Reputation trap

So you are saying if this sample really did pass the nuclear flash test the DoD would have seized it and created an international incident? So it must be a fraud?

I am saying that if the sample was as fantastic as is claimed, and would be a game-changer in protection against nuclear weapons, then the DoD would have done anything it deemed necessary in order to ensure that they had access to that technology - and in order to minimise the possibility of foreign powers having the same technology.

There would be no need of an "international incident" - there are all sorts of options before that. The easiest would be for the DoD to offer bribes (including money, or shares, or whatever terms the inventor wanted, or ensuring that an American company had got production rights) in order to get access to the stuff. But it would be extremely simple for them to say "we ran a second test at higher power, but it vaporised the sample" and then keep it.

Remember, the job of the DoD is /war/. They deal with a balance between protecting the lives and way of life of Americans, and the lives and rights of other people across the world (including other American citizens). Collateral damage is an fact of war. And while the DoD try to minimise collateral damage, do you really think they would consider the commercial rights of a stubborn and awkward British guy to be more important than an invention that could change the outcome of a nuclear war? I am not suggesting that the US DoD is evil or run by the sort of power-mad generals and ruthless weapon makers that one sees in films. I am not even suggesting that they would have had to do something illegal or unethical, at least not until legal and ethical methods had failed. I am merely suggesting that they would be failing to do their job if they had this stuff in their hands, saw its capabilities (as claimed), and then did do all they could to ensure that they had access to this technology.

We have lots of wood here. Wood houses are especially good in earthquake territory, where falling stones and bricks kill people. My house has a reinforced concrete foundation, steel beam structural elements, and a wood frame with lots of plywood, up to current earthquake standards. We have a flat roof, which needs a tar-and-gravel tuneup about every 20 years, which is no big deal.

I don't know of homes being made from tin sheet. Some fru-fru architects like to use corrigated iron siding, but that's ugly and costs extra.

Copperclad FR4 is a neat construction material.

Does anything support the bricks and mortar? Bricks here are only siding, applied over a usually wood structure.

You are still confused. Clearly he wanted to keep control more than he wanted to "exploit an invention", etc.

Really? He suffered "anguish"? I think at every step he did what he felt best.

That's a bit of BS.

Den fredag den 8. januar 2016 kl. 17.41.59 UTC+1 skrev John Larkin:

so only for show ...

the brick and mortar supports the brick and mortar it has worked for hundreds of years

normally a house is bricks on the outside, then mineral wool batts for insulation, then inner wall of bricks or more modern prefab concrete walls or aerated concrete blocks

-Lasse

Ok, so you choose to ignore all the info you have viewed? I suppose the fact that many claim this material was tested by government agencies is not verified, but what do you expect for an Internet conversation? If you want more evidence try finding out who at these government agencies tested it and verify with them maybe. Sure, you can not believe the claims, but I can't see a reason to do so when there is lots of video showing the sample being tested even if not rigorously. The torch test is a pretty good ad hoc test.

Den fredag den 8. januar 2016 kl. 04.06.38 UTC+1 skrev krw:

a trademark that has become a a generic term for corrugated sheets or slates made from fiber reinforced cement

-Lasse

Typically 2-3' deep concrete or stone foundations under the walls or in areas subject to coal mining subsidence entire concrete rafts or the older alternative medieval technology of wood frame building infilled with brick or wattle & daub. Most new build today is either brick or stone in areas of natural beauty. A few Scandinavian kit flat packs get built mostly by keen DIYers but they are very much a minority interest.

If your building is historic and listed then you have to maintain it with the appropriate old materials. Mine requires lime mortar and some walls are nearly 3' thick in places. The Victorian habit of plasterers using chicken wire to stop plaster slumping makes Wifi coverage tricky.

Lead? Oh, the *horrors*! I suppose they could have RoHS roofs.

Slate only lasts "centuries" with major annual maintenance. I know many people with slate roofs who constantly have to replace broken slates. They're getting really hard to find, too.

Copper won't last anything like a century. It'll get stolen by weeks end. ;-)

You mean where normal people can afford to buy a house?

Yeah, that's cheap. Shingles are almost the perfect roofing material. they're cheap and heavy (stones added). They do have to be replaced more often but they're a *lot* cheaper.

Bullshit.

Slate does the same. Not to mention tree branches and hail doesn't do it any good, either.

Whoopie! ...and ten years later it all has to come off.

Well, it's weatherproof and bugproof and doesn't need painting. But bricks and stone don't add much thermal insulation, so there have to be insulated inner layers. In a wood house, that's usually fiberglas stuffed into the wooden walls, with drywall/sheetrock as the interior finish, which helps fire protection.

That's wouldn't work here, in a earthquake zone. The US has lots of wood, so most construction is wood frame, but occasionally some steel studs.

The first floor walls of our cabin the the Sierras is concrete blocks, which is good protection against bugs and rot from melting snow. Above that, wood. The blocks are filled with rerod and concrete, which has been experimentally demonstrated to be difficult to cut a hole through.

;-)

Brick homes are around but brick has an R value of around minus one. Wood framing has these neat pockets that are easily stuffed with dead air. Newer construction has more L and less W so even more R.

A lot of the older houses here (older meaning 1940s or so) are stucco over chicken wire on the exterior. They tend to get mouldy on the outside and the wood below (pre-Tyvek) always rots.

Brick buildings here are mandated to be reinforced for earthquake safety, which is expensive. In the 1989 quake, the deaths were caused by the Oakland freeway collapse and by falling bricks inside and outside buildings. A 7-story building next to us had the entire brick facing peel off onto the sidewalk. Miraculously, nobody was walking there; one brick would have been lethal.

Lead is a standard roofing material in the UK.

Where it has been used for the entire roof (classically churches), it is a magnet for thieves.

It is used in new-build construction for valleys and on top of brick/stone walls.

See for pointers such as

That does explain a lot.

Three feet thick! How old is your house.. got a picture or something?

George H.

Typical construction technique for 4 story houses before WW1 was two outer skins made of brick or, more likely stone and cement, and then rubble dumped in between the two skins. The lower walls would be up to 3' thick, tapering to 9" or 1' at the top.

Often valley roofs were used, so that extra weight could be placed "on top of" the walls, for the same structural reasons that there are "pinnacles" on churches and flying buttresses.

Cavity walls were only introduced in the late 1920s.

I think you are amusing.

There simply is no reason to believe they actually created fusion. Evidence against this discovery is the total lack of neutrons which would accompany the type of reaction that would be happening.