Skip to main content

Home/ Advanced Concepts Team/ Group items tagged big

Rss Feed Group items tagged

Filter: All | Bookmarks | Topics Simple Middle
Thijs Versloot

Time 'Emerges' from #Quantum Entanglement #arXiv - 1 views

medium.com/...d5d3dc850933

science quantum relativity

shared by Thijs Versloot on 23 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • Thijs Versloot on 23 Oct 13
     
    Time is an emergent phenomenon that is a side effect of quantum entanglement, say physicists. And they have the first exprimental results to prove it
  • ...5 more comments...
  • johannessimon81 on 23 Oct 13
     
    I always feel like people make too big a deal out of entanglement. In my opinion it is just a combination of a conserved quantity and an initial lack of knowledge. Imagine that I had a machine that always creates one blue and one red ping-pong ball at the same time (|b > and |r > respectively). The machine now puts both balls into identical packages (so I cannot observe them) and one of the packages is sent to Tokio. I did not know which ball was sent to Tokio and which stayed with me - they are in a superposition (|br >+|rb >), meaning that either the blue ball is with me and the red one in Tokio or vice versa - they are entangled. So far no magic has happened. Now I call my friend in Tokio who got the ball: "What color was the ball you received in that package?" He replies: "The ball that I got was blue. Why did you send me ball in the first place?" Now, the fact that he told me makes the superpositon wavefunction collapse (yes, that is what the Copenhagen interpretation would tell us). As a result I know without opening my box that it contains a red ball. But this is really because there is an underlying conservation law and because now I know the other state. I don't see how just looking at the conserved quantity I am in a timeless state outside of the 'universe' - this is just one way of interpreting it. By the way, the wave function for my box with the undetermined ball does not collapse when the other ball is observed by my friend in Tokio. Only when he tells me does the wavefunction collapse - he did not even know that I had a complementary ball. On the other hand if he knew about the way the experiment was conducted then he would have known that I had to have a red ball - the wavefunction collapses as soon as he observed his ball. For him it is determined that my ball must be red. For me however the superposition is intact until he tells me. ;-)
  • Luzi Bergamin on 24 Oct 13
     
    Sorry, Johannes, you just develop a simple hidden-parameters theory and it's experimentally proven that these don't work. Entangeled states are neither the blue nor the red ball they are really bluered (or redblue) till the point the measurement is done.
  • Luzi Bergamin on 24 Oct 13
     
    Hm, to me this looks like a bad joke... The "emergent time" concept used is still the old proposal by Page and Whotters where time emerges from something fundamentally unobservable (the wave function of the Universe). That's as good as claiming that time emerges from God. If I understand correctly, the paper now deals with the situation where a finite system is taken as "Mini-Universe" and the experimentalist in the lab can play "God of the Mini-Universe". This works, of course, but it doesn't really tell us anything about emergent time, does it?
  • johannessimon81 on 24 Oct 13
     
    Actually, it has not been proven conclusively that hidden variable theories don' work - although this is the opinion of most physicists these days. But a non-local hidden variable would still be allowed - I don't see why that could not be equivalent to a conserved quantity within the system. As far as the two balls go it is fine to say they are undetermined instead of saying they are in bluered or redblue state - for all intents and purposes it does not affect us (because if it would the wavefunction would have collapsed) so we can't say anything about it in the first place.
  • Luzi Bergamin on 24 Oct 13
     
    Non-local hidden variables may work, but in my opinion they don't add anything to the picture. The (at least to non-physicists) contraintuitive fact that there cannot be a variable that determines ab initio the color of the ball going to Tokio will remain (in your example this may not even be true since the example is too simple...).
  • johannessimon81 on 24 Oct 13
     
    I guess I tentatively agree with you on both points. In the end there might anyway be surprisingly little overlap between the way that we describe what nature does and HOW it does it... :-D
  • Luzi Bergamin on 24 Oct 13
     
    Congratulations! 100% agree.
Alexander Wittig

Picture This: NVIDIA GPUs Sort Through Tens of Millions of Flickr Photos - 2 views

blogs.nvidia.com/...flickr

AI

shared by Alexander Wittig on 21 Jul 15 - No Cached
LeopoldS liked it
  • Alexander Wittig on 21 Jul 15
     
    Strange and exotic cityscapes. Desolate wilderness areas. Dogs that look like wookies. Flickr, one of the world's largest photo sharing services, sees it all. And, now, Flickr's image recognition technology can categorize more than 11 billion photos like these. And it does it automatically. It's called "Magic View." Magical deep learning! Buzzword attack!
  • ...4 more comments...
  • LeopoldS on 21 Jul 15
     
    and here comes my standard question: how can we use this for space? fast detection of natural disasters onboard?
  • Alexander Wittig on 22 Jul 15
     
