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Advanced Biodiesel Classes

girl mark — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 22:39:26 GMT

Biodiesel Production Classes

Biodiesel Essentials: Sept 18-19, 10-5 pm

Advanced Topics in Biodiesel Production: Sept 20-21, 10-5 pm. (Must have prior experience or attend the Essentials class first)

Riverhead, NY
early bird registration before 8/16 $108 per class
After 8/16: $120 per class
www.girlmark.com/tour

This class also offered in Florida in October, and elsewhere during the fall.

Biodiesel is a clean-burning diesel alternative made from any natural oil or fat. It can be made easily in a backyard or garage environment. We are offering two classes at a home in Riverhead, LI, covering beginning or advanced topics, on September 18-19 or 21-22.

The Biodiesel Essentials class is a comprehensive, hands-on workshop that teaches you everything you need to know to make high quality biodiesel, use your system more efficiently, and make informed decisions about shortcuts. This class is geared to both beginning and more advanced students and we encourage discussion of questions you may have, as appropriate.

There are extensive hands-on 'lab' portions in the class during which you will get individual attention to make sure you understand the process fully and can do the techniques on your own at home. We will run a full-sized system but also do 'lab'-scale batches so that you really learn the underlying concepts and techniques, and we will make some 'engineered failures' so you learn what not to do and what causes it.

The Advanced Topics class covers many more techniques beyond basic production, and will be more discussion-based, with some experienced regional homebrewers and farm-scale biodiesel producers attending, who will share their experience (if you have experience in biodiesel, please bring a short presentation about your system, or photos to share). There will be some hands-on lab work in the Advanced Topics class as well (soap testing and water/glycerine neutralization, ethanol-based biodiesel production techniques, and acid-base two-stage biodiesel will all be done as a lab exercise). Advanced Topics will also cover regulatory issues with small-scale production, composting or boiler fuel use of glycerine and advanced treatment of spent wash water, taxes, and more.

To attend the weekend Advanced Topics class, you must have prior experience making biodiesel, or attend the Thur-Fri Essentials class first.

Location:

We are meeting in a private home a few miles from Riverhead, NY, with many 'green building' and recycled building materials technologies on display (photo below is from last winter's Biodiesel Essentials class). The address will be emailed out to registered participants two weeks before the class. We can help arrange transportation from LIRR in advance.

There is a working, functional homebrewing system on a trailer that we will operate during the Essentials class.

Some topics covered in the Biodiesel Essentials class:
biodiesel/SVO/solvent thinning (ie DSE etc) options and history
biodiesel chemistry
testing oil (titration and water testing)
removing water from oil
making test batches
an overview of equipment
Equipment build- help build a reactor at the end of Sunday's class
quality control factors
quality testing
mistwashing and other water washing options
breaking emulsion
two-stage base biodiesel
waste water and glycerine treatment and disposal
reuse
waterless soap removal with Amberlite and GL's process
common pitfalls
hands-on experience recovering from failed batches and emulsion
special considerations for biodiesel made with ethanol instead of methanol
safety

The Advanced Topics class covers topics that include:

Quality control
analysis of real-world problems with offspec biodiesel
"ASTM testing" for those considering commercial production
gas chromatography versus other options for testing for conversion
acid-base biodiesel process
advanced topics in dewatering of oil
using glycerine in your process for various benefits
testing for soap
methanol recovery and equipment design
testing recovered methanol for purity
zeolite and other methods for improving methanol purity
issues to avoid when "waterless washing" with ion exchange resin
acid-base chemistry and safety
testing for residual soap
acidulation of soap in glycerine, special equipment considerations
Recapturing oils or biodiesel trapped in glycerine or wash water
dealing with high-water-content oils
Graham Laming-type vapor control system
spill-proofing your system
regulatory issues
taxes
larger-scale equipment design (for co-ops or small farms)
treating wash water and glycerine for disposal or other uses
commercial tests for wash water- BOD, COD, FOG, etc
real-world test results related to biodegradability/safety of sidestream disposal
burning glycerine safely for energy
hydronic/solar applications for biodiesel and wash water heating
disaster prevention scenarios exercises for larger-scale processor systems
discussion of regulatory topics for non-commercial producers larger than homebrew
solar heating options
very through discussion/demonstration of several different options in washing, including drawbacks and advantages
greywater systems for wash water recycling

I strongly recommend that you read this website first: http://www.biodieselcommunity.org to get a background for this subject.

To register for the class:

see www.girlmark.com/tour

posted in Science Central - 0 replies

UFOs---are they real

Adam — Wed, 22 Sep 2004 21:24:56 GMT

I have always believed that we are not alone out there. My reasoning is simple; do the math:

Let's assume that for every million solar systems out there, one will have life on it (at this very point in the timeline)Of those planets with life on them, one out of every million has intellegent life on it. When you consider that the Milky Way galaxy has over 300 billion stars, it becomes obvious that there are other intellegent, sentient beings out there. Even if you raised the odds to 1 out of 5 million out of 5 million, the math still supports life out there beyond our solar system

Which brings me to my next thought: Have they visited us? My belief is yes, we have been visited at least a few times. I once wrote a short story where Haley's comet was actually an ancient beacon designed to warn travellers that the 3rd planet was infested with humans.

But...even if we assume that there is life out there, and that we have been visited...exactly what percentage of the people who claim to have seen a UFO or been abducted are actually legitimate?

posted in Science Central - 30 replies

Current Research in Modern Physics

robster — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 06:14:15 GMT

i need to do a research paper in my quantum course about a current area of research in modern physics and i thought I'd run it past you fine folks to see if I could come across anything I haven't noticed :)

I was thinking of looking into GRBs; does anybody know of any interesting areas that might also make a good topic?

posted in Science Central - 0 replies

Hormone Spray Elicits Trust in Humans

richardfash — Wed, 08 Jun 2005 20:04:51 GMT

It sounds like the stuff of science fiction, but scientists have discovered that a whiff of a certain hormone makes people more willing to trust others with their money.

The hormone is oxytocin, which in nonhuman mammals is associated with social attachment, as well as a number of physiological functions related to reproduction. As such, it is believed to help animals overcome their natural tendency to avoid proximity and allow others to approach them. Hypothesizing that oxytocin might have a comparable role in human prosocial approach behaviors, such as trust, Michael Kosfeld of the University of Zurich and his colleagues devised a double-blind study to compare trusting tendencies in subjects given an oxytocin nasal spray and those given a placebo. After receiving either a single dose of the hormone or the placebo, participants played a trust game in which an investor chooses how much money to fork over to a trustee, who then decides how much to return after the amount is quadrupled. Subjects played the game using monetary units, which were exchanged for real money at the end of the experiment.

posted in Science Central - 2 replies

Volcano Erupts in Isolated Iceland Area

richardfash — Thu, 04 Nov 2004 19:03:53 GMT

(Article Posted - November 2, 2004 - 01:05:11 GMT)

REYKAJVIK, Iceland (AP) - A volcano erupted in a remote area of Iceland
on
Monday, setting off tremors across the area and prompting officials to
warn
pilots to avoid flying through gasses being emitted by the blast.

No evacuations were needed in the unpopulated area around Grimsvotn
mountain
in eastern Iceland, the Meteorological Office said, but visual
confirmation
of the damage being done was impossible because heavy winds and rains
reduced
visibility in the area.

The eruption was believed to have been caused by expansion of a lake
underneath the Vatnajokull glacier.

"The water is under extreme pressure from the glacier. We believe it
could
open a part of the Grimsvotn mountain, causing the release of some
magma,
though this cannot be confirmed without visual identification," said
Oli Thor
Arnarsson at the Meteorological Office.

His office issued the warning to pilots on Monday evening.

Grimsvotn last erupted six years ago. It also erupted in 1995 and 1993,
causing flooding.

The mountain lies on the Atlantic Rift, the meeting of the Euro and
American
continental plates. The three major volcanoes of Iceland - Hekla, Katla
and
Grimsvotn - lie on the same fault line. Hekla last erupted in 2000.

Copyright 2004
The Associated Press All Rights Reserved
http://news.lp.findlaw.com/ap_stories/i/1103/11-1-2004/20041101171501_09.html

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =

Vatnajökull, Iceland: Click here to view full image (3190 kb)
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/NewImages/images.php3?img_id=10851
Image provided by the USGS EROS Data Center Satellite Systems Branch.

posted in Science Central - 1 reply

Scientists tip: exercise your sense of humour

richardfash — Sat, 04 Jun 2005 17:58:19 GMT

http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200506/s1384640.htm
Scientists measure energy in laughter. 04/06/2005. ABC News Online

Scientists at obesity conference: Laughing out loud for 10-15 minutes a day burns 10-40 calories. (ABC TV)

Scientists measure energy in laughter

If you want to burn a few extra calories, laugh. Scientists in the US say they are the first to measure how much energy it takes to laugh.

Laughing is no match for running, cycling or pumping iron but scientists said on Saturday laughing out loud for 10-15 minutes a day burns 10-40 calories, the amount in a small piece of chocolate, depending on a person's body weight.

"We calculated that this is equal to two kilograms a year if you do it every day," Dr Maciej Buchowski, of Vanderbilt University Medical Centre in Nashville, Tennessee, told an obesity conference.

Dr Buchowski believes he and his colleagues are the first to measure how much energy it takes to laugh.

"We discovered that laughter produces energy," he said.

They recruited 100 students who were friends or couples and measured the energy expenditure of each pair while they watched television comedy clips in a metabolic chamber.

The sealed room enabled scientists to measure how much energy the laughter produced while a heart monitor also tracked their heart rate.

Dr Buchowski and his team did not tell the students, who were advised not to talk or move, the goal of the experiment.

"It's not easy to catch genuine laughter because if you tell people you are going to measure laughter they will force the laugh," Dr Buchowski said.

To measure the students' resting metabolic rate the scientists showed them scenes of the English countryside.

