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Toys Science

The Year In Ideas 143

Posted by michael from the things-that-go-boom-in-the-night dept.
popo writes "The New York Times Magazine has a review of the year's most original and interesting ideas. They include "The Tornado in a Can" ("A contained cyclone, it turns out, is very useful for pulverizing things") and David Stevenson's real-life proposal to dig to the center of the Earth. by sinking heavy iron through the Earth's mantle."
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The Year In Ideas More

The Year In Ideas

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  • Yeah, like we haven't fucked up the planet enough (Score:4, Insightful)

    by corebreech ( 469871 ) on Saturday December 13, 2003 @12:33PM (#7711168) Journal
    Let's start melting holes in it!

    And why? So somebody can get an 'A'!

    Which reminds me of that great scene in Star Trek TNG Evolution where Guinan busts Wesley crawling around her 10-forward, and after mumbling something about Dr. Frankenstein, asks him about the grades he's getting.

    He replies that he always gets an 'A'.

    And she replies, "So did Dr. Frankenstein."

    (and lest anybody think my using the word fuck in the subject is out of line, I refer you to none other than the FCC who says it isn't such a bad word afterall. [washingtonpost.com])

  • Discover has almost the same article (Score:4, Informative)

    by meltoast ( 619369 ) * on Saturday December 13, 2003 @12:33PM (#7711170) Homepage
    Discover Magazine has the "top 100 scientific achievements of '03". It also has the most convuluted index possible for said achievements!

  • there already is a slashdot story... (Score:4, Informative)

    by iamplupp ( 728943 ) on Saturday December 13, 2003 @12:36PM (#7711185) Homepage
    ...on the tornado in a can [slashdot.org]

  • Someone had to say it... (Score:5, Funny)

    by philthedrill ( 690129 ) on Saturday December 13, 2003 @12:45PM (#7711232)
    But I think the farmer (with his Tornado in a Can idea) has been watching too many Roadrunner cartoons.
    • Either that or sixties advertising. There was a cleaner in a bottle that had the pitch "Cleans like a white tornado!" (Just the thing for getting soot out of those Klan robes?)

      It could have been worse. There was a laundry detergent that had some giant troll arm reach out of the washer and grab your clothes. Then again, with Slashdot, inventing giant trolls would be redundant...

      TV "culture"? You're soaking in it!

    • Re:Someone had to say it... (Score:4, Funny)

      by weston ( 16146 ) <(westonsd) (at) (canncentral.org)> on Saturday December 13, 2003 @01:24PM (#7711410) Homepage
      Or Mystery Men [geocities.com]....

      After enlisting additional help from a carny weapons designer (Tom Waits -- !!), who contributes such non-lethal devices as Tornado in a Can and a Blame Thrower, they head off to storm Frankenstein's lair.
    • But I think the farmer (with his Tornado in a Can idea) has been watching too many Roadrunner cartoons.

      Maybe he will also make Spray-On Hole a reality. That was my favorite Roadrunner invention.

      He tested Spray-On Asshole on a company called something like "CSO", it is rummored. I wonder if it ever worked?

  • Picture/Mockup of actual Windhexe machine (Score:4, Informative)

    by bogie ( 31020 ) on Saturday December 13, 2003 @12:47PM (#7711237) Journal
    anchor [vt.edu]

    • I'm going to take a stab that "Sarah" didn't "write" that article on Virginia Tech's website. Instead, I'm guessing she took the story that the Washington Post wrote, and rephrased it a little.

      Nearly every sentence in Sarah's article is a clear, direct ripoff of the Washington Post article.

  • The correct link (Score:5, Informative)

    by danila ( 69889 ) on Saturday December 13, 2003 @12:51PM (#7711251) Homepage
    Here is a more helpful link to the table of contents, not to the introduction.

    http://www.nytimes.com/pages/magazine/ [nytimes.com]

  • Breaking the laws of physics (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 13, 2003 @12:52PM (#7711256)
    A garbage-processing plant in Pennsylvania will go online with its Windhexe next month; the machine can turn two tons of trash into one ton of sterile powder.

    Wow, it's a device that violates conservation of mass!

    • Wow, it's a device that violates conservation of mass!

      Naah.... they just 'forgot' to mention the ton of really really deadly vapors that they leak^H^H^H^Hcontribute to the air...
    • Hi. If you're serious, please see this thread [slashdot.org].
    • I'd assume, given what else was said in the article that the other ton is mostly water (with traces of other volatile compounds).