    Even on ground. You could for example teach it what nuclear reactors or missiles or other weapons you don't want look like on satellite pictures and automatically scan the world for them (basically replacing intelligence analysts).
  • Alexander Wittig on 23 Jul 15
     
    In fact, I think this could make a nice ACT project: counting seals from satellite imagery is an actual (and quite recent) thing: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0092613 In this publication they did it manually from a GeoEye 1 b/w image, which sounds quite tedious. Maybe one can train one of those image recognition algorithms to do it automatically. Or maybe it's a bit easier to count larger things, like elephants (also a thing).
  • jcunha on 23 Jul 15
     
    In HiPEAC (High Performance, embedded architecture and computation) conference I attended in the beginning of this year there was a big trend of CUDA GPU vs FPGA for hardware accelerated image processing. Most of it orbitting around discussing who was faster and cheaper with people from NVIDIA in one side and people from Xilinx and Intel in the other. I remember of talking with an IBM scientist working on hardware accelerated data processing working together with the Radio telescope institute in Netherlands about the solution where they working on (GPU CUDA). I gathered that NVIDIA GPU suits best in applications that somehow do not rely in hardware, having the advantage of being programmed in a 'easy' way accessible to a scientist. FPGA's are highly reliable components with the advantage of being available in radhard versions, but requiring specific knowledge of physical circuit design and tailored 'harsh' programming languages. I don't know what is the level of rad hardness in NVIDIA's GPUs... Therefore FPGAs are indeed the standard choice for image processing in space missions (a talk with the microelectronics department guys could expand on this), whereas GPUs are currently used in some ground based (radio astronomy or other types of telescopes). I think that on for a specific purpose as the one you mentioned, this FPGA vs GPU should be assessed first before going further.
  • Paul N on 29 Jul 15
     
    You're forgetting power usage. GPUs need 1000 hamster wheels worth of power while FPGAs can run on a potato. Since space applications are highly power limited, putting any kind of GPU monster in orbit or on a rover is failed idea from the start. Also in FPGAs if a gate burns out from radiation you can just reprogram around it. Looking for seals offline in high res images is indeed definitely a GPU task.... for now.
  • jcunha on 31 Jul 15
     
    The discussion of how to make FPGA hardware acceleration solutions easier to use for the 'layman' is starting btw http://reconfigurablecomputing4themasses.net/.
Dario Izzo

Optimal Control Probem in the CR3BP solved!!! - 7 views

math.u-bourgogne.fr/...research

OCP CR3BP trajectory MAD

shared by Dario Izzo on 07 Jun 11 - No Cached
  • Dario Izzo on 07 Jun 11
     
    This guy solved a problem many people are trying to solve!!! The optimal control problem for the three body problem (restricted, circular) can be solved using continuation of the secondary gravity parameter and some clever adaptation of the boundary conditions!! His presentation was an eye opener ... making the work of many pretty useless now :)
  • ...13 more comments...
  • Ma Ru on 08 Jun 11
     
    Riemann hypothesis should be next... Which paper on the linked website is this exactly?
  • Joris _ on 08 Jun 11
     
    hmmm, last year at the AIAA conference in Toronto I presented a continuation approach to design a DRO (three-body problem). Nothing new here unfortunately. I know the work of Caillau, although interesting what is presented was solved 10 years ago by others. The interest of his work is not in the applications (CR3BP), but in the research of particular regularity conditions that unfortunately make the problem limited practically. Look also at the work of Mingotti, Russel, Topputo and other for the (C)RTBP. Smart-One inspired a bunch of researchers :)
  • Dario Izzo on 08 Jun 11
     
    Topputo and some of the others 'inspired' researchers you mention are actually here at the conference and they are all quite depressed :) Caillau really solves the problem: as a one single phase transfer, no tricks, no misconvergence, in general and using none of the usual cheats. What was produced so far by other were only local solutions valid for the particular case considered. In any case I will give him your paper, so that he knows he is working on already solved stuff :)
  • Dario Izzo on 08 Jun 11
     
    Answer to Marek: the paper you may look at is: Discrete and differential homotopy in circular restricted three-body control
  • Joris _ on 08 Jun 11
     
    Ah! with one single phase and a first order method then it is amazing (but it is still just the very particular CRTBP case). The trick is however the homotopy map he selected! Why this one? Any conjugate point? Did I misunderstood the title ? I solved in one phase with second order methods for the less restrictive problem RTBP or simply 3-body... but as a strict answer to your title the problem has been solved before. Nota: In "Russell, R. P., "Primer Vector Theory Applied to Global Low-Thrust Trade Studies," JGCD, Vol. 30, No. 2", he does solve the RTBP with a first order method in one phase.
  • Joris _ on 08 Jun 11
     