They taped them as they watched 10 minutes of comedy interspersed by five minutes of the country scenes for more than an hour.

After analysing the tapes second by second to look for waves of laughter they found that the male students laughed more than the females. The longest laughter was 40 seconds in a minute.

"We found that when people were laughing the increase was about 20 per cent above the basic metabolism rate," Dr Buchowski said.

About 2,000 delegates from 80 countries attended the four-day European Congress on Obesity that ends on Saturday.

posted in Science Central - 4 replies

We have an energy measure of truth.

zargon — Wed, 22 Jun 2005 15:32:03 GMT

If you have followed the simple instruction give in the last message and measure the energy loss from laughing at my message then I submit that we have a measure of truth,since evrything I said is true. Good ha.?

posted in Science Central - 1 reply

Hmmm, Global Warming....

wendyraustin — Fri, 21 Apr 2006 22:40:44 GMT

Watched a documentary last night that intrigued me. Suffice it to say not all scientists believe in Global Warming, but we won't debate that part.

All of our greenhouse gas emmissions in the US are being reduced. These gasses apparently have been forming a protective layer in the ozone. Although we are seeing rising temperatures around the globe, these temperatures are much less than they should be given our pollutants. A scientist was able to monitor the reaction of the air when virtually all flights in America were ceased for three whole days, and what he found was astounding.

This leads to a frightening question: If we continue to reduce our harmful chemicals into the air, and get other countries to follow suit, there will be a much faster increase in global temperature. So, what do we do now?

Do any of you work in a related field that could shed some insight into this concept??

posted in Science Central - 15 replies

Large Meteor Slams Northern Norway

JasonLee — Tue, 13 Jun 2006 08:14:36 GMT

Wake up folks

http://www.aftenposten.no/english/local/article1346411.ece

SCIENCE!

posted in Science Central - 3 replies

10 percent use claim

Yul — Tue, 15 Aug 2006 17:40:46 GMT

Where did the claim that people use 10 percent of their brains come from? Because as I understand it, that claim is false. Unless they're refering to the cerebral cortex as the part of the brain that is used (used in the sense that it's the thinking part of the brain), then that claim makes no sense. Any other views on this?

posted in Science Central - 10 replies

As the seed vault grows...

Frozenstars — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 03:24:44 GMT

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6593333.stm

Britain's "Noah's Ark" for plants has just collected its billionth seed.

The Millennium Seed Bank will present the seed, from an African bamboo, to Chancellor Gordon Brown, as it seeks funds to continue operating after 2010.

Part of the Royal Botanic Gardens (RBG) at Kew, the bank already stores material from 18,000 species, some of which have become extinct in the wild.

Seed banks are seen as an essential part of plans to curb the rapid loss of biodiversity, in Britain and worldwide.

If policymakers are serious about funding adaptation to climate change, seed banks are a key part of that
by 2010, Kew plans to have amassed seeds from 30,000 species, representing 10% of the world's plants.

"Now we're starting to think about where we go beyond 2010," the project's head Paul Smith told the BBC News website.

"And we want to get to 25% of species stored away by 2020. If policymakers are serious about funding adaptation to climate change, seed banks are a key part of that."

Dry world

Seeds are collected by Kew's partner organisations around the world and sent to the RBG site at Wakehurst Place in Sussex.

They come from all over the globe, although British varieties are particularly well represented, with seeds from 88% of its native flora sequestered away.

Most of the seeds can be preserved by careful drying, after which they are stored at minus 20C. A few need more specialised, tailor-made treatment.

Some will last like this for millennia, others for decades; these will be planted and germinated before their expiry date comes up, and the seed of their offspring collected and stored anew.

But the idea is not to hide them away for ever. Where species have gone extinct, or are teetering on the edge, Kew's stores are used to replenish wild populations.

One British example is strapwort (Corrigiola litoralis), a critically endangered native of southwest England now found on only one nature reserve, which Kew's stocks are helping to keep alive.

Minimum investment

The billionth seed comes from the African bamboo species Oxytenanthera abyssinica, a plant used in Mali and other West African countries for building, furniture, and wine-making.

Its presentation to Mr Brown is aimed at persuading the Chancellor and prospective Prime Minister to continue funding the Millennium Seed Bank after 2010.

It is a key year in conservation, marking the target date by which, under the UN biodiversity convention, the world's governments are pledged to have halted and begun to reverse the seemingly inexorable biodiversity decline.

"Scientists are always asking for money," conceded Dr Smith. "But what makes us different is that we have a proven methodology here, we have the network and we know how to do what we do.

"This costs about £2,000 ($4,000) per species; so to collect a quarter of what's out there would cost about £100m ($200m).

"With threats not only from climate change but also deforestation, changes in land use and so on, seed-banking is the bare minimum."

posted in Science Central - 5 replies

The Heavens: the real one

cortelyou — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 20:55:26 GMT

http://www.texasjim.com/NASApix/NASA%20pix.htm

Hi res photos of the last Space Shuttle mission

Praise science!

/southpark

posted in Science Central - 3 replies

smirk Should We Now Ban The Golden Book of Chemistry Experiments?!

Frozenstars — Sat, 04 Aug 2007 22:54:00 GMT

There is hardly a boy or a girl alive who is not keenly interested in finding out about things. And that's exactly what chemistry is: Finding out about things--finding out what things are made of and what changes they undergo. What things? Any thing! Every thing!
--The Golden Book of Chemistry Experiments

Golf Manor is the kind of place where nothing unusual is supposed to happen, the kind of place where people live precisely because it is more than 25 miles outside of Detroit and all the complications attendant on that city. The kind of place where money buys a bit more land, perhaps a second bathroom, and so reassures residents that they're safely in the bosom of the middle class. Every element of Golf Manor invokes one form of security or another, beginning with the name of the subdivision itself--taken from the 18 hole course at its entrance--and the community in which it is nestled, Commerce Township. The houses and trees are both old and varied enough to make Golf Manor feel more like a neighborhood than a subdivision, and the few features that do convey subdivision--a sign at the entrance saying "We have many children but none to spare. Please drive carefully"--have a certain Back to the Future charm. Most Golf Manor residents remain there until they die, and then they are replaced by young couples with kids. In short, it is the kind of place where, on a typical day, the only thing lurking around the corner is a Mister Softee ice-cream truck.

But June 26, 1995, was not a typical day. Ask Dottie Pease. As she turned down Pinto Drive, Pease saw eleven men swarming across her carefully manicured lawn. Their attention seemed to be focused on the back yard of the house next door, specifically on a large wooden potting shed that abutted the chain-link fence dividing her property from her neighbor's. Three of the men had donned ventilated moon suits and were proceeding to dismantle the potting shed with electric saws, stuffing the pieces of wood into large steel drums emblazoned with radioactive warning signs. Pease had never noticed anything out of the ordinary at the house next door.

A middle-aged couple, Michael Polasek and Patty Hahn, lived there. On some weekends, they were joined by Patty's teenage son, David. As she huddled with a group of nervous neighbors, though, Pease heard one resident claim to have awoken late one night to see the potting shed emitting an eerie glow. "I was pretty disturbed," Pease recalls. "I went inside and called my husband. I said, `Da-a-ve, there are men in funny suits walking around out here. You've got to do something.'"

What the men in the funny suits found was that the potting shed was dangerously irradiated and that the area's 40,000 residents could be at risk. Publicly, the men in white promised the residents of Golf Manor that they had nothing to fear, and to this day neither Pease nor any of the dozen or so people I interviewed knows the real reason that the Environmental Protection Agency briefly invaded their neighborhood. When asked, most mumble something about a chemical spill. The truth is far more bizarre: the Golf Manor Superfund cleanup was provoked by the boy next door, David Hahn, who attempted to build a nuclear breeder reactor in his mother's potting shed as part of a Boy Scout merit-badge project.

It seems remarkable that David's story hasn't already wended its way through all forms of journalism and become the stuff of legend, but at the time the EPA refused to give out David's name, and although a few local reporters learned it, neither he nor any family members agreed to be interviewed. Even the federal and state officials who oversaw the cleanup learned only a small part of what took place in the potting shed at Golf Manor because David, fearing legal repercussions, told them almost nothing about his experiments. Then in 1996, Jay Gourley, a correspondent with the Natural Resources News Service in Washington, D.C., came across a tiny newspaper item about the case and contacted David Hahn. Gourley later passed on his research to me, and I subsequently interviewed the story's protagonists, including David--now a twenty-two-year-old sailor stationed in Norfolk, Virginia.

I met with David in the hope of making sense not only of his experiments but of him. The archetypal American suburban boy learns how to hit a fadeaway jump shot, change a car's oil, perform some minor carpentry feats. If he's a Boy Scout he masters the art of starting a fire by rubbing two sticks together, and if he's a typical adolescent pyro, he transforms tennis-ball cans into cannons. David Hahn taught himself to build a neutron gun. He figured out a way to dupe officials at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission into providing him with crucial information he needed in his attempt to build a breeder reactor, and then he obtained and purified radioactive elements such as radium and thorium.

I had seen childhood photographs of David in which he looked perfectly normal, even angelic, with blond hair and hazel-green eyes, and, as he grew older, gangly limbs and a peach-fuzz mustache. Still, when I went to meet him in Norfolk, I was anticipating some physical manifestation of brilliance or obsession. An Einstein or a Kaczynski. But all I saw was a beefier version of the clean-cut kid in the pictures. David's manner was oddly dispassionate, though polite, until we began to discuss his nuclear adventures. Then, for five hours, lighting and grinding out cigarettes for emphasis, David enthused about laboring in his backyard laboratory. He told me how he used coffee filters and pickle jars to handle deadly substances such as radium and nitric acid, and he sheepishly divulged the various cover stories and aliases he employed to obtain the radioactive materials. A shy and withdrawn teenager, David had confided in only a few friends about his project and never allowed anyone to witness his experiments. His breeder-reactor project was a means--albeit an unorthodox one--of escaping the trauma of adolescence. "I was very emotional as a kid," he told me, "and those experiments gave me a way to get away from that. They gave me some respect."