      But somehow the powdered brocoli just doesn't seem right. "I say it's spinach and I say the hell with it."

      If it works as claimed though, I can think of lots and lots of uses for it. Like maybe you could build something like a rototiller out of it (though you probably would have to mix in some larger bits to keep the powder from turning into cement when it gets wet).

    • It evaporates off moisture-- ever seen DRY trash?
    • We have a device that can turn several tons of various materials into zero tons of the same types of materials! It's called a space shuttle.

      Nobody said anything about conservation of weight....

      • Well, if you want to get real technical about it, the space shuttle weighs nearly as much in orbit as on Earth. Weight is defined as the force of gravity on an object according to the equation G*m1*m2/d^2, where d is the distance between masses m1 and m2. Relative to the radius of the earth, the increase in d is rather marginal when you go from the surface of the Earth to the orbital altitude of the space shuttle. The only reason it seems like there is no gravity is that the space shuttle is essentially

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
      Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • Wow, it's a device that violates conservation of mass!

      Mass isn't conserved, mass-energy is. See nuclear bombs. However one ton of mass becomes rather a lot of energy.

  • Journey to the center of the earth (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Camel Pilot ( 78781 ) on Saturday December 13, 2003 @12:54PM (#7711265) Homepage Journal
    The one thing i did not understand about the journey to the center of the earth proposal is how would you attach a sensor package with telemetry to a pile of goo at several thousands of degrees f.

    Seems like a rather minor snag.

    • Re:Journey to the center of the earth (Score:5, Funny)

      by Camel Pilot ( 78781 ) on Saturday December 13, 2003 @01:07PM (#7711325) Homepage Journal
      Furthermore the article states there is still a need for some "clever engineering" concerning the instrumentation.

      Sure and "clever engineering" is all thats stands between us and terraforming Venus.

      So can I get an "Invention of the year" award for my idea of using one of the moons of Jupiter (i am sure the greenies would whine about using ours) as an extrasolar vehicle/colony so that humans can explore the local region of our galaxy? The propulsion idea still requires some "clever engineering"

      • So can I get an "Invention of the year" award for my idea of using one of the moons of Jupiter (i am sure the greenies would whine about using ours) as an extrasolar vehicle/colony so that humans can explore the local region of our galaxy? The propulsion idea still requires some "clever engineering"

        Who wants that sort of crap... If you can get it to move around, back it up a few yards and then slam it into Jupiter! Even better, do it while hosting a reverse Survivor show where, every week before impact, p

    • Sorry for being off-topic but I couldn't find a contact email at sammcgees.com and the FAQs didn't help me. Do you ship overseas (specifically, to the UK)?
    • Using the Leidenfrost effect. The temperature of the iron will hold steady at whatever the melting point of iron is. Another blob of metal at the center of the iron will hold at its melting point. Continue with a couple more layers of shielding of this type, and your sensor pack can be held at an operable temperature for long enough to reach the center of the earth.
    • The one thing i did not understand about the journey to the center of the earth proposal is how would you attach a sensor package with telemetry to a pile of goo at several thousands of degrees f.

      Dude, that's the easiest part. Just slap a big ol' water cooling kit in there (and maybe some neons just for the hell of it).
    • The one thing i did not understand [...] is how would you attach a sensor package with telemetry to a pile of goo at several thousands of degrees f.

      Well, the probe can't get hotter than 2750 C., or the molten iron blob would boil away and the ride would be over.

      There are several substances which are still solid at this temperature: carbon, tungsten, thorium and magnesium oxide, etc. Carbon is a conductor; MgO is an insulator; and ThO2 won't dissolve in molten iron. So, it might be possible to build an

      • Of course it can get hotter. 2750 C is the boiling point at one atmosphere pressure. No doubt, the pressure at the center of the earth will be much greater, so much so that the temperature will simply reach equilibrium with it's surroundings and the sensor package will be melted as expected.

  • Windhexe? (Score:4, Funny)

    by Gudlyf ( 544445 ) <<gudlyf> <at> <realistek.com>> on Saturday December 13, 2003 @12:54PM (#7711269) Homepage Journal
    How long before Microsoft sues him for that name?

    Here's another page [vt.edu] with some pictures of it.