    I think what is interesting is not what he solved, but how he solved the problem. But, are means more important than end ... I dunno
  • Dario Izzo on 08 Jun 11
     
    I also loved his method, and it looked to me that is far more general than the CRTBP. As for the title of this post, OK maybe it is an exageration as it suggests that no solution was ever given before, on the other end, as Marek would say "come on guys!!!!!"
  • Joris _ on 09 Jun 11
     
    The generality has to be checked. Don't you think his choice of mapping is too specific? he doesn't really demonstrate it works better than other. In addition, the minimum time choice make the problem very regular (i guess you've experienced that solving min time is much easier than mass max, optimality-wise). There is still a long way before maximum mass+RTBP, Topputo et al should be re-assured :p Did you give him my paper, he may find it interesting since I mention the homotopy on mu but for max mass:)
  • Dario Izzo on 09 Jun 11
     
    Joris, that is the point I was excited abut, at the conference HE DID present solutions to the maximum mass problem!! One phase, from LEO to an orbit around the moon .. amazing :) You will find his presentation on line.... (according to the organizers) I gave him the reference to you paper anyway, but no pdf though as you did not upload it on our web pages and I could not find it in the web. So I gave him some bibliography I had with be from the russians, and from Russell, Petropoulos and Howell, As far as I know these are the only ones that can hope to compete with this guy!!
  • Joris _ on 09 Jun 11
     
    for info only, my phd, in one phase: http://pdf.aiaa.org/preview/CDReadyMAST08_1856/PV2008_7363.pdf I prefered Mars than the dead rock Moon though!
  • Dario Izzo on 09 Jun 11
     
    If you send me the pdf I can give it to the guy .. the link you gave contains only the first page ... (I have no access till monday to the AIAA thingy)
  • LeopoldS on 11 Jun 11
     
    this is why I like this Diigo thingy so much more than delicious ...
  • tvinko on 17 Jun 11
     
    What do you mean by this comment, Leopold? ;-) Jokes apart: I am following the Diigo thingy with Google Reader (rss). Obviously, I am getting the new postings. But if someone later on adds a comment to a post, then I can miss it, because the rss doesn't get updated. Not that it's a big problem, but do you guys have a better solution for this? How are you following these comments? (I know that if you have commented an entry, then you get the later updates in email.) (For example, in google reader I can see only the first 5 comments in this entry.)
  • LeopoldS on 18 Jun 11
     
    I like when there are discussions evolving around entries
  • LeopoldS on 18 Jun 11
     
    and on your problem with the RSS Tamas: its the same for me, you get the comments only for entries that you have posted or that you have commented on ...
Alexander Wittig

PQCRYPTO ICT-645622 - 0 views

pqcrypto.eu.org/press.html

Math Cryptography

shared by Alexander Wittig on 11 Sep 15 - No Cached
  • Alexander Wittig on 11 Sep 15
     
    Horizon2020 project on post quantum cryptography just released their first draft of recommendations for quantum computer safe encryption algorithms. No big surprise with the symmetric algorithms (what's used today is fundamentally sound), but the asymmetric public-key methods will be interesting.
Eduardo Martin Moraud

The brain thinks hands are wider and stubbier than they actually are - 4 views

www.scientificamerican.com/...post.cfm

shared by Eduardo Martin Moraud on 17 Jun 10 - Cached
LeopoldS liked it
  • Eduardo Martin Moraud on 17 Jun 10
     
    How big do you think your hands are?... No clue
pacome delva

The Coolest Antiprotons - 2 views

focus.aps.org/st1

phy antiprotons antihydrogen

shared by pacome delva on 05 Jul 10 - Cached
  • Researchers cooled a cloud of about 4,000 antiprotons down to 9 kelvin using a standard approach for cooling atoms that has never been used with charged particles or ions. The technique could provide a new way to create and trap antihydrogen, which could help researchers probe a basic symmetry of nature.
  • hydrogen and antihydrogen should share many basic traits, like mass, magnetic moment, and emission spectrum. If antihydrogen and hydrogen have even slightly different spectra, it indicates some new physics principles beyond the standard model, a very big deal.
  • pacome delva on 05 Jul 10
     
    antihydrogen propulsion...?
  • ...1 more comment...
  • LeopoldS on 05 Jul 10
     
    how to efficiently direct it?
  • Nicholas Lan on 06 Jul 10
     
    didn't roger write an assessment of antimatter propulsion when he was in the ACT?
  • pacome delva on 06 Jul 10
     
    yeah the problem is the amount of antimatter you can get and more specifically how to trap it. I found that you would need around one gram to go to the outer Solar System. So we are far from that, but finding an efficient way to trap it, with an electromagnetic trap rather than solid walls is a first step !
pacome delva