You--Scientist!
--The Golden Book of Chemistry Experiments, Chapter 10

In The Making of the Atomic Bomb, Richard Rhodes notes that the psychological profiles of pioneering American physicists are remarkably similar. Frequently the eldest son of an emotionally remote, professional man, he--almost all were men--was a voracious reader during childhood, tended to feel lonely, and was shy and aloof from classmates.

David's parents, Ken and Patty Hahn, divorced when he was a toddler. Ken is an automotive engineer for General Motors, as is his second wife, Kathy Missig, whom he married soon after the divorce. David lived with his father and stepmother in a small split-level home in suburban Clinton Township, about thirty miles north of Detroit. Ken Hahn worked extraordinarily long hours for GM. With close-cropped hair and a proclivity for short-sleeved dress shirts, Ken radiates a coolness that, combined with his constant preoccupation, must have been confounding to a child. When asked about his undemonstrative nature, Ken attributes it to his German ancestry. Yet for all his starchiness, it was Kathy who was David's chief disciplinarian.

David spent weekends and holidays with his mother and her boyfriend, Michael Polasek, an amiable but hard-drinking retired forklift operator at GM. Golf Manor is demographically similar to Clinton Township, but the two households could not have been more different emotionally. Patty Hahn committed suicide in the house a few years ago, but Michael still lives there surrounded by pictures of her. ("She was a beautiful person," he says. "She was my whole life.") He keeps five cats and a spotless household, and looks like a member of Sha Na Na.

Despite the fact that David was shuffled between households, his early years were seemingly ordinary. He played baseball and soccer, joined the Boy Scouts, and spent endless hours exploring with his friends. An abrupt change came at the age of ten, when Kathy's father, also an engineer for GM, gave David The Golden Book of Chemistry Experiments. The book promised to open doors to a brave new world--"Chemistry means the difference between poverty and starvation and the abundant life," it stated with unwavering optimism--and offered instructions on how to set up a home laboratory and conduct experiments ranging from simple evaporation and filtration to making rayon and alcohol. David swiftly became immersed and by age twelve was digesting his father's college chemistry textbooks without difficulty. When he spent the night at Golf Manor, his mother would often wake to find him asleep on the living room floor surrounded by open volumes of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

In his father's house, David set up a laboratory in his small bedroom, where the shelves are still lined with books such as Prudent Practices for Handling Hazardous Chemicals in Laboratories and The Story of Atomic Energy. He bought beakers, Bunsen burners, test tubes, and other items commonly found in a child's chemistry set. David, though, was not conducting the typical adolescent experiments. By fourteen, an age at which most boys with a penchant for chemistry are conducting rudimentary gunpowder experiments, David had fabricated nitroglycerine.

David's parents admired his interest in science but were alarmed by the chemical spills and blasts that became a regular event at the Hahn household. After David destroyed his bedroom--the walls were badly pocked, and the carpet was so stained that it had to be ripped out--Ken and Kathy banished his experiments to the basement.

Which was fine with David. Science allowed him to distance himself from his parents, to create and destroy things, to break the rules, and to escape into something he was a success at, while sublimating a teenager's sense of failure, anger, and embarrassment into some really big explosions. David held a series of after-school jobs at fast-food joints, grocery stores, and furniture warehouses, but work was merely a means of financing his experiments. Never an enthusiastic student and always a horrific speller, David fell behind in school. During his junior year at Chippewa Valley High School--at a time when he was secretly conducting nuclear experiments in his back yard--David nearly failed state math and reading tests required for graduation (though he aced the test in science). Ken Gherardini, who taught David conceptual physics, remembers him as an excellent pupil on the rare occasions when he was interested in classwork but otherwise indifferent to his studies. "His dream in life was to collect a sample of every element on the periodic table," Gherardini told me with a laugh during an interview at Chippewa Valley before his 8:20 A.M. class. "I don't know about you, but my dream at that age was to buy a car."

David's scientific preoccupation left less and less time for friends, though throughout much of high school he did have a girlfriend, Heather Beaudette, three years his junior. Heather says he was sweet and caring (she once returned from a weeklong trip to Florida to find a pile of lengthy love letters) but not always the perfect date. Heather's mom, Donna Bunnell, puts it this way: "He was a nice kid and always presentable, but [in the days before her second wedding] we had to tell him not to talk to anybody. He could eat and drink but, for God's sake, don't talk to the guests about the food's chemical composition."

Not even his scout troop was spared David's scientific enthusiasm. He once appeared at a scout meeting with a bright orange face caused by an overdose of canthaxanthin, which he was taking to test methods of artificial tanning. One summer at scout camp, David's fellow campers blew a hole in the communal tent when they accidentally ignited the stockpile of powdered magnesium he had brought to make fireworks. Another year, David was expelled from camp when--while most of his friends were sneaking into the nearby Girl Scouts' camp--he stole a number of smoke detectors to disassemble for parts he required for his experiments. "Our summer vacation was screwed up when we got a call telling us to pick David up early from camp," his stepmother recalls with a sigh.

Up to this point the most illicit of David's concoctions were fireworks and moonshine. But convinced that David's experiments and increasingly erratic behavior were signs that he was making and selling drugs, Ken and Kathy began to spot-check the public library, where David told them he studied. In variably, David would be there as promised, surrounded by a huge pile of chemistry books. But Ken and Kathy were not assuaged, and, worried that he would level their home, they prohibited David from being there alone, locking him out when they were away, even on quick errands, and setting a time for their return so that he could get back in. Kathy began routinely searching David's room and disposing of any chemicals and equipment she found hidden under the bed and deep within the closet.

David was not deterred. One night as Ken and Kathy were sitting in the living room watching TV, the house was rocked by an explosion in the basement. There they found David lying semiconscious on the floor, his eyebrows smoking. Unaware that red phosphorus is pyrophoric, David had been pounding it with a screwdriver and ignited it. He was rushed to the hospital to have his eyes flushed, but even months later David had to make regular trips to an ophthalmologist to have pieces of the plastic phosphorus container plucked carefully from his eyes.

Kathy then forbade David from experimenting in her home. So he shifted his base of operations to his mother's potting shed in Golf Manor. Both Patty Hahn and Michael Polasek admired David for the endless hours he spent in his new lab, but neither of them had any idea what he was up to. Sure, they thought it was odd that David often wore a gas mask in the shed and would sometimes discard his clothing after working there until two in the morning, but they chalked it up to their own limited education. Michael says that David tried to explain his experiments but that "what he told me went right over my head." One thing still sticks out, though. David's potting-shed project had something to do with creating energy. "He'd say, `One of these days we're gonna run out of oil.' He wanted to do something about that."

The force hidden in the atom will be turned into light and heat and power for everyday uses. Chemists of the future, working with their brother-scientists, the physicists, will find new ways of harnessing and using the atoms of numerous elements--some of them unknown to the scientists of today. Do you want to share in the making of that astonishing and promising future?
--The Golden Book of Chemistry Experiments

Like Michael, few people whom David confided in understood what he was doing. Ken Hahn, who had taken chemistry courses in college, could follow some of what David told him but thought he was exaggerating for attention. "I never saw him turn green or glow in the dark," he says. "I was probably too easy on him."

It probably didn't feel that way to David. Although Ken is immensely proud of David's experiments now that they have a certain notoriety, at the time they represented a breakdown in discipline. As fathers are wont to do, Ken felt the solution lay in a goal that he didn't himself achieve as a child--Eagle Scout. As teenagers are wont to do, David subverted that goal.

In addition to showing "scout spirit," Eagle Scouts must earn twenty-one merit badges. Eleven are mandatory, such as First Aid and Citizenship in the Community. The final ten are optional; scouts can choose from dozens of choices ranging from American Business to Woodwork. David elected to earn a merit badge in Atomic Energy. His scoutmaster, Joe Auito, who lives on a rural road an hour or so north of Detroit and who resembles an aging Deadhead rather than the rock-ribbed conservative I'd expected, says he's the only boy to have done so in the history of Clinton Township Troop 371. David's Atomic Energy merit-badge pamphlet was brazenly pro-nuclear, which is no surprise since it was prepared with the help of Westinghouse Electric, the American Nuclear Society, and the Edison Electric Institute, a trade group of utility companies, some of which run nuclear power plants. The pamphlet judiciously states that America is a democracy and "the people decide what the country will do." The pamphlet goes on to suggest, however, that critics of atomic energy were descended from a long line of naysayers and malcontents, warning that "if America decides for or against nuclear power plants based on fear and misunderstanding, that is wrong. We must first know the truth about atomic energy before we can decide to use it or to stop it."

David was awarded his Atomic Energy merit badge on May 10, 1991, five months shy of his fifteenth birthday. To earn it he made a drawing showing how nuclear fission occurs, visited a hospital radiology unit to learn about the medical uses of radioisotopes,(1) and built a model reactor using a juice can, coat hangers, soda straws, kitchen matches, and rubber bands. By now, though, David had far grander ambitions. As Auito's wife and troop treasurer, Barbara, recalls: "The typical kid [working on the merit badge] would have gone to a doctor's office and asked about the X-ray machine. Dave had to go out and try to build a reactor."

What is a breeder reactor? This simplistic description comes from a publication that David obtained from the Department of Energy (DOE): "Imagine you have a car and begin a long drive. When you start, you have half a tank of gas. When you return home, instead of being nearly empty, your gas tank is full. A breeder reactor is like this magic car. A breeder reactor not only generates electricity, but it also produces new fuel."

