ICE!

Well, Texas and Ohio voted for Hillary.  My mother was listening to Rush Limbaugh today (I was listening to Dr. Kaku and then Dr. Wolfson (more on this later)) and I really wasn't.  Granted, there were times I heard it and from what I gather ... well.

IF I heard it correctly (big IF here, because my mind was on Dr. Wolfson's lecture) Rush was talking about Hillary and Barack Obama ... their race for the nomination, and the fact that Rush appeared to want to get Hillary to stay in the race longer.

Why?  To fracture the Democratic vote would be my guess.  Again, I really wasn't listening too closely. 

But whatever happened to "government by the people and for the people?"  Call me naive here, but does anybody really think that any of the politicians have our best interests at heart?

And then there's what Dr. Ward was saying the other day ... that we really COULD get weaned off of oil if we (as a nation) really put our mind to it.  Most of our oil is imported nowadays.  And, according to Dr. Kaku (yes, he's a theoretical physicist but he also is an expert on the environment) we'd have to discover a new Saudi Arabia every 10 YEARS to keep up with the demand for oil.   That ain't likely to happen.

Our "government" spent $2 billion to dig the hole for the Superconducting Supercollider (in Texas) ... and then anothe $2 billion to fill the damn thing up.  Had it been built, it would have measured 87km in circumference.  By contrast, the new Large Hadron Collider (CERN) will be 27km in circumference.  And it SHOULD be online by mid 2008.  It should put String Theory to the test, and it is believed that it will have enough energy to create a Higgs Boson.  Since ST is the ONLY theory that predicts the Higgs, this will either nail it to the wall, or blow it out of the water.

BUT...it's also thought that the LHC MIGHT be able to create a magnetic monopole.  What does that mean in English for you and I?  Well...

One thing that's keeping us from having UNlimited energy ("hot" fusion) is that the plasma is contained in "doughnuts" of magnetic fields.  A magnetic field, you'll remember, has a north and south pole.  A magnetic monopole, by contrast, is a north pole WITHOUT a south pole.  These hypothetical particles are REALLY heavy suckers, which is why they haven't been found yet.

Well, when you try to contain plasma in a magnetic field, it's rather like squeezing a balloon.  You squeeze one area, and it bulges in another.  Squeeze that area, and ANOTHER bulges.  With only ONE magnetic field (north pole), the monopole (a hypothetical particle) COULD help contain the plasma long enough to make the reaction self-sustaining.  More than that, IF the plasma could be contained LONG ENOUGH, it would create MORE energy than is used to sustain the magnetic field.  Free energy.

Imagine what we could do with that.  Suddenly, we could tell Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, UAE, and all the other countries that we import oil from that we don't need them anymore.  Then, they wouldn't have the US by the balls anymore.

We're not there yet, and if the politicians have their way, we won't get there any time soon.  Probably not in my lifetime.  Why?  M O N E Y.  The oil industry has many highly paid lobbyists in the District of Corruption.  If we DID get hot fusion to work, their stocks and their profits would tank.  It's that simple. They don't WANT different sources of fuel because they haven't invested in it.

Before I close this entry, let's take a look at hydrogen fuel cells.  They sound good, and "Green," but there is a problem with them.  They're clean WHERE YOU BURN THEM.  How do you create a fuel cell?  In a factory that makes them.  Where does that factory get its energy?  The electric power grid.  Where does the grid get the bulk of their energy from?  Coal-fired power plants. 

Fuel cells are a stop-gap ONLY ... they won't solve the problem.

And hybrids?  Dr. Kaku is right in that most people do their chores within 60 miles, which is the limit on most hybrids before the gasoline engine kicks in.  But there is a problem.  Where does the electric motor get its energy?  By plugging it into an outlet.  The outlet that gets its power from the same grid that we just spoke about.  Oops.

Another stop-gap.  Perhaps somebody really should ask the politicians why they let the oil industry run this country. 

We ALMOST have the technology to make hot fusion work.  Certainly we have enough technology to DRASTICALLY cut our demand for oil. 

But the oil industry, their lobbyists, and the politicians that they bought don't want that.  They WANT oil.  They WANT their profits. 

They don't want unlimited energy.