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Styropyro – The brightest laser pointer in the world!

An evening pause: Much of the electronics described here is over my head, but the final result is quite astonishing.

Hat tip Tom Wilson.

Genesis cover

On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.

 
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.


The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
 

"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News

11 comments

  • wayne

    just skimmed quickly, is this a real thing?

    Terminator (1984)
    “Phased plasma rifle, in a 40-watt range”
    https://youtu.be/X1hLe8rSir0?t=30

  • Thomas Wilson

    Yes it’s real. He has done many power electronic projects in the past, check out his YT channel.

  • Joe

    Shiny!

    I think I need to talk to this guy about a project…

  • pzatchok

    He better be careful.
    He could put his eye out with that thing.

  • Max

    Reminds me of my childhood, scrapping grocery store scanners and laser copiers. (All made irreverent when the laser pointer became common, even on my Skill saw)
    Now I keep it simple, with young grandchildren around, melting iron with giant magnifying glass from a old rear projection TV. No better way to teach them to respect fire then handing them a stick of wood and watch it catch fire instantly. Someday I will show them my 1st tesla coil made simply from a 6 V ignition coil from an old beetle… The higher the voltage, the longer the spark!
    My last project with them was making a compact high pressure air air pump out of an old refrigerator motor. (They refuse to learn how to patch bicycle tires… They rather play with their phones)

  • pzatchok

    My last electrical experiment was a simple Jacobs ladder made from an old neon sign transformer.

    My first was a true success. At 6 I found out that 110 volts didn’t kill me but melted a wall socket and a few large areas of the skin on my hand.

    My second experiment was an even greater success a year later.

  • Max

    Joe,
    Quub Microsatellites sounds like a fascinating cutting edge technology. You have access to real data, unfiltered by political assumptions.
    Are you allowed to release your findings? Or is it strictly controlled by the customer, are they confidential findings?

    NASA has been caught fudging the Earth observation data for political reasons… are you in the position of personal first hand knowledge to know what the real science “is” and what it means for us? If the exaggeration is just chicken little claiming the sky is falling?

    Do you have real concerns/discoveries that you can share?
    Do you have a comment about so many earth observation satellites continuously installed by China? What are they really? (Their actions destroying their countries environment speak louder then their claims of environmental concerns)

    Not I, but the company I work for finds deep heavy metal underground ore deposits with sensitive gravity detectors. (Gravity strongly increases over ore deposits)
    The WEF would tell you we need to reduce the population because were running out of resources. Absolutely not true, modern technology with modern mining techniques have discovered more resources then we can use in a 1000 years;

    “In a new study, scientists have discovered previously unrecognized structural lines 100 miles or more down in the Earth that appear to signal the locations of giant deposits of copper, lead, zinc and other vital metals lying close enough to the surface to be mined, but too far down to be found using current exploration methods”
    “Up to now, all such deposits have been found pretty much at the surface, and their locations have seemed to be somewhat random. Most discoveries have been made basically by geologists combing the ground and whacking at rocks with hammers. Geophysical exploration methods using gravity and other parameters to find buried ore bodies have entered in recent decades, but the results have been underwhelming. The new study presents geologists with a new, high-tech treasure map telling them where to look”
    https://scitechdaily.com/deep-earth-structures-discovered-that-may-signal-enormous-hidden-metal-lodes/

    New claims are at an all-time high, most are kept secret to avoid competition and government intrusion. Some new discoveries;
    https://mine.nridigital.com/mine_australia_mar20/new_mining_finds_across_australia

    The deeper they mine, the hotter it becomes. Remote sensing and automation is a necessity. Developing equipment that will function reliably in extremely hot conditions of near 1000° will be the next technological barrier to break.
    The good news is, water that boils can be turned into electricity providing the energy needs of the equipment. Eventually, entire underground city’s will spring forth in large caverns independent from above ground politics. (Also underground cities in the ocean, near ore deposits of the sea vents like west of Vancouver, are also likely to happen in the near future)

    We are developing technology that will be used on Mars, moon, mercury and possibly Venus. The future is here now, and you are part of it. I hope we skip “destroying everything” of the “build back better” mentality of the fascist and jump in to the “new Renaissance” of the space-age!

  • M Puckett

    Stripped serial number on the diode and from China=Chinese military part.

  • Jay

    Watching this, I thought to myself that the 555 timer is probably the longest manufactured IC out there.

    Thanks for that tip M Puckett. I have to deal with counterfeit chips in my hobby, and most of them are from China, but I did not know that fact.

  • Allan Hennings

    As a kid I remember probing around in the back of a tv with a volt meter. When one circuit burned out the meter the experimenting zeroed in on that circuit. Found I could cut cardboard with the spark (when I turned up the control pots to max.). Know now what I was playing with was deadly dangerous.

  • M Puckett

    Jay, I am just applying Occam’s Razor. Seems obvious giving the nature, the redaction and the source.

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