All reactors, conventional and breeder, rely on a critical pile of a naturally radioactive element--typically uranium-235 or plutonium-239--as the "fuel" for a sustained chain of reactions known as fission. Fission occurs when a neutron combines with the nucleus of a radioisotope, say uranium-235, transforming it into uranium-236. This new isotope is highly unstable and immediately splits in half, forming two smaller nuclei, and releasing a great deal of radiant energy (some of which is heat) and several neutrons. These neutrons are absorbed by other uranium-235 atoms to begin the process again.

A breeder reactor is configured so that a core of plutonium-239 is surrounded by a "blanket" of uranium-238. When the plutonium gives off neutrons, they are absorbed by the uranium-238 to become uranium-239, which in turn decays by emitting beta rays and is transformed into neptunium-239. Following another stage of "radioactive decay," neptunium becomes plutonium-239, which can replenish the fuel core. The nuclear industry used to tout breeders as the magical solution to the nation's energy needs. The government had opened up two experimental breeders at a test site in Idaho by 1961. Amid great fanfare, in 1963 Detroit Edison opened the Enrico Fermi I power plant, the nation's first and only commercially run breeder reactor. The following decade, Congress appropriated billions of dollars for the Clinch River Breeder Reactor in Tennessee. Hopes ran so high that Glenn Seaborg, chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission during the Nixon years, predicted that breeders would be the backbone of an emerging nuclear economy and that plutonium might be "a logical contender to replace gold as the standard of our monetary system."

Such optimism proved to be unwarranted. The first Idaho breeder had to be shut down after suffering a partial core meltdown; the second breeder generated electricity but not new fuel. The Fermi plant--located just 60 miles from Clinton Township--was plagued by mechanical problems, accidents, and budget overruns, and produced electricity so expensive that Detroit Edison never even bothered to break down the costs. In 1966, the plant's core suffered a partial meltdown after the cooling system malfunctioned; six years later the plant was shut down permanently. In 1983, when it was estimated that completion costs would deplete much of the federal budget for energy research and development, Congress finally killed the Clinch River program.

If he knew of such setbacks, David was in no way deterred by them. His inspiration came from the nuclear pioneers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries: Antoine Henri Becquerel, the French physicist who, along with Pierre and Marie Curie, received the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1903 for discovering radioactivity; Fredic and Irene Joliot-Curie, who received the prize in 1935 for producing the first artificial radioisotope; Sir James Chadwick, who won the Nobel Prize in physics the same year for discovering the neutron; and Enrico Fermi, who created the world's first sustainable nuclear chain reaction, a crucial step leading to the production of atomic energy and atomic bombs.(2)

Unlike his predecessors, however, David did not have vast financial support from the state, no laboratory save for a musty potting shed, no proper instruments or safety devices, and, by far his chief impediment, no legal means of obtaining radioactive materials. To get around this last obstacle, David utilized a number of cover stories and concocted identities, plus a Geiger-counter kit he ordered from a mail-order house in Scottsdale, Arizona, which he assembled and mounted to the dashboard of his burgundy Pontiac 6000.

David hadn't hit on the idea to try to build a breeder reactor when he began his nuclear experiments at the age of fifteen, but in a step down that path, he was already determined to "irradiate anything" he could. To do that he had to build a "gun" that could bombard isotopes with neutrons. David wrote to a number of groups listed in his merit-badge pamphlet--the DOE, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), the American Nuclear Society, the Edison Electric Institute, and the Atomic Industrial Forum, the nuclear-power industry's trade group--in hopes of discovering how he might obtain, from both natural and commercial sources, the radioactive raw materials he needed to build his neutron gun and experiment with it. By writing up to twenty letters a day and claiming to be a physics instructor at Chippewa Valley High School, David says he obtained "tons" of information from those and other groups, though some of it was of only marginal value. The American Nuclear Society sent David a teacher's guide called "Goin' Fission," which featured an Albert Einstein cartoon character: "I'm Albert. Und today, ve are gonna go fission. No, ve don't need any smelly bait and der won't be any fish to clean. I mean fission, not fishin'."

Other organizations proved to be far more helpful, and none more than the NRC. Again posing as a physics teacher, David managed to engage the agency's director of isotope production and distribution, Donald Erb, in a scientific discussion by mail. Erb offered David tips on isolating certain radioactive elements, provided a list of isotopes that can sustain a chain reaction, and imparted a piece of information that would soon prove to be vital to David's plans: "Nothing produces neutrons ... as well as beryllium." When David asked Erb about the risks posed by such radioactive materials, the NRC official assured "Professor Hahn" that the "real dangers are very slight," since possession "of any radioactive materials in quantities and forms sufficient to pose any hazard is subject to Nuclear Regulatory Commission (or equivalent) licensing." David says the NRC also sent him pricing data and commercial sources for some of the radioactive wares he wanted to purchase, ostensibly for the benefit of his eager students. "The NRC gave me all the information I needed," he later recalled. "All I had to do was go out and get the materials."

The newspapers have published numerous diagrams, not very helpful to the average man, of protons and neutrons doing their stuff.... But curiously little has been said, at any rate in print, about the question that is of most urgent interest to all of us, namely, "How difficult are these things to manufacture?"
--George Orwell, "You and the Atom Bomb," 1945

Armed with information from his friends in government and industry, David typed up a list of sources for fourteen radioactive isotopes..Americium-241, he learned from the Boy Scout atomic-energy booklet, could be found in smoke detectors; radium-226, in antique luminous dial clocks; uranium-238 and minute quantities of uranium-235, in a black ore called pitchblende; and thorium-232, in Coleman-style gas lanterns.

To obtain americium-241, David contacted smoke-detector companies and claimed that he needed a large number of the devices for a school project. One company agreed to sell him about a hundred broken detectors for a dollar apiece. (He also tried to "collect" detectors while at scout camp.) David wasn't sure where the americium-241 was located, so he wrote to BRK Electronics in Aurora, Illinois. A customer-service representative named Beth Weber wrote back to say she'd be happy to help out with "your report." She explained that each detector contains only a tiny amount of americium-241, which is sealed in a gold matrix "to make sure that corrosion does not break it down and release it." Thanks to Weber's tip, David extracted the americium components and then welded them together with a blowtorch.

As it decays, americium-241 emits alpha rays composed of protons and neutrons. David put the lump of americium inside a hollow block of lead with a tiny hole pricked in one side so that alpha rays would stream out. In front of the lead block he placed a sheet of aluminum. Aluminum atoms absorb alpha rays and in the process kick out neutrons. Since neutrons have no charge, and thus cannot be measured by a Geiger counter, David had no way of knowing whether the gun was working until he recalled that paraffin throws off protons when hit by neutrons. David aimed the apparatus at some paraffin, and his Geiger counter registered what he assumed was a proton stream. His neutron gun, crude but effective, was ready.

With neutron gun in hand, David was ready to irradiate. He could have concentrated on transforming previously non-radioactive elements, but in a decision that was both indicative of his personality and instrumental to his later attempt to build a breeder reactor, he wanted to use the gun on radioisotopes to increase the chances of making them fissionable. He thought that uranium-235, which is used in atomic weapons, would provide the "biggest reaction." He scoured hundreds of miles of upper Michigan in his Pontiac looking for "hot rocks" with his Geiger counter, but all he could find was a quarter trunkload of pitchblende on the shores of Lake Huron. Deciding to pursue a more bureaucratic approach, he wrote to a Czechoslovakian firm that sells uranium to commercial and university buyers, whose name was provided, he told me, by the NRC. Claiming to be a professor buying materials for a nuclear-research laboratory, he obtained a few samples of a black ore--either pitchblende or uranium dioxide, both of which contain small amounts of uranium-235 and uranium-238.

David pulverized the ores with a hammer, thinking that he could then use nitric acid to isolate uranium. Unable to find a commercial source for nitric acid--probably because it is used in the manufacture of explosives and thus is tightly controlled--David made his own by heating saltpeter and sodium bisulfate, then bubbling the gas that was released through a container of water, producing nitric acid. He then mixed the acid with the powdered ore and boiled it, ending up with something that "looked like a dirty milk shake." Next he poured the "milk shake" through a coffee filter, hoping that the uranium would pass through the filter. But David miscalculated uranium's solubility, and whatever amount was present was trapped in the filter, making it difficult to purify further.

Frustrated at his inability to isolate sufficient supplies of uranium, David turned his attention to thorium-232, which when bombarded with neutrons produces uranium-233, a man-made fissionable element (and, although he might not have known it then, one that can be substituted for plutonium in breeder reactors). Discovered in 1828 and named after the Norse god Thor, thorium has a very high melting point, and is thus used in the manufacture of airplane engine parts that reach extremely high temperatures. David knew from his merit-badge pamphlet that the "mantle" used in commercial gas lanterns--the part that looks like a doll's stocking and conducts the flame--is coated with a compound containing thorium-232. He bought thousands of lantern mantles from surplus stores and, using the blowtorch, reduced them into a pile of ash.

David still had to isolate the thorium-232 from the ash. Fortunately, he remembered reading in one of his dad's chemistry books that lithium is prone to binding with oxygen--meaning, in this context, that it would rob thorium dioxide of its oxygen content and leave a cleaner form of thorium. David purchased $1,000 worth of lithium batteries and extracted the element by cutting the batteries in half with a pair of wire cutters. He placed the lithium and thorium dioxide together in a ball of aluminum foil and heated the ball with a Bunsen burner. Eureka! David's method purified thorium to at least 9,000 times the level found in nature and 170 times the level that requires NRC licensing.

At this point, David could have used his americium neutron gun to transform thorium-232 into fissionable uranium-233. But the americium he had was not capable of producing enough neutrons, so he began preparing radium for an improved irradiating gun.

