Let’s get back to life - Today, I share a bit of what’s happened with my digital organisms, my ongoing experiments with some software-based artificial life I wrote, and talk about where we’re going next. The general system is very close to where I wa...

Jets and jet engines - While doing the research for an episode on nuclear powered aircraft, I ran across a bunch of information on how jet engines work. I thought, gee, the history design and physics of jet engines would make a nifty episode.

From television to nuclear fusion - In 2005, a small team, headed by Robert Bussard, built a nuclear fusion reactor. The design was a descendent of a fusion reactor invented by the same man who invented the television.

It can’t melt down if it’s already melted - Today we look at the latest and greatest in reactor design, molten salt nuclear reactors. Here’s a link to Moltex Energy - Moltex Energy - Here’s a link to a short video that explains the Moltex react...

Nuclear powered aircraft - In the 1950/s the United States Airforce and Navy considered nuclear powered aircraft. Instead of burning fuel to heat air and provide thrust, a nuclear-powered jet engine would heat the air from the heat generated by a nucl...

Blast me to the moons! - Once you’ve learned how to tap nuclear energy, what can you do with it? One proposal was to take a couple thousand nuclear bombs, drop them behind a spacecraft, and set them off to push the craft from the Earth’s surface,

Nuclear alchemy - The medieval alchemists wanted to change lead into gold. It was, by the methods they were attempting to use, impossible, but modern physics might be able to turn gold into lead. it is possible to change one chemical element into anot...

Isotopes and enrichment - A given element can have different numbers of neutrons. While the protons determine an elements chemical properties, the different number of neutrons can have different nuclear properties.

Let’s relax with nuclear physics - I’d like to thank john peacocke for giving me the idea for the next few episodes. We’ve been chatting via email, and he told me about molten salt nuclear reactors. That reactor and the general subject are interesting...

Pulling the bone over their eyes - The fossil record contains, at best, only a few percent of any given ecology during any given time. To complicate the picture, some of the fossils are fakes. From money to reputation to jokes,