those Enron bastards should get needles in the arm and their families should be sold as slaves to Ugandan thugs who like a little white girl to come home to after a long day of ethnic cleansing.

for drycho:  the weapon served it's purpose.  i believe we should have reduced the Japanese population to ashes and the germans as well.  they deserved it.  both of these nations had opportunity after opportunity to adhere to rules and international laws but one thought that they were homo-superior and the other thought that they were gods.  Neither deserve to walk upright.

[Dracho]

David Brin's "Earth" is a great read about accidently making a black hole.

[FRA.E.Kehakoul_XC]

Well, unluckyly you would never havebeen able to build the bomb if it werent for the lighning fast switches from Germany,you got  as a present in that sub right?
Good example of how people tend to forget where they stoley their technological inovations from.
Further its considered to be uncool to kill the own relatives..,so many americans are Name changed Germans.
Could it be that you are a slight bit unreflected if it comes to stuff like this jayvt3?

[Dracho]

Well, unluckyly you would never havebeen able to build the bomb if it werent for the lighning fast switches from Germany,you got  as a present in that sub right?
Good example of how people tend to forget where they stoley their technological inovations from.
Further its considered to be uncool to kill the own relatives..,so many americans are Name changed Germans.
Could it be that you are a slight bit unreflected if it comes to stuff like this jayvt3?

I'm not familiar with any switches from a captured U-Boat being used in the Manhatten project!  Please elaborate!  Are you maybe referring to the Enigma machine?  To my knowledge, only the U-110 (a IXB designed in 1935, and hardly noteworthy in terms of technology) and the U-505 (a IXC and again not one of the late war marvels of German engineering) were ever captured (not counting post-war surrenders). 

The U-110 was captured in 1941 by the British and was the source of the Enigma machine and the breaking of the German Naval Code, and the U-505 was captured in 1944 by the Americans.  The Captain who captured it was nearly courtsmartialed because it was feared the Kreigsmarine might change their codes because it was captured instead of sunk.


Also, it is my understanding that many of the German expatriots (Hitler frightened most of them off in the early 30's) who built the bombs were repeatedly assured it would never be used on Germany.

(Just as an aside, did you know the only target destroyed in North America in WWII, was a loading pier in Bell Island, Newfoundland?  The U-518 fired a torpedo at a loading pier and "sank" it).

It took a special kind of person to go to sea on a U-boat, because most of those guys never came back.

The most successful ones:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_successful_U-boats

[jayvt3]

i think that the purpose off my post has been dilluted.  i was trying to convey that these little intellectual snobs just thumbed their collective noses at the basics of safety in science.   now i know risks are in exploration but they are not and will never be a purposeful part of discovery or invention.

i refuse to adhere to the term "acceptable risks".  i never will.

for FRA:  War by it's sole reason is horrible and a stain upon the tapestry that is human history.  To try to find anything noble in it is a fools venture.  I believe also if it is a crime in society then the law applies doubly so in war.  Rape is the death penalty but the enemy gets wiped out to the last man, woman and especially children.  No prisoners mean no prisoner abuses.  Take nothing from the enemy except that which will help you to win.  War should be so horrible that nations should fall down and beg GOD for a way, any way other than war.

[FRA.E.Kehakoul_XC]

No Dracho,.. i dont talk about the Enigma

I talk about U-234 which surrendered 1945 to you guys it had 260 tons of equipment abord  for the Japanese atom programm.That cargo consisted of 560 Kgs Uranum oxid which was used for Hiroshima, it had a dissassembled Me- 262 aboard and tons of equipment needed for implosion type nuclear weapons ,inclusive theose switches i mentiond, which are needed for implosion type warheads  in order to be able to ignite the explosives symetricaly.
Its proven that those  parts were used in those two  bombs.., and before you say it, yes i am aware that the first one was not a implosion type bomb ,...what do you think,.. i am in need to make those things up?? lol
There are tons more of unwelcome informations were those  came from.

[762_XC]

Interesting! I had no idea about U-234.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U-234

The Wiki article makes no mention of the switching equipment. Do you have a reference link for that somewhere Kehak?