Radium was used in paint that rendered luminescent the faces of clocks and automobile and airplane instrument panels until the late 1960s, when it was discovered that many clock painters, who routinely licked their brushes to make a fine point, died of cancer. David began visiting junkyards and antiques stores in search of radium-coated dashboard panels or clocks. Once he found such an item, he'd chip paint from the instruments and collect it in pill vials. It was slow going until one day, driving through Clinton Township to visit his girlfriend, Heather, he noticed that his Geiger counter went wild as he passed Gloria's Resale Boutique/Antique. The proprietor, Gloria Genette, still recalls the day when she was called at home by a store employee who said that a polite young man was anxious to buy an old table clock with a tinted green dial but wondered if she'd come down in price. She would. David bought the clock for $10. Inside he discovered a vial of radium paint left behind by a worker either accidentally or as a courtesy so that the clock's owner could touch up the dial when it began to fade. David was so overjoyed that he dropped by the boutique later that night to leave a note for Gloria, telling her that if she received another "luminus [sic] clock" to contact him immediately. "I will pay any some [sic] of money to obtain one."

To concentrate the radium, David secured a sample of barium sulfate from the X-ray ward at a local hospital (staff there handed over the substance because they remembered him from his merit-badge project) and heated it until it liquefied. After mixing the barium sulfate with the radium paint chips, he strained the brew through a coffee filter into a beaker that began to glow. This time, David had judged the solubility of the two substances correctly; the radium solution passed through to the beaker. He then dehydrated the solution into crystalline salts, which he could pack into the cavity of another lead block to build a new gun.

Whether David fully realized it or not, by handling purified radium he was truly putting himself in danger. Nevertheless, he now proceeded to acquire another neutron emitter to replace the aluminum used in his previous neutron gun. Faithful to Erb's instructions, he secured a strip of beryllium (which is a much richer source of neutrons than aluminum) from the chemistry department at Macomb Community College--a friend who attended the school swiped it for him--and placed it in front of the lead block that held the radium. His cute little americium gun was now a more powerful radium gun. David began to bombard his thorium and uranium powders in the hopes of producing at least some fissionable atoms. He measured the results with his Geiger counter, but while the thorium seemed to grow more radioactive, the uranium remained a disappointment.

Once again, "Professor Hahn" sprang into action, writing his old friend Erb at the NRC to discuss the problem. The NRC had the answer. David's neutrons were too "fast" for the uranium).(3) He would have to slow them down using a filter of water, deuterium, or tritium. Water would have sufficed, but David likes a challenge. Consulting his list of commercially available radioactive sources, he discovered that tritium, a radioactive material used to boost the power of nuclear weapons, is found in glow-in-the-dark gun and bow sights, which David promptly bought from sporting-goods stores and mail-order catalogues. He removed the tritium contained in a waxy substance inside the sights, and then, using a variety of pseudonyms, returned the sights to the store or manufacturer for repair--each time collecting another tiny quantity of tritium. When he had enough, David smeared the waxy substance over the beryllium strip and targeted the gun at uranium powder. He carefully monitored the results with his Geiger counter over several weeks, and it appeared that the powder was growing more radioactive by the day.

Now seventeen, David hit on the idea of building a model breeder reactor. He knew that without a critical pile of at least thirty pounds of enriched uranium he had no chance of initiating a sustained chain reaction, but he was determined to get as far as he could by trying to get his various radioisotopes to interact with one another. That way, he now says, "no matter what happened there would be something changing into something--some kind of action going on there." His blueprint was a schematic of a checkerboard breeder reactor he'd seen in one of his father's college textbooks. Ignoring any thought of safety, David took the highly radioactive radium and americium out of their respective lead casings and, after another round of filing and pulverizing, mixed those isotopes with beryllium and aluminum shavings, all of which he wrapped in aluminum foil. What were once the neutron sources for his guns became a makeshift "core" for his reactor. He surrounded this radioactive ball with a "blanket" composed of tiny foil-wrapped cubes of thorium ash and uranium powder, which were stacked in an alternating pattern with carbon cubes and tenuously held together with duct tape.

David monitored his "breeder reactor" at the Golf Manor laboratory with his Geiger counter. "It was radioactive as heck," he says. "The level of radiation after a few weeks was far greater than it was at the time of assembly. I know I transformed some radioactive materials. Even though there was no critical pile, I know that some of the reactions that go on in a breeder reactor went on to a minute extent."

Finally, David, whose safety precautions had thus far consisted of wearing a makeshift lead poncho and throwing away his clothes and changing his shoes following a session in the potting shed, began to realize that, sustained reaction or not, he could be putting himself and others in danger. (One tip-off was when the radiation was detectable through concrete.) Jim Miller, a nuclear-savvy high-school friend in whom David had confided, warned him that real reactors use control rods to regulate nuclear reactions. Miller recommended cobalt, which absorbs neutrons but does not itself become fissionable. "Reactors get hot, it's just a fact," Miller, a nervous, skinny twenty-two-year-old, said during an interview at a Burger King in Clinton Township where he worked as a cook. David purchased a set of cobalt drill bits at a local hardware store and inserted them between the thorium and uranium cubes. But the cobalt wasn't sufficient. When his Geiger counter began picking up radiation five doors down from his mom's house, David decided that he had "too much radioactive stuff in one place" and began to disassemble the reactor. He placed the thorium pellets in a shoebox that he hid in his mother's house, left the radium and americium in the shed, and packed most of the rest of his equipment into the trunk of the Pontiac 6000.

WASTE DISPOSAL. If you can dump your waste directly into the kitchen drain (NOT into the sink), you are all right. If not, collect it in a plastic pail to be thrown out when you're finished.
--The Golden Book of Chemistry Experiments

At 2:40 A.M. on August 31, 1994, the Clinton Township police responded to a call concerning a young man who had been spotted in a residential neighborhood, apparently stealing tires from a car. When the police arrived, David told them he was waiting to meet a friend. Unconvinced, officers decided to search his car. When they opened the trunk they discovered a toolbox shut with a padlock and sealed with duct tape for good measure. The trunk also contained over fifty foil-wrapped cubes of mysterious gray powder, small disks and cylindrical metal objects, lantern mantles, mercury switches, a clock face, ores, fireworks, vacuum tubes, and assorted chemicals and acids. The police were especially alarmed by the toolbox, which David warned them was radioactive and which they feared was an atomic bomb.

For reasons that are hard to fathom, Sergeant Joseph Mertes, one of the arresting officers, ordered a car containing what he noted in his report was "a potential improvised explosive device" to be towed to police headquarters. "It probably shouldn't have been done, but we thought that the car had been used in the commission of a crime," Police Chief Al Ernst now says sheepishly. "When I came in at 6:30 in the morning it was already there."

The police called in the Michigan State Police Bomb Squad to examine the Pontiac and the State Department of Public Health (DPH) to supply radiological assistance. The good news, the two teams discovered, was that David's toolbox was not an atomic bomb. The bad news was that David's trunk did contain radioactive materials, including concentrations of thorium--"not found in nature, at least not in Michigan"--and americium. That discovery automatically triggered the Federal Radiological Emergency Response Plan, and state officials soon were embroiled in tense phone consultations with the DOE, EPA, FBI, and NRC.

With the police, David was largely uncooperative and taciturn. He provided his father's address but didn't mention his mother's house or his potting-shed laboratory. It wasn't until Thanksgiving Day that Dave Minnaar, a DPH radiological expert, finally interviewed David. David told Minnaar that he had been trying to make thorium in a form he could use to produce energy and that he hoped "his successes would help him earn his Eagle Scout status." David also finally admitted to having a backyard laboratory.

On November 29, state radiological experts surveyed the potting shed. They found aluminum pie pans, jars of acids, Pyrex cups, milk crates, and other materials strewn about, much of it contaminated with what subsequent official reports would call "excessive levels" of radioactive material, especially americium-241 and thorium-232. How high? A vegetable can, for example, registered at 50,000 counts per minute--about 1,000 times higher than normal levels of background radiation. But although Minnaar's troops didn't know it at the time, they conducted their survey long after David's mother, alerted by Ken and Kathy and petrified that the government would take her home away as a result of her son's experiments, had ransacked the shed and discarded most of what she found, including his neutron gun, the radium, pellets of thorium that were far more radioactive than what the health officials found, and several quarts of radioactive powder. "The funny thing is," David now says, "they only got the garbage, and the garbage got all the good stuff."

After determining that no radioactive materials had leaked outside the shed, state authorities sealed it and petitioned the federal government for help. The NRC licenses nuclear plants and research facilities and deals with any nuclear accidents that take place at those sites. David, of course, was not an NRC-licensed operation, so it was determined that the EPA, which responds to emergencies involving lost or abandoned atomic materials, should be contacted for assistance. In a memo to the EPA's Emergency Response and Enforcement Branch, the Department of Public Health noted that the materials discovered in David's lab were regulated under the Federal Atomic Energy Act and that the "extent of the radioactive material contamination within a private citizen's property beg for a controlled remediation that is beyond our authority or resources to oversee."

EPA officials arrived in Golf Manor on January 25, 1995--five months after David had been stopped by the police--to conduct their own survey of the shed. Their "action memo" noted that conditions at the site "present an imminent and substantial endangerment to public health or welfare or the environment," and that there was "actual or potential exposure to nearby human populations, animals, or food chain...." The memo further stated that adverse conditions such as heavy wind, rain, or fire could cause the "contaminants to migrate or be released."

A Superfund cleanup took place between June 26 and 28 at a cost of about $60,000. After the moon-suited workers dismantled the potting shed with electric saws, they loaded the remains into thirty-nine sealed barrels placed aboard a semitrailer bound for Envirocare, a dump facility located in the middle of the Great Salt Lake Desert. There, the remains of David's experiments were entombed along with tons of low-level radioactive debris from the government's atomic-bomb factories, plutonium-production facilities, and contaminated industrial sites. According to the official assessment, there was no noticeable damage to flora or fauna in the back yard in Golf Manor, but 40,000 nearby residents could have been put at risk during David's years of experimentation due to the dangers posed by the release of radioactive dust and radiation.