  • SlipHead.com - Top Idea Exchange (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Telluride ( 720291 ) on Saturday December 13, 2003 @01:11PM (#7711340)
    Speaking of top ideas, check out SlipHead.com [sliphead.com]. Its an open forum for the free exhange of ideas - similar to the way the open software movement works. Get recognized for having the best ideas, and who knows, maybe you'll even catch the eye of an investor!

  • Air Pollution? (Score:5, Informative)

    by Politburo ( 640618 ) on Saturday December 13, 2003 @01:15PM (#7711363)
    One thing I did not see in the comments on the original Tornado in a Can story is this:

    A garbage-processing plant in Pennsylvania will go online with its Windhexe next month; the machine can turn two tons of trash into one ton of sterile powder.

    Guess what. That other ton of material isn't getting destroyed. That doesn't happen. It's probably going into the air as (very tiny) solid particles. Now, since these particles are created from the very beginning of the process, are they also sterile? I would think not. I'm not saying this process is environmentally bad. I'm only saying that waste disposal never has a simple, clean solution.

    • Re:Air Pollution? (Score:5, Informative)

      by chivo ( 20329 ) on Saturday December 13, 2003 @01:23PM (#7711404)
      Actually no. The other ton of "material" is probably just the water being evaporated during the breakdown process. It appears to be a closed system, so nothing is magically disappearing. On the other hand, I've only seen a couple of pictures so magical disappearances could be possible
      • Hi. Please see my other reply: here [slashdot.org]. Also, even if it's a 'closed' system, the mass has to go somewhere. It must be accounted for. It is not simply disappearing. If it's the water, then he would have ~32 ft^3 of water to deal with from the evaporation. If that's going to air, then it's not a closed system! The device appears quite small from the pictures and would not hold more than 10 gallons of water.
        • I don't know for a fact whether it is indeed a closed system or not, I was simply speculating.

          My guess is, the idea of 1Ton of powder material from 2Tons of waste is an estimate really. The contraption pictured doesn't seem big enough to hold 2Tons of waste. Perhaps someone put in 10lbs of garbage and 5lbs of powder camer out? The truth is both the NYTimes article and VT link are too light on detail to really say. However, in a scaled up version, a version that could hold 2Tons of garbage, 32ft^3 of wa

    • Re:Air Pollution? (Score:2, Informative)

      by random735 ( 102808 )
      it says the system removes moisture..any chance they're removing a ton (literally) of moisture from two tons of trash? doesn't seem impossible to me...water weighs alot.

      • Re:Air Pollution? (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Politburo ( 640618 ) on Saturday December 13, 2003 @01:32PM (#7711459)
        Yes, water weighs 8.34 lb/gal. That means ~240 gallons of water would be in the two tons of trash. 240 gallons of water is ~32 ft^3. While I do believe I overlooked the water loss, I don't believe it could be all water.
        • While I do believe I overlooked the water loss, I don't believe it could be all water.

          Why not? A siginificant portion of garbage is food waste and the like. This material tends to be > 50% water, so I see no reason the garbage as a whole couldn't be easily 50% water. Also, theres likely some rounding involved in going from 2 tons to 1. Like maybe two to 1.2, but1 sounded better.

        • Much of your own weight is water. Why would garbage, with all its organic matter, be any different?

        • Re:Air Pollution? (Score:3, Insightful)

          by Wordplay ( 54438 )
          Keep in mind that 32 ft^3 is only a little over 3 feet on a side. That's not all that much when you consider the probable volume of two tons of trash.
    • I wondered about that myself. Your other responses mention water, but I would be surprised that half the weight was water, too.

      However, the bit about the eggshells & membranes suggests that the vortex can separate materials. Perhaps they're saying there's 1 ton of sterile powder and now only 1 ton of unsterile trash powder. That still doesn't really make sense, though.

      I wondered about sterile, too. Perhaps the pulverization and superheating kills all viri and bacteria? But there must still be chemical

  • Well, no shit? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Lord Kano ( 13027 ) on Saturday December 13, 2003 @01:23PM (#7711401) Homepage Journal
    They include "The Tornado in a Can" ("A contained cyclone, it turns out, is very useful for pulverizing things")

    In other news, I have just concluded a study that has found that a glass of water, it turns out, is very useful for quenching thirst.

    Come one now, if they can clear trailer parks in 30 seconds, isn't this just a progression of logic?

