• MIT’s photonic crystals lead towards nuclear batteries everywhere
    68 replies, posted
Put them in all the things that generate heat!
[QUOTE=Squad;34575722]Do you actually work in a scientific environment? I can tell you that science does, in fact, work by competition. It may seem in theory that the best results are through cooperation, but it isn't pure cooperation.[/QUOTE] Yes, within my PhD I'm involved in building an optical atomic lattice clock based on ultra-cold neutral bosonic Magnesium-24. [QUOTE=Squad;34575722]The only cooperation is using what others have found previously to find something new, however new ideas are usually from labs which are very secretive until the point that they are ready to publish. They may "collaborate" in a sense that they may get very general ideas about something without ever revealing any information until they find it themselves. Then you have someone working on the same exact project at the same rate and finishes at the same time as the other person. Now you have two people who just did the same exact thing. [/QUOTE] No, this is not true. Sure, you do not give your "secrets" to everyone but as an example, we have several cooperations with other (I put it in quotation marks) "competing" groups. And the metrological (not met[b]e[/b]orological) business is a hard business. We help each other, discuss about technology and talk about latest results or what we are currently trying to do (even before a paper is released in public). This is how science works. [QUOTE=Squad;34575722]If science worked by cooperation, those scientist would get together and speed up their progress, however prestige gets the best of each scientist and each individual wants to be the first and only discoverer. [/QUOTE] Speeding up science by a factor of 2 means investing a factor of 4 or even more in money. And that is not that easy to get. For example, the experiment I'm working on is now more than a decade old and has achieved great results in the past 4 years. But we have very limited budget of roughly $15k to $30k a year, which keeps us in going on doing the measurements with semi-operable equipment in some places, which gives us a daily adjustment pain. And whenever e.g. an optical fiber breaks you can easily spend up several thousand of dollars. Buying a new laser goes even into the range of tens to hundreds of thousand dollars. If we had lets say 200k a year or more, we could speed up things a lot and get rid of all the legacy stuff of the past decade which gives us a pain every day. [QUOTE=Squad;34575722]In many was, yes, science is cooperative. In the ways that produce the best results, not so much. When scientist compete they work harder to get their research out before their competitor. Thus, speeding up scientific advancement. It would be more productive to have people working collaboratively together on the same project instead of independently on the same project. I say more productive in the sense that the scientists would work together to figure out problems instead of running into the same problems and not sharing how to get around them.[/QUOTE] As I said before, there is a lot of inter-experiment cooperation. We do not simply drive each other in problems. But I have to add that my point of view (which I see every day) is only valid for the fundamental science, which is preferably done by academical institutes. Whenever we talk about "science" in a way of creating a product directly, this is done by companies which indeed want to keep it secret as long as possible. Then your point is valid. But the topic was about fundamental science. [editline]6th February 2012[/editline] [QUOTE=Turnips5;34576058]lmao he has a PhD in physics, you do a bad job of picking your targets[/QUOTE] I don't have a PhD yet. I'm doing it right now. But in the next couple of years, I will have one for sure.
I guess I just didn't convey my point very well at all. All I was really trying to say is that science isn't 100% cooperative. In a research lab its better than when working in industry. Science in industry is more competitive I guess is what I was trying to get at. Sorry for the confusion.
[QUOTE=Gmod4ever;34575765]What is this from?[/QUOTE] I was wondering the same thing so I did a search. Looks like Dennou Coil.
[QUOTE=aVoN;34577927]I don't have a PhD yet. I'm doing it right now. But in the next couple of years, I will have one for sure.[/QUOTE] ah, I honestly thought you'd finished your PhD and were doing more research
[QUOTE=Turnips5;34576058]Isn't that just a [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betavoltaics]betavoltaic[/url]? [editline]6th February 2012[/editline] if not, can you please explain the difference that I might learn from you[/QUOTE] God dammit, whenever I come up with a good idea somebody else has done it ages ago :(
Competitive science is best science.
Well, I probably should have read the article before I started stockpiling my bottle caps.
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