I'm pretty sure Little Boy's U-235 came from Oak Ridge.

[Bonk]

i think that the purpose off my post has been dilluted.  i was trying to convey that these little intellectual snobs just thumbed their collective noses at the basics of safety in science.   now i know risks are in exploration but they are not and will never be a purposeful part of discovery or invention.

i refuse to adhere to the term "acceptable risks".  i never will.

What makes you think there was ever any danger? I'm afraid the article linked on slashdot does not have anywhere near the information to make such a conclusion; it typical media hype about science that they have no real conception of.

Did you read the article from Sandia I linked (http://www.sandia.gov/media/z290.htm)?

The experiment takes place under high vacuum, The timescale of the experiment is on the order of microseconds. It amounts basically to a glorified lightbulb burnout.

I am also in serious doubt about the temperatures reported. Temperature is a way for humans to express the collective kinetic energy of a group of particles. It has no real meaning applied in this context, just public effect. I'd like to see the details on the measurement apparatus. (in fact the actual numbers are electron volts... on the order of 200 eV)

So where is this perceived risk?

Was the minute amount of superheated plasma with microsecond lifetimes somehow going to breach a large vacuum and consume the earth? 

I have produced energies on a similar scale (70 eV) under high vacuum literally thousands of times, I'm still here. In fact I did so for the purpose of protecting the environment. Can you conceive of that?

Why aren't you concerned by military antimatter containment efforts which can pose a real and genuine threat to the integrity of the earth's structure... we were able to store a few hundred antiprotons on the benchtop for over 10 minutes over ten years ago... I am very suspicious of the lack of reports on progress in this area. Why? Because only minute quantities of antimatter are required to produce an explosion that will literally crack this planet in half.... I'm not worried about fancy lightbulbs.

[The Postman]

I'm pretty sure Little Boy's U-235 came from Oak Ridge.

I can confirm that the material came from Oak Ridge. At one time I could have told you exactly which building it came out of but I have forgotten that by now( I think Y-13). Both of my maternal grandparents worked and lived at Oak Ridge during the war.

[Dracho]

No Dracho,.. i dont talk about the Enigma

I talk about U-234 which surrendered 1945 to you guys it had 260 tons of equipment abord  for the Japanese atom programm.That cargo consisted of 560 Kgs Uranum oxid which was used for Hiroshima, it had a dissassembled Me- 262 aboard and tons of equipment needed for implosion type nuclear weapons ,inclusive theose switches i mentiond, which are needed for implosion type warheads  in order to be able to ignite the explosives symetricaly.
Its proven that those  parts were used in those two  bombs.., and before you say it, yes i am aware that the first one was not a implosion type bomb ,...what do you think,.. i am in need to make those things up?? lol
There are tons more of unwelcome informations were those  came from.

Hmm.. I'd heard of the U-234, but never took note of the Uranium.  Here is a link to a documentary that I might try to get my hands on.

This meticulous recreation of U-234's final voyage sheds new light onto one of World War Two's enduring mysteries. Departing Germany in late March 1945, U234's mission was to deliver cutting-edge German military technology to Japan; its payload included V-2 rocket and jet fighter components, and about 1,200 pounds of uranium oxide, a key ingredient in Japan's own atomic weapons program. After weeks of evading Allied attacks, the ship's crew surrendered to the U.S. Navy upon learning of Germany's defeat; the ship was escorted to an American port and its cargo carefully scrutinized. The uranium oxide however quickly vanished without a trace. One of this film's key revelations comes from Major John Lansdale, a Manhattan Project official who apparently confiscated the uranium for America's own bomb-building program; he and others argue persuasively that U-234's uranium shipment, intended by Germany for its Japanese ally, was ultimately delivered by America, in the bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Combining sharp archival detail with exhaustive interviews including U-234 crew and officers, the Manhattan Project's Hans Bethe, Lansdale and others, this film provides powerful answers to one of the war's most intriguing chapters.

http://www.ihffilm.com/840.html

[Just plain old Punisher]

The uranium was mined from Alaska, and then transported to Oak Ridge.