Last May, I made the 90-mile drive from Detroit to Lansing, where Dave Minnaar works in a dreary building that houses several state environmental agencies. Because Patty Hahn had cleaned out the shed before Minnaar's men arrived on the scene, he never knew that David had built neutron guns or that he had obtained radium. Nor did he understand, until I told him, that the cubes of thorium powder found by police at the time of David's arrest were the building blocks for a model breeder reactor. "These are conditions that regulatory agencies never envision," says Minnaar. "It's simply presumed that the average person wouldn't have the technology or materials required to experiment in these areas."

"The real danger ... lies in the radioactive properties of these elements. [Some] migrate to the bone marrow, where their radiation interferes with the production of red blood cells. Less than one-millionth of a gram can be fatal." --from David's notes

David went into a serious depression after the federal authorities shut down his laboratory. Years of painstaking work had been thrown in the garbage or buried beneath the sands of Utah. Students at Chippewa Valley had taken to calling him "Radioactive Boy," and when his girlfriend, Heather, sent David Valentine's balloons at his high school, they were seized by the principal, who apparently feared they had been inflated with chemical gases David needed to continue his experiments. In a final indignity, some area scout leaders attempted (and failed) to deny David his Eagle Scout status, saying that his extracurricular merit-badge activities had endangered the community.

In the fall of 1995, Ken and Kathy demanded that David enroll in Macomb Community College. He majored in metallurgy but skipped many of his classes and spent much of the day in bed or driving in circles around their block. Finally, Ken and Kathy gave him an ultimatum: Join the armed forces or move out of the house. They called the local recruiting office, which sent a representative to their house or called nearly every day until David finally gave in. After completing boot camp last year, he was stationed on the nuclear-powered USS Enterprise aircraft carrier.

Alas, David's duties, as a lowly seaman, are of the deck-swabbing and potato-peeling variety. But long after his shipmates have gone to sleep, David stays up studying topics that interest him--currently steroids, melanin, genetic codes, antioxidants, prototype reactors, amino acids, and criminal law. And it is perhaps best that he does not work on the ship's eight reactors, for EPA scientists worry that his previous exposure to radioactivity may have greatly cut short his life. All the radioactive materials he experimented with can enter the body through ingestion, inhalation, or skin contact and then deposit in the bones and organs, where they can cause a host of ailments, including cancer. Because it is so potent, the radium that David was exposed to in a relatively small, enclosed space is most worrisome of all. Back in 1995, the EPA arranged for David to undergo a full examination at the nearby Fermi nuclear power plant. David, fearful of what he might learn, refused. Now, though, he's looking ahead. "I wanted to make a scratch in life," he explains when I ask him about his early years of nuclear research. "I've still got time. I don't believe I took more than five years off of my life."

(1) Individual atoms of an element have the same number of protons in their nuclei. This "atomic number" determines the element's chemical properties and position in the periodic table. The number of neutrons within atoms of the same elements can vary, however. Known as isotopes, these variations have unique physical properties because the number of neutrons affects the atom's mass. Most elements have at least two naturally occurring, stable isotopes. But isotopes of heavier elements (those with more protons) are often unstable. Called radioisotopes, and often artificially produced, these nuclei undergo some form of radioactive decay--alpha, beta, or gamma--to become more stable. In alpha decay, the nucleus loses two protons and two neutrons, thus transforming into another element two atomic numbers below it on the periodic table. In beta decay, either a neutron is converted into a proton, and the atomic number rises, or the opposite occurs, pushing the atomic number down. Gamma radiation--in which energy is emitted but no transformation occurs--can accompany alpha or beta decay (where the atomic number falls) or can occur on its own. Americium-241, for example, is a radioisotope of americium. Its atomic number is 95, its atomic mass number is 241, and it becomes neptunium-237 through alpha decay.

(2) Another role model, similar to David in temperament, was the Englishman Francis William Aston. He invented the mass spectrograph in 1920, which he used to identify more than 200 isotopes. As a child, writes Richard Rhodes, Aston "made picric-acid bombs from soda-bottle cartridges and designed and launched huge tissue-paper fire balloons...."

(3) Manhattan Project scientists discovered that some neutrons can move at speeds of about 17 million miles per hour. If they are slowed down or "moderated," to about 5,000 miles per hour, they have a better chance of being absorbed by another atom.

**Ken Silverstein's last article for Harper's Magazine, "The Boeing Formation," appeared in the May 1997 issue. He lives in Washington, D.C.

*11/98 Harper's Magazine. Copyright of "The Radioactive Boy Scout" is the property of Harper's Magazine. Its content may not be copied without the copyright holder's express written permission except for the print or download intended solely for the use of the individual user.

posted in Science Central - 0 replies

New Tribe

Mon, 21 May 2007 16:14:38 GMT

http://tribes.tribe.net/quantum-gravity

posted in Science Central - 0 replies

Sheep save the world!

Roy — Sun, 01 Apr 2007 18:41:56 GMT

Fascinating article but always keep the date in mind.

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/04/the-sheep-albedo-feedbacki/

posted in Science Central - 4 replies

Bay Area Yuri's Night 2007 at NASA Ames - Ticket prices about to go up!

HiLife — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 23:36:58 GMT

Prepare for Liftoff!

WWW.WORLDSPACEPARTY.ORG

Get ready for something entirely different.

On April 13th the Bay Area joins the world in celebration of space exploration
in a unique convergence of artists, scientists, astronauts, performers and
musicians.

Yuri's Night is a commemoration of humankind’s first venture into space, by
Russian Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin. This gathering bridges national, cultural,
generational and social barriers to ignite excitement about what is new on the
horizon in space exploration and to remind us of the magnificent feats
humanity is capable of.

Yuri's Night Bay Area will be held at Moffett Field in the NASA Ames Research
Center's massive SOFIA hangar, home to the world's largest aerial observatory.
Our host for the evening is pioneering space traveler Anousheh Anasari, the
first privately funded female to reach orbit. She is joined by Dr. Chris
McKay, world renowned expert in astrobiology and terraformation with the Space
Science Division of NASA Ames Research Center, as they welcome you to a
dazzling array of interactive art installations and science demos, interwoven
with musical and acrobatic performances by some of the world's finest
entertainers.

Cutting-edge interactive technology and live demos including:

* Exploration of the world through NASA World Wind
* Gigapan, explorable high resolution panoramas from around the world
* A portal into Second Life
* Burning Man Earth, Google's Black Rock City browser

Science demonstrations and innovations from the worlds of robotics,
engineering, and astronomy, will also be on display:

* ASME's Human powered vehicle
* NASA robotics, including the next generation of rovers
* Exclusive heavenly imagery from Slooh

Engage with space-inspired and technology-infused art installations, including:

* StarZipper, created by internationally renowned artist Michael Light
and collaborator Dave Rattray
* Peter Foucault's Motion Sensor Drawing Robots
* Spot Drave's collaborative evolutionary high-definition visual
algorithm generator, Electric Sheep
* Meet the artists and scientists face to face or chat virtually with
visitors from around the globe at a kiosk.

Experience rare video works documenting art in space:

* Matières Chorégraphiques by Kitsou Dubois, celebrated French dancer,
choreographer and artistic director of Ki Productions

* Projects from the Zero Gravity Arts Consortium, Lowry Burgess's
monumental project The Seed of the Infinite Absolute, Lorelei Lisowsky, and
Frank Pietronigro's 'Drift Painting' in microgravity
* Meet Japan's space artist Ayako Ono
* Jean Luc Soret's Space Art project videos curated direct from Paris's
International @rt Outsiders Festival.

Enter the Documentary Dome and fuel your imagination with the planet's
greatest space-related documentaries, including screenings of:

* Dr. Maryanne Galvin's 'What's Going On Up There?'
* 'Hubble: 15 Years of Discovery': a project of international cooperation
between European Space Agency & NASA that dramatically documents The Hubble
Space Telescope.
* HBO's original production, 'From the Earth To The Moon'

Witness awe-inspiring space-themed performances by an armada of acrobats and
dancers, featuring:

* KC Bella Fuega and Spiral Hoop Dance (orbital hooping and bellydance)
* Flowtoys (celestial light performance and UFO flowplanes)
* VigilAntiUP (intergalactic stilting)
* A Parade from the Future (with cutting edge Bay Area circuit benders
and other worldly creatures).

Live dance and acrobatics fused with audiovisual performances, will be
coordinated with a world-class lineup of live electronic music:

PLAID - Warp Records, UK

TELEFON TEL AVIV - Hefty Records, Chicago
BLUETECH - Aleph Zero, Native State, Portland
OOAH + BORETA - Glitch Mob, LA/SF
SUTEKH - Context, Soul Jazz, Leaf
MR. PROJECTILE & JONAH SHARP (aka SPACETIME CONTINUUM) - Merck, Reflective,
Astralwerks
RD - Designed Disorder, Glitch Mob
WELDER - Cyberset
MOZAIC - Nexus
DR. TOAST - False Profit

Music environs will be complimented by a team of visual artists -- including
KOSHO, CELESTINESTAR, RECURSIVEVIDEOLAB and VIBERATION -- spinning light into
space throughout the night.

Meanwhile, outside on the tarmac, the SPACE COWBOYS will have their own
dynamic lineup of djs aboard their interstellar party transporter, the UNIMOG.
Also on the tarmac will be Playaflies and Rabbit in the Moon's outside VJ
set PLUS large scale sculpture and multimedia installations from the bay
area's finest and beyond.

This year’s theme is the greenification of space. The event is bio-diesel
powered, a variety of organic food and drink will be available, waste products
will be composted and recycled, and one tree will be planted for every ticket
sold in an effort to offset the event's carbon emissions.

Come join us in celebrating the accomplishments of mankind on a collective
cosmic journey to the depths of space and beyond.

***********************

Friday, April 13th, 2007

Event opens at 6:30pm

NASA Ames Research Center* Moffett Field, Mountain View, CA, 94035

Tickets are on sale now. Limited $25 presale tickets still available, but not
for long!

Purchase advance tickets at: www.worldspaceparty.com/tickets

Limited VIP tickets available. Privileges include: VIP room overlooking the
main floor, open bar and food throughout the evening, a chance to meet silicon
valley innovators and dynamic thinkers, exclusive Bay Area Yuri's Night
memorabilia and much more to be announced.

PLUS! Space Cadets are invited to go weightless and experience zero-gravity on
Sunday, April 22, 2007! This unique VIP experience will provide you with a
ZeroG flight flown from San Jose International Airport PLUS exclusive access
to all Yuri's Night Bay Area 2007 events. 3-2-1 Liftoff! VIP Flight Tickets
$5,000.00 each. Email zerogartists@mac.com to reserve your seat today. Don't
let this zero gravity opportunity to fly float by!

As always, please check www.worldspaceparty.com for the latest…

Yuri's Night Bay Area Crew, Over and Out.

End Transmission.
-----------------------------------------------
References to NASA Ames shall not be construed as official NASA approval or
endorsement of any non-Governmental or commercial entity or activity.

posted in Science Central - 0 replies

Question- The physics of a hooping move

sayyida — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 01:38:52 GMT

Hi everyone,

I am a hooper, and I like to know what the physical forces are behind what I do, to aid in instruction. A question I have been asked by a fellow hooper is why when doing the move shown in the link below, the hooper can turn only in the same direction in the hoop. The move will not work if you try to turn in the opposite direction. Here is the move being discussed:

www.christagiles.com/video/orbit.wmv (requires Windows Media Player)

Also, if this sort of stuff interests you, here is a little video tutorial of mine on the physics of hooping and other flow toys. I would love to hear any thoughts other people have on this matter:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0e1s8q9Pr28

posted in Science Central - 0 replies

Multiplying the ocean's CO2 guzzlers ...

Frozenstars — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 01:23:19 GMT

From BBCnews.com

Our oceans are teeming with phytoplankton: millions of microscopic plants beneath the waves that are vital to the marine ecosystem because they form the base of the marine food chain.

Phytoplankton are not visible to the naked eye but from space, satellite images show that phytoplankton form enormous green swirls hundreds of kilometres long around coastal waters.

They employ photosynthesis, using sunlight and carbon dioxide (CO2) from sea water, to sustain themselves.

"Just like trees, they can take carbon dioxide and give us back oxygen," says Professor Ian Jones, an ocean engineer from the University of Sydney, Australia.

When the plankton die, they sink deep to the ocean floor, taking the carbon with them.

What Professor Jones wants to do is add one of the components of urine - urea - to the areas of the ocean that lack phytoplankton.

Urea is a nitrogen-rich fertiliser that helps plants grow and therefore by adding it to the parts of the ocean that lack phytoplankton, Professor Jones thinks it will turn these areas into a lush "forest", eventually reversing the effects of global warming.

'Desolate Zone'

It was a natural disaster - flooding - that was to trigger his idea to introduce nutrients to the ocean. When rivers burst their banks and flood agricultural land, the fertiliser or nutrients on the land are washed away into the sea.

If you do not like the outcome, you can turn off the tap

Professor Ian Jones
And by studying the effects of rainfall in Sydney harbour, he discovered that when it rained, more nutrients come into the harbour and the phytoplankton numbers increase.

When the rain goes, they decrease again.

In 1995, a team of US oceanographers set out to study the "Desolate Zone" - an area 400km (250 miles) to the south west of the Galapagos Islands, where there are few plankton.

The researchers wanted to test the theory that this area was missing one vital nutrient: iron.

Half a tonne of iron was added to the sea. As a result, plankton bloomed and the ocean turned green.

By the end of the experiment, the scientists had calculated that the small area of newly fertilised phytoplankton had absorbed an additional 7,000 tonnes of CO2, the equivalent of 2,000 fully grown trees.

Liquid nitrogen

But for Professor Jones, there was a problem with iron fertilisation. Eighty percent of the ocean does not react to it because there is already enough, especially around the coast.

Urea would be pumped into the ocean from a nitrogen factory
The challenge for him was to find a source of nutrients that would be easily and cheaply available.

Like iron, nitrogen is one of the nutrients that makes plankton grow, but it has to be in a form that the marine organisms can process.

Professor Jones' solution is to use granular urea - bitter-tasting white granules - and convert it into liquid form so that it can go through a pipeline into the ocean.

The plan would be to run the pipe from a nitrogen factory and pump gallons of urea into the ocean to feed the plankton.

Unknown consequences

Adding large doses of nutrients to the ocean, however, does not always have a beneficial effect.

If there are too many plankton, when they die they drive bacteria production that results in a depletion of oxygen in the water and the death of other marine life.

The urea plan would only work in areas where there is not much plankton to begin with, says the professor.

"The important thing about ocean nourishment is that we are not doing it where there is lots of productivity; we are doing it in the desert regions of the ocean," he explains.

"If you do not like the outcome, you can turn off the tap. It's like irrigation. When you turn off the food supply for the plankton, they will just die."

But then there is the issue of meddling with ecosystems that have found a natural balance over millions of years of evolution.

Even Professor Jones admits: "Once you start managing nature you have to continue to manage nature, there is no use hoping that it will restore itself to a new equilibrium set up by humans."

posted in Science Central - 1 reply

Public Domain artwork commissioned by NASA

cortelyou — Mon, 19 Feb 2007 17:03:24 GMT

http://www.donaldedavis.com/PARTS/allyours.html

Neat.

posted in Science Central - 0 replies

'no mouth pipetting'

mella — Wed, 14 Feb 2007 22:41:28 GMT

I was reviewing my lab's Health & Safety Manual today and there's the standard section about no mouth pipetting - does *anyone* do this anymore? Is there a reason why someone would bother in the year 2007 to mouth pipette?

posted in Science Central - 1 reply

Ice mass snaps free from Canada's Arctic

cortelyou — Fri, 29 Dec 2006 17:49:42 GMT

41 sq mile ice sheet breaks free; global warming in region likely to blame say scientists:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061229/ap_on_sc/canada_arctic_ice_break

posted in Science Central - 5 replies

Non-newtonian fluid demonstration

cortelyou — Sat, 03 Feb 2007 01:15:55 GMT

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2XQ97XHjVw

Walking on water! lol

posted in Science Central - 0 replies

Watch Comet McNaught

artistftw — Mon, 08 Jan 2007 00:21:40 GMT

http://www.space.com/spacewatch/soho_lasco_c3_live.html

posted in Science Central - 0 replies

balance vs scale

mella — Fri, 29 Dec 2006 21:09:40 GMT

This may seem like a stupid question,but it's stumped us here in the lab today:

What is the difference between a BALANCE and a SCALE?

The two words seem to be used interchangeably to describe a variety of devices that are used to determine the mass of an object, but do they actually describe the same devices, or are scales different than balances?

posted in Science Central - 3 replies

How fun

Katie — Sun, 05 Nov 2006 17:15:07 GMT

Don't you just love when science fiction meets science fact?
http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/technology/quantum_teleportation_010926.html

posted in Science Central - 1 reply

Please help...

Sun, 19 Nov 2006 04:12:03 GMT

If a large square glass container were moving in a vacuum uniformely at a velocity of 100m.s., and a ray of light passed from the back of the container (Velocity 1 which would be the speed of light constant, C) through the container (Velocity 2?) and then through the front end (Velocity 3?).
What would "Velocity 2" and "Velocity 3" be?
I will try and draw a diagram.
...................___________
..................|......................|
..................|......................|
-->-C--->--|----"2"---->---- |---"3"->
..................|......................|
..................|__________ |

+ The effect of the actual glass on the light is to be ignored.
+ One answer for a observer on the ground and one answer for an observer in the glass container.
+ The container's atmosphere is a vacuum.

I know this a basic question, but I'm still learning.

posted in Science Central - 1 reply

Waiting for the perfect human Mars fight: Why humans may NEVER land on Mars

Yul — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 21:21:09 GMT

The technology to send humans to Mars has existed for many years. Yet one of the reasons why no one has landed on Mars is because certain folks won't allow it until a human Mars flight can be made perfect. Of course if that policy is maintained indefinitely, then human's will land on Mars the day perpetual motion machines are perfected. Meanwhile, there are those of us who do want a human Mars flight risked depsite the inability to make it perfect. In other words, launching humans to Mars now would very likely be a suicide mission in the minds of some people. OK, so it might be a suicide mission. But at least it would be tried, and those on the Mars flight would be volunteers anyway. The only other option would be to NEVER send humans to Mars since a perfect Mars flight can never be attained. Ho ve!

posted in Science Central - 13 replies

Static Electricity Questions

armatronix — Sun, 17 Sep 2006 19:48:30 GMT

Okay, here's the scenario:

I recently moved from a house with carpeting into a house with hardwood floors, and I'm beginning to understand why carpeting is maybe a good thing for people who own cats. I'm amazed at the amount of cat hair that collects on (and in) every piece of electronics in my combined office/studio/living room.

Today, I discovered that if I turn on a fan in said room, I can, for lack of a better term, "aerosolize" the cat hair and create what amounts to a cat hair tornado. If I could somehow attract that hair, then I could take it out of circulation.

So here are my questions:

1. Is there some sort of a reverse Van der Graff generator that would attract the cat hair once it is airborne?
2. Is it a simple technology that I could build myself relatively inexpensively?
3. Would it threaten the integrity of the data on my hard drives and/or pose a safety risk for myself, my pets, or my electronic devices?

posted in Science Central - 7 replies

I QUIT!

Yul — Wed, 23 Aug 2006 14:39:52 GMT

This tribe seems very counterproductive to me. So I'm going to quit and join a science tribe that supports technological advancement.

posted in Science Central - 4 replies

HIV Origins Found?

Frozenstars — Thu, 25 May 2006 23:41:51 GMT

Read so yourself:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12966623/

posted in Science Central - 13 replies

A plane that runs on gravity and uses vacuum for lift?