A Puzzling Collapse of Earth's Upper Atmosphere - 1 views

science.nasa.gov/...15jul_thermosphere

phy atmosphere solar_forecast

shared by pacome delva on 22 Jul 10 - Cached
LeopoldS liked it
  • NASA-funded researchers are monitoring a big event in our planet's atmosphere. High above Earth's surface where the atmosphere meets space, a rarefied layer of gas called "the thermosphere" recently collapsed and now is rebounding again.
  • pacome delva on 22 Jul 10
     
    Wow, this is a bit frigthening. Another proof that we understand very little about our atmosphere !!!
  • LeopoldS on 22 Jul 10
     
    very interesting indeed!
Francesco Biscani

Gamers beat algorithms at finding protein structures - 0 views

arstechnica.com/...finding-protein-structures.ars

inf

shared by Francesco Biscani on 04 Aug 10 - Cached
  • Foldit takes a hybrid approach. The Rosetta algorithm is used to create some potential starting structures, but users are then given a set of controls that let them poke and prod the protein's structure in three dimensions; displays provide live feedback on the energy of a configuration. 
  • By tracing the actions of the best players, the authors were able to figure out how the humans' excellent pattern recognition abilities gave them an edge over the computer.
  • Humans turn out to be really bad at starting from a simple linear chain of proteins; they need a rough idea of what the protein might look like before they can recognize patterns to optimize. Given a set of 10 potential structures produced by Rosetta, however, the best players were very adept at picking the one closest to the optimal configuration.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • The authors also note that different players tended to have different strengths. Some were better at making the big adjustments needed to get near an energy minimum, while others enjoyed the fine-scale tweaking needed to fully optimize the structure. That's where Foldit's ability to enable team competitions, where different team members could handle the parts of the task most suited to their interests and abilities, really paid off.
  • Francesco Biscani on 04 Aug 10
     
    Some interesting ideas for our crowdsourcing game in here.
Joris _

FASTSAT performing well; launch of small satellite coming next week | al.com - 0 views

blog.al.com/...at_performing_well_launch.html

MAD Space debris

shared by Joris _ on 29 Nov 10 - No Cached
  • Being able to launch a satellite from a satellite has numerous potential benefits to the military and scientists, but those benefits depend on the smaller satellite not hitting the mother ship when it launches and going where it needs to go.If the sail can deploy as planned to its 100-square-foot size - about as big as a six-person camping tent - and can guide the smaller satellite to its planned re-entry, it would also illustrate a new way to bring satellites back to Earth and reduce orbiting space junk.
Joris _

Japan probe overshoots Venus, heads toward sun - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...AR2010120701077.html

MAD venus robust

shared by Joris _ on 08 Dec 10 - No Cached
sreejanag liked it
  • A Japanese probe to Venus failed to reach orbit Wednesday and was captured by the sun's gravitational pull
  • Akatsuki's engines did not fire long enough to attain the proper orbiting position
  • may be able to try again when it passes by Venus six years from now.
  • Joris _ on 08 Dec 10
     
    The usefulness of having a robust trajectory :) ... They have to wait 6 more years for another date with Venus ...
  • ...2 more comments...
  • Joris _ on 09 Dec 10
  • LeopoldS on 11 Dec 10
     
    I agree in general but just out of the stomach: is there really an optimised trajectory that would be able to avoid this kind of scenarios when main thrusters don't perform properly? Wouldn't you in any case end up in a sun-orbiting trajectory and have to come back after years??
  • Joris _ on 11 Dec 10
     
    "optimised trajectory" of course not, robust definitely! It was the subject of my paper presented at the AAS (the one in San Diego) "Designing robust interplanetary trajectories subject to one temporary engine failure". The problem here is that they do not have enough fuel for a correction maneuver that would allow to come back to Venus earlier, and break for a VOI. A robust scenario could have alloted the best amount of fuel and time to be able to recover from almost all possible unplanned events. In the paper, I introduce some confidence regions such that I get the robust control for p% chance of mission success in case m% chance of problem with the propulsion system.
  • Dario Izzo on 12 Dec 10
     
    You should run your method on this scenario and see if you could get a trajectory with a shorter come back time using the same spacecraft.... would be a big selling point for a new trajectory design approach
pacome delva

Cutting Soot Counteracts Warming in California - 1 views

news.sciencemag.org/...-soot-counteracts-warming.html

phy climate_change soot

shared by pacome delva on 15 Dec 10 - No Cached
  • models suