This episode of Hub Dialogues features host Sean Speer in conversation with The Hub’s executive director, Rudyard Griffiths, about the experience of launching The Hub over the past two years, including how we’re doing, what we’ve learned, and what to expect in 2023.  You can listen to this episode of Hub Dialogues on Acast, Amazon, Apple, Google, Spotify, or YouTube. The episodes are generously supported by The Ira Gluskin And Maxine Granovsky Gluskin Charitable Foundation. SEAN SPEER: Welcome to Hub Dialogues. I’m your host, Sean Speer, editor-at-large at The Hub. I’m honoured to be joined today by Rudyard Griffiths, The Hub’s executive director. I thought it would be a good idea to wrap up 2022 with a conversation about The Hub at 20 months, including how we’re doing,… Source link

Amongst our Indian scientists who continuously endeavour on placing Bharat in the forefront of using atomic energy for peace time employment and defence time deployment, Dr.P K Iyengar (Padmanabhan Krishnagopala Iyengar) occupies a pride of place. His remembernce day falls on 21st December. Born in 1931 in Tirunelveli, Tamil Nadu, Dr. PK Iyengar joined the Department of Atomic Energy in his 21st year as a young research scientist. In his career spanning nearly 60 years, he excelled not just in pure research but also in its large scale usage. In the sixties he turned to the design of India’s first plutonium fast-reactor, PURNIMA, and commissioned it in 1972. In 1974 he conducted the Peaceful Nuclear Explosion code named “Smiling Budhdha” at Pokharan. For these successful… Source link

A government laboratory, after decades of tireless effort and many a disappointment, announces that it has achieved the holy grail of green energy—nuclear fusion ignition! And the response has been . . . a damp squib. A reporter at the Guardian sniffed that what happened at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory was a “milestone event but not a major one.” Yes, he agrees, “nuclear fusion would have a beneficial impact on our planet by liberating vast amounts of energy without generating high levels of carbon emissions and would be an undoubted boost in the battle against climate change.” So why not cheer? Apparently because failures and hoaxers have claimed breakthroughs in the past that didn’t pan out. Sir John Cockcroft claimed in 1958 that he had achieved success with… Source link

(Image source: iStock) It may prove to be as historic as the harnessing of fire, invention of the wheel, or the channeling of electricity. It will certainly rank on a par with the first release of nuclear energy in an experimental Chicago reactor or its first test as an atomic weapon near Los Alamos, New Mexico. It is the first successful experiment to extract power from what scientists often describe as “cold fusion.” It may take a decade or more to convert their successful experiment into commercially available power, but what it offers is an inexhaustible, readily available source of clean energy that eliminates pollution, greenhouse gases, or radioactive waste from the current generation of nuclear reactors. In short, it has the means to be as powerful and transformative than… Source link

It is a thought as old as human existence. It is as old as the first time a sentient being looked up at the sky and realised the great glowing thing in the sky above was what gave the Earth its warmth and light throughout the day. How could they capture some of it? And, could they find something like it right here on Earth for themselves?  Speculations such as those have triggered humanity’s myths and legends — as well as its scientific explorations. In one of his most lyrical short stories, The Golden Apples of the Sun, Ray Bradbury, the renowned 20th-century speculative fiction author, described a rocket expedition from Earth whose mission was to skim right across the surface of the sun to scoop up a cargo of the sun’s actual material — the very hydrogen being fused into… Source link

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Podcast by CAPITOL WEEKLY STAFF posted 12.19.2022 CAPITOL WEEKLY PODCAST: Proposition 30, the ambitious plan to combat wildfires and fund EV infrastructure throughout the state by taxing California’s wealthiest citizens failed at the ballot box in November. Early polls found broad support for the measure, but a strong opposition campaign led by Gov. Newsom and the CTA turned the tide and ultimately derailed the measure. We spoke with Bill Magavern, Policy Director of the Coalition for Clean Air, and an author of Prop. 30, about efforts to combat pollution and climate change in the wake of Proposition 30’s defeat. Show Notes: :26 Prop. 30 – what happened? 4:18 “What really cost us the initiative… Source link

Workers in protective gear gather for their duties in Beijing, November 2022. Photo: AP/Andy Wong Last week’s item on dismal attendances at signing sessions, even by famous authors, reminds me of one woman who attracted enormous crowds. It was at the Merry Hill shopping centre, Dudley, in 1999 and the (then) most famous woman in the world was signing her autobiography at the rate of 500 an hour. “She says she’s getting wrist-ache,” said one lady in the queue. “Makes a change from housemaid’s knee,” sniggered another. No media interviews were allowed so I adopted a cunning plan, disguising myself as a member of the public to speak with a woman who brought down the most powerful man in the world. Her book may not have been the greatest political memoir ever written but on that… Source link

What is the fastest-moving object on Earth? Certainly not the traffic on the A34 north of Oxford, but the answer lies not far away. In a small chamber in an anonymous building on an industrial estate outside the city there is a machine that regularly fires small aluminium pellets, about the size of a postage stamp, at speeds of 20km per second (45,000mph). It is the headquarters and laboratory of First Light Fusion, one of a number of companies and organisations that are trying to harness commercial power from nuclear fusion – potentially a far cleaner and safer form of generating nuclear power than our existing nuclear fission power stations.    There is little of the feel of a nuclear power station as Nick Hawker, CEO and co-founder of First Light Fusion, shows me around the… Source link

Though I’m of the opinion that we have reached “peak woke,” I’m less sure that we’ll be rid of woke anytime soon. I read an op-ed a few days ago that speculated on a coming period of “plateau woke.” That might be just about right. “Woke,” as you know, is a term used to describe a veritable cornucopia of progressive chicanery: overreaching diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, disregard for public safety, reparations, “decolonizing” various academic fields, environmental hysteria and support for various ”identity” movements. Source link