I've lived a life where I have been able to professionally dabble in pure fantasies. Three years with the U.S. Senate working on energy and the environmental legislation.  I drafted the bill that created the national hydrogen program in 1979.  Worked on laser fusion at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence ( SETI ) at the NASA Ames Research Center.   I had a full career in renewable energy, directing the Hawaii Natural Energy Institute at the University of Hawaii and co-founding the Pacific International Center for High Technology Research. Here is a  nine-year old posting providing some details on my experience with fusion .  in the mid-1970's I remember having an apartment adjacent to Wente Brothers, and watching the Watergate hearings.  That was almost half a century ago.  At the  end of 2022 : Lawrence Livermore first achieved a net energy gain in a fusion experiment using lasers. That...

Our flight to Tokyo on Hawaiian Airlines featured the ususal take-off view of Waikiki and Diamond Head. The food and service were great.  Started with prosecco, then went on to Johnny Walker Black, sake and Kirin Beer with a Japanese meal.  Followed by cheesecake, Bailey's and cognac. Saw three films.   Guy Richie's The Covenant , which got 83/98 ratings from  Rotten Tomatoes,  really good move, and  Someone You Loved,  a Korean romance film with a different kind of twist at the end.  Unexpected. The last one was  Contact , but the iPad had to be turned off when the plane approached Haneda Airport, so I missed the last few minutes. However, I turned to Google, and  found this article, which tries to explain what happened .,  Left more questions about the reality, except that Jody Foster playing the role of a Search for Extraterrestial Intelligence (SETI) scientist, possibly went through a  wormhole  and returned back ...

 It's Sunday and not much happening anywhere of much concern to me.  I could go spiritual, but can't think of anything worthwhile. Two items, though, the tiniest possible, and the second as vast as it can be, caught my attention: Fundamental physicists just reported that a fundamental particle had more mass than expected, throwing the whole field into turmoil. A W boson is supposed to have an energy effect of 80,357,000 electron volts. Hard to believe this is even physically possible, but a team of 400 scientists associated with the U.S. Fermi National Accelerator Lab reported in  Science  that they measured 80,433,000 ev.   This difference of a slightly more than one part in a thousand means that their understanding of nature is wrong! So what is the solution?  Run another 10-year study or two. Then what happens if the Fermi result is confirmed?  Then quantum mechanics will need to find another Standard Model. Perhaps all this bewilderment will s...