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I decided to treat the article that speculated about neutrinos powering cell phones and EVs as a not-so-crazy idea, rather than waste another day trying to calculate if it's actually possible. As a result, my powertrons have become neutrino-to-energy reactors, usually referred to as neutrino boilers, or just boilers. The origin of "boilers" comes from the fact that when a neutrino reactor is breached, it implodes into a singularity and then explodes like a mini-bang, with plasma temperatures reaching 250M degrees (now that'll heat your water!). I don't intend to explain how a neutrino-to-energy reactor works, though. The name should make it pretty obvious what it does, which is all I need for a Lucas-ian space opera (the s--t just works; don't bore people by trying to invent hokey explanations for impossible tech).

I may, however, mention in the Galactipedia article on FTL travel that if a ship's atreidite-based reserves (batteries) are drained (e.g., in battle) and the ship is too far from a major source of neutrinos, then the vessel can become marooned in space, unable to power the boiler and recharge the atreidite. That adds a nice element of risk to space travel, although primarily for vessels forced to move away from a major neutrino source (e.g., a star). That could be military vessels engaged in combat, civilian ships fleeing pirates, etc. In those situations you better hope your atreidite-powered interstellar drones are fully charged to go for help. And since drones can't carry huge reactors, they can only make a limited number of jumps before they run out of power.

Thanks, njc. I started reading it but had to spend the rest of the day dealing with other people's f-ups. I'll finish the rest of the article later this week. If other people only did their jobs the way they're supposed to, we'd all have a lot more free time, and companies could shrink their call centers.

For example, a few months ago, I tried logging into the Alberta government's portal, which allows us mortals to perform functions without having to deal with chronically understaffed call centers. Well, for some reason, my new computer (HP Win11 Chrome) kept getting an error 429 when I tried to log in, reset my password, recover my username, etc. Useful error message if ever I saw one. So, I called the call center (non-IT folks) who asked a few questions, including whether or not I have another computer. Turns out I do - a Chromebook. So I trundled downstairs to try it, and it worked. At that point, the tech guru at the call center concluded the problem lay with my PC and I'd have to call the manufacturer. When I pointed out that my HP works perfectly with thousands of websites I'd visited since buying it, he insisted there was nothing that could be done at their end. When I asked to speak with someone in IT to do more troubleshooting, he said there was no one he could transfer me to, and repeated that I'd have to speak to the manufacturer. Can you imagine the call with HP Support: My HP doesn't work with Alberta.ca's login page, although it works everywhere else, but the highly technical call center folks insisted it must be a hardware problem.

Fortunately, there is another way to contact support, which is through email. So, I sent them an email and made my case, including the fact that just because their software works with some PCs, doesn't mean the problem isn't on their side. I eventually got an email back (an electronic form letter), which explained some possible causes of error 429, and things to try, up to and including reinstalling Windows. Can you imagine? I went so far as the step to reinstall my browser but then stopped. I emailed back that I had tried everything (a fib, I know) and asked what else they suggest. That was the last I heard from them. About two weeks later, I tried logging in again, and lo and behold, it worked. I guess whatever hardware problem was causing the error must have self-corrected. :-)

This is the kind of crap I was dealing with all day. :-(
Dirk

Well, if the sun only puts out enough neutrinos every 176 years to equal the energy of a gallon of gasoline, then those cell phones and EVs better sip that gas very sparingly. :-) I think my problem is in the underlying numbers. I got some of them from Alexa, which didn't always quote sources I would necessarily trust if I was googling for the same info. This could be an example of the Alexa AI relying on crappy sources, which Open AI admits is a general problem. And of course, as companies all scramble to integrate AI and use it to answer questions based on shitty sources, googling will increasingly return crappy search results, which is already a known problem even without AI.

Correction: there are 100 trillion neutrinos passing through us every second.

Interesting quirk: Even a banana emits neutrinos—they come from the natural radioactivity of the potassium in the fruit. If only I could come up with some way to efficiently concentrate potassium to the point where the result produces enough neutrinos to be a useful source of energy.

I finally came up with a theoretically possible future power source to serve as the core of powertrons: neutrinos. Fusion will still be used for smaller power sources. The only down side of both neutrinos and fusion is that neither will come close to doing that implode-explode thing when the powertron is breached. Perhaps something about the way energy is "gathered" from neutrinos makes imp-exp explosions possible. Hard to imagine though since researchers are talking about neutrino-powered smartphones and electric cars in the coming decade(s). Apparently it's not a particularly dangerous tech.

Perhaps if I use neutrons (from an artificial baby neutron star in engineering) rather than neutrinos....

I think I finally have an acceptable replacement for mattergy cannons. It's way simpler/shorter than my recent parabolic dish writeup.

That's a cool idea.

Yes and yes

Another item: Sol, have you had a chance to look at the functioning of spellchecking on various important TNBW text fields? I no longer recall which ones had/didn't have spellchecking, but there definitely was more of it before the crash. I especially find myself looking up plenty of words when posting to the forum.

EDIT: Found the problem. My browser (Chrome) is able to spellcheck words in at least some TNBW text fields (e.g., forum posts) but the feature was off. Not sure how that happened. But that seems to be the fix.

EDIT 2: Did a little more testing. Chrome's spellchecking seems to work on ALL major TNBW text fields except the closing comment to an inline review and the closing comment when responding to that review.

Thanks
Dirk

Sol, could you please add me as a moderator of the following existing groups?

Historical Fiction
medieval fantasy/magic
thriller/mystery/suspense
YA/New Adult crossover
Brave – Community of Christian Writers
New Novelists

Also, please add the following members as moderators of the groups listed next to their names:

Bill - Romance
Lynn - Memoirs
Kdot - medieval fantasy/magic

Please do not remove any existing moderators.

Thanks
Dirk

I pity whoever gets caught in this weather with a broken down car. Someone going from a heated garage at home to a heated garage at work, or the reverse, is likely to get very complacant, especially those young enough to reproduce. Which reminds me, I need to order a better blanket for the car. Or a winter-weight down comforter.