    LK
  • I'm pretty sure Icelanders are looking forward to this. After all, who doesn't want to live in a nuclear bomb test area? ;-)

  • Tornado in a Can, industrial version (Score:5, Informative)

    by Animats ( 122034 ) on Saturday December 13, 2003 @01:45PM (#7711535) Homepage
    There's an industrial version [umd.edu] installed at a University of Maryland agricultural test facility.

    This is basically a high-powered cyclone dryer [okadora.co.jp]. Cyclone dryers have been around for decades, but they're not usually run at power levels high enough to get grinding effects.

  • Anyone remeber those from the movie Mystery Men? :-)

    Shoveler: A canned tornado, huh?

    Heller: Totally non-lethal, but totally effective.

  • Wow! A personal connection (Score:5, Interesting)

    by altairmaine ( 317424 ) on Saturday December 13, 2003 @02:03PM (#7711633)
    It's sort of neat to see a story like this, because Dr. Stevenson was one of my advisors at Caltech. He's a great guy with a cool New Zealand accent and a wide assortment of knowledge about almost everything. But I can shed a little light on this, both because I know him and because I have a geology background.

    First, for the credulous, he's semi-joking. The physics of the iron sinking into the core is actually plausible, but his tone when talking about "generating a crack in the crust" is tongue-in-cheek. This would require a much larger nuclear detonation, say, than has ever been tested by anybody. The seismic consequences would be... bad. What's more, we aren't anywhere even close to being able to design probes that could survive such an environment and send messages back.

    To dispel a common misconception, the interior of the earth is NOT molten. Omitting some interesting boundary layers, the Earth is composed of the following chunks from the inside out: the inner core (solid iron alloy), the outer core (molten iron alloy), the mantle (solid rock), and the crust (we live on it). If you're curious as to how we know, it's because liquids and solids have dramatically different properties as far as transmitting seismic waves. I just found a decent site at JPL here [nasa.gov] that illustrates the earth's structure nicely, although it appears to have been written for grade schoolers.

    The idea that the mantle is liquid is one of the most widely held misconceptions about major geological concepts. It exhibits ductile deformation, so it flows something like a liquid, with a speed of centimeters or meters per year. Magma, however, results when rock is pushed up into the crust from the mantle - the decrease in pressure lowers the melting temperature. It can also be generated when water seeps into hot rocks - wet rock has a lower melting temperature. It is NOT evidence that the mantle itself is liquid.

    So why would this work? A large body of iron would be much denser than mantle rock, and at a hundred million kilograms, the net downward force would be considerable enough to force mantle rock out of the way. I'm too lazy to figure out the physics for this post, but I would imagine this is the content of the Nature article. The interesting question would be, "would ductile deformation occur quickly enough to get the iron down in a reasonable amount of time?" The answer, apparently, is 'yes'.

  • real details here: (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    http://www.vortexdehydration.com/id28.htm

  • This is from: billboards that watch you

    Mobiltrak's technology relies on a little-known fact about car radios: they don't just receive signals; they also emit them. A car radio tunes to a particular station by mixing the signal from the ether with its own internally generated signal. It's that faint internal signal that the Mobiltrak dish picks up.

    Can someone explain this? From Mobiltrak's FAQ [mobiltrak.com], it implies the "internal signal" is just RF noise - and that its noise signature is different depending upon

    • Re:billboards that watch you... rf noise? (Score:4, Informative)

      by jaoswald ( 63789 ) on Saturday December 13, 2003 @04:00PM (#7712202) Homepage
      The signal that is being picked up is not "noise" in the sense of "random noise" but rather "noise" in the sense of "unintentional emission."

      The signal that is being picked up is the "local oscillator" of the receiver in the car radio. Essentially, almost every radio receiver uses a heterodyne receiving technique. The incoming radio waves from all sources are "mixed" in a non-linear circuit with a "local oscillator" signal produce within the receiver. The non-linear nature of the mixing circuit means that signals appear at the frequencies which are the difference between the incoming radio waves and the LO frequency.

      For example, if you are tuning to FM frequency 104.1 MHz, the LO is tuned to a frequency of 114.8 MHz, creating a "copy" of the FM stations' signal at 10.7 MHz. This 10.7 MHz is called the "intermedicate frequency". Then, the actual circuitry to decode the radio modulation and create sound is designed to work off of the 10.7 MHz IF signal.