Roy — Thu, 15 Jun 2006 05:55:09 GMT

I've thought about using vacuum for lift for years. Could it be coming?

http://www.machinedesign.com/ASP/viewSelectedArticle.asp?strArticleId=56635&strSite=MDSite&Screen=AEROSPACE&catId=379

posted in Science Central - 4 replies

Giant Crater Found Beneath Antarctica

valobstruction — Sat, 03 Jun 2006 20:52:38 GMT

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/060601_big_crater.html

An apparent crater as big as Ohio has been found in Antarctica. Scientists think it was carved by a space rock that caused the greatest mass extinction on Earth, 250 million years ago.

The crater, buried beneath a half-mile of ice and discovered by some serious airborne and satellite sleuthing, is more than twice as big as the one involved in the demise of the dinosaurs.

posted in Science Central - 2 replies

Is this a case of covering your ass with a Mammoth ass?!

Frozenstars — Tue, 25 Jul 2006 23:16:56 GMT

Read so yourself:

http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/science/07/25/skorea.disgraced.ap/index.html

posted in Science Central - 0 replies

Energy Output

Johann — Sun, 16 Jul 2006 17:58:00 GMT

I'm much more of a theorist than a math wiz so I'm not sure if this experiment is possible or even makes any sense, but I'll do my best.

I would like to see someone equate the energy output of the human race and compare their mass versus the energy output/mass of other active objects, namely within the macro and microcosoms (i.e celestial bodies and molecules or small organisms).

I have no evidence, but I have a feeling that despite their size, planets and stars have less energy effecting their suroundings as humans have when comparing this outpust against the mass of the subjects. If we had a mass equal to that of all of the human race and made it into something less advance, it would probably have less of an effect on its surroundings. By something less advanced I mean something with fewer systems in it.

In writing this I am left with one major difficulty. How does one seperate the extent of a body and its outlets? Are humans not a part of the system that makes up the earth, or the earth a consequence of the sun? I'm not sure how to limit these variables in order to make them practical to use.

Any ideas or suggestions are welcome.

posted in Science Central - 2 replies

Wise Move...

Frozenstars — Mon, 19 Jun 2006 17:53:56 GMT

The Seed-Vault:

http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/science/06/19/arctic.seedvault.ap/index.html

posted in Science Central - 0 replies

Science and FedEx

cortelyou — Fri, 12 May 2006 18:24:33 GMT

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6886880938991195179

A time lapse computer display of how air traffic controllers with pilots guide their planes en route to the airport around thunderstorms. Seemly with such precision! I thought it was neat anyway.

posted in Science Central - 2 replies

Talkin' about regeneration!

Yul — Wed, 05 Apr 2006 14:06:17 GMT

Finally, the mainstream news is taking note of regeneration research:
http://www.happynews.com/news/442006/lab-grows-bladders-from-cells-of-patients.htm
But from my perspective, this is old news -- old news that should have been heavily publicized for years!

posted in Science Central - 1 reply

Rejected American inventions

Yul — Mon, 27 Mar 2006 15:46:27 GMT

I'm of the mind that some of the rejected inventions on the American Inventor TV show actually could have practical applications. For example, the Bladder Buddy -- a wearible "toilet" of sorts -- looks like the ideal device for space missions. If the guy who invented it called NASA, he might actually make a buttload of money off it. Also, the invention of invisible tear gas could be something that law enforcement agencies and the military would probalby pay megabucks for it. If only I could say the same thing about the Space Beetle Utopia.

posted in Science Central - 1 reply

Light-Transmitting Concrete

captaincracklins — Tue, 28 Mar 2006 04:08:42 GMT

Check it out:

http://www.techeblog.com/index.php/tech-gadget/light-transmitting-concrete

The concrete is strewn with parallel optical fibers which conduct the light. I wonder if the tensile strength is affected, and whether it could be used for structural purposes.

posted in Science Central - 3 replies

Towards a new test of general relativity?

cortelyou — Fri, 24 Mar 2006 00:15:47 GMT

http://www.physorg.com/news12054.html

Just as a moving electrical charge creates a magnetic field, so a moving mass generates a gravitomagnetic field. According to Einstein's Theory of General Relativity, the effect is virtually negligible. However, Martin Tajmar, ARC Seibersdorf Research GmbH, Austria; Clovis de Matos, ESA-HQ, Paris; and colleagues have measured the effect in a laboratory.

posted in Science Central - 2 replies

Biotech @ North Carolina?

Wed, 22 Mar 2006 00:25:31 GMT

NC Biotech Research Campus
http://www.localtechwire.com/article.cfm?u=13541

posted in Science Central - 0 replies

Zero population growth

Yul — Fri, 24 Feb 2006 16:02:35 GMT

I recently saw this David Susuki special on Link TV, and it reminded me that the best way for us to save the Earth's environment is to employ zero population growth. How about that?

posted in Science Central - 14 replies

Bush is an Enviromental Groundbreaker!

blackegg — Thu, 02 Mar 2006 21:59:35 GMT

did you hear? did you hear?
In the Presidential Address (or the one before that?)
President Bush unvieled a
*radical , groundbreaking*
plan. Something by the name of "Alternative Energy".
Who woulda thought there was an alternative???
President Bush is the wisest in allll the land!!!

posted in Science Central - 5 replies

The Iceman's Genetic Woe's...

Frozenstars — Sun, 05 Feb 2006 16:06:14 GMT

Man, this joker seems to have had the worst luck?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4674866.stm

posted in Science Central - 3 replies

Ozonated?

alicat — Wed, 18 Jan 2006 04:48:35 GMT

My company helps small manufacturers with their sales and marketing. This week we got a package from a would-be who wanted us to help spread the word about "Ozonated Olive Oil" which they insisted would do everything from make you young again to make you feel vital and alive.

I am not taking on their product for a lot of reasons besides the bullshit factor- but I still want to know: what is ozonation and why would anyone do it to olive oil?

Ali

posted in Science Central - 6 replies

U.S. could have reached Mars 20 years ago

Yul — Fri, 17 Feb 2006 22:20:55 GMT

I'VE BEEN SAYING THIS FOR THE PAST 20 YEARS!!

Griffin: US Could Have Reached Mars 20 Years Ago
February 17, 2006
For further information about the Mars Society, visit our website at
www.marssociety.org.

Speaking in testimony to the House Science Committee yesterday, NASA
Administrator Mike Griffin said that the USA could have sent
astronauts to Mars by the early 1980's.

According to reportage on CNN:

<Griffin countered [remarks by Rep Sherwood Boehlert, (R-NY)]that
NASA has a lot of ground to make up to implement the Bush
administration's plan to phase out the troubled space shuttle program
by 2010 and focus on building spacecraft capable of a return to the
moon by 2018 and later a mission to Mars.

"The United States did have these capabilities," Griffin said. "We
allowed them to atrophy. We proactively made decisions as a country
that caused those capabilities to go away.

"If we were sitting here today with the capabilities that this nation
had purchased as of the end of the Apollo program, we could go to
Mars within a decade. We have a decade's worth of hard work in front
of us just to be able to get back to where we were.">

Griffin's remarks completely debunk the assertions made in some
quarters that human missions to Mars are a goal for the far future.
Had sensible policies been pursued in the past, American astronauts
would have walked on Mars during Ronald Reagan's first term in
office, and the first children born on Mars a decade later might be
entering middle school – on Mars – right about now.

The task now is to move forward. NASA's attempt to resume human
exploration is being hamstrung by the fact that it is wasting nearly
its entire human spaceflight budget on the Shuttle program, which is
not contributing towards reaching for the Moon or Mars in any way.

Only one more Shuttle flight is really needed: that to repair and
upgrade the Hubble Space Telescope. That mission should be flown
without further delay. After that, the Shuttle program should be shut
down, and its $5 billion per year budget moved over to fund the
development of a heavy lift launch vehicle (HLLV) and the other
flight elements needed to send astronauts to the Moon and Mars. The
HLLV could also be used to launch and complete the International
Space Station much more rapidly than can be done through prolonging
Shuttle operations.

Provided this policy is implemented, humans may yet reach Mars in our
time.

posted in Science Central - 3 replies

Science Central's topics - tribe.net

Advanced Biodiesel Classes

UFOs---are they real

Current Research in Modern Physics

Hormone Spray Elicits Trust in Humans

Volcano Erupts in Isolated Iceland Area

Scientists tip: exercise your sense of humour

We have an energy measure of truth.

Hmmm, Global Warming....

Large Meteor Slams Northern Norway

10 percent use claim

As the seed vault grows...

The Heavens: the real one

*smirk* Should We Now Ban The Golden Book of Chemistry Experiments?!

New Tribe

Sheep save the world!

Bay Area Yuri's Night 2007 at NASA Ames - Ticket prices about to go up!

Question- The physics of a hooping move

Multiplying the ocean's CO2 guzzlers ...

Public Domain artwork commissioned by NASA

'no mouth pipetting'

Ice mass snaps free from Canada's Arctic

Non-newtonian fluid demonstration

Watch Comet McNaught

balance vs scale

How fun

Please help...

Waiting for the perfect human Mars fight: Why humans may NEVER land on Mars

Static Electricity Questions

I QUIT!

HIV Origins Found?

A plane that runs on gravity and uses vacuum for lift?

Giant Crater Found Beneath Antarctica

Is this a case of covering your ass with a Mammoth ass?!

Energy Output

Wise Move...

Science and FedEx

Talkin' about regeneration!

Rejected American inventions

Light-Transmitting Concrete

Towards a new test of general relativity?

Biotech @ North Carolina?

Zero population growth

Bush is an Enviromental Groundbreaker!

The Iceman's Genetic Woe's...

Ozonated?

U.S. could have reached Mars 20 years ago

smirk Should We Now Ban The Golden Book of Chemistry Experiments?!