      That way, the actual tuning of the radio is done by changing the LO frequency over a range of about 90 MHz to 120 MHz, using digital synthesis techniques. The LO is a sine wave, so it is easy to generate. Whatever gets mixed to the 10.7 MHz gets turned into sound coming from your speakers.

      The way Mobiltrak appears to work is that most radios are not that well shielded, so the 114.8 MHz LO signal leaks out and can be detected by the Mobiltrak receiver. That LO signal contains no information, so it can't really tell if you are listening, but most people don't emit MHz signals from their car for any other reason.
  • Hmmmm, I know a particular executive I work for as a vendor whos office chair I'd love to install one of those windhexes beneath. Ohhhh yeah, Just fire that baby up via some sort of remote during our next "Tiger Team Meeting Quality QA1 A-OK" goddamned corporate browbeating conference call. "Bla blaaa bla bla blaaa" WHOOSH! Then, beautiful silence ensues. Glee!

    Or I could just settle for filling her crack with molten rock-gravy. Yup, great ideas indeed!

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • When the vortext pulverizes dead birds into a powder, it it actually ground finely enough that bacteria are destroyed?

      From the article:

      It then exposes the degraded material to the heat cast off by its air compressors,

      I presume it is this heat that sterilises the powder opposed to the grinding effect.

    • Winsness said, "The single most important quality of the tornado in a can is whatever goes into it comes out with its nutritional value. You can get four times the price of non-edible waste." Another question, if RIAA and their lawyers went in, would anything come out?
    • According to this page, products thrown into a windhexe get pulverized down to "micron sized particles." Since staphylococcus is about 2 microns long, I'd say that the pure mechanical powdering effect would not destroy the disease. However, the process also takes almost all of the water out of anything thrown into it, I have a feeling that even bacteria might be torn open and sucked dry of fluids via an evaporative process. I don't think sufficient documentation of this is available online yet.

      However,

  • My personal fav: PowerPoint makes you dumb (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Jesrad ( 716567 ) on Saturday December 13, 2003 @03:18PM (#7712010) Journal
    Here [nytimes.com] is my favorite article of the collection.

  • "PowerPoint makes you dumb" (Score:3, Insightful)

    by fbform ( 723771 ) on Saturday December 13, 2003 @03:27PM (#7712054)
    original article [nytimes.com]
    Seriously, amen to that. I'm an engineer, and I see similar examples everyday - decisions being made (and grants being awarded) on the basis of who has the flashier slides. I think we have finally brought Attention Deficit Disorder to the corporate level.
  • Liberals have long complained that the right overwhelms them with personal attacks and vicious allegations, while the left tries, naively, to make a more noble and substantive case...The various expressions of liberal fury are a direct imitation of what the right has been doing for more than a decade.

    Could they for Christ's sake refrain from injecting liberal politics into every article they write? As if Liberals haven't overwhelmed the right with personal attacks and vicious allegations ever. That's rig
  • United States Patent Application
    20020027173 Apparatus and method for circular vortex air flow material grinding [uspto.gov]

    To download it as a pdf document try pat2pdf [tothink.com]

  • "William Speed Weed?" (Score:3, Funny)

    by theonetruekeebler ( 60888 ) on Saturday December 13, 2003 @08:04PM (#7713493) Homepage Journal
    That's the author of the article on the Jules Verne Project [nytimes.com]. Is it just me, or does "Speed Weed" sound like a way to kill an afternoon down at the trailer park? Ghod bless 'im.

    Oh, and the project itself sounds cool as hell.

  • But his wing allows him to travel four feet horizontally for every foot he descends, which meant he could cover 22 miles in this six-minute flight.

    4:1 glide ratio? Errrr... a modern paraglider gets 8:1, never mind hanggliders at 12:1 or gliders at 40:1. A paragliding wing weighs less than 15 pounds, costs less than 3000 US$, and is safe, easy, and comfortable to fly, none of which can be said of this contraption. Tens of thousands of paragliding pilots worldwide routinely use their wings to stay in the
  • Popular Science also has a best of what's new: including the pet translator: http://www.popsci.com/popsci/bown/2003/article/0,1 8881,535988,00.html and this handy thing for watching people have sex (again and again): http://www.popsci.com/popsci/bown/2003/article/0,1 8881,536011,00.html By the way, haven't Jules Verne and the recent movie "the core," taught us to stay the hell away from the center of the earth - someone slap this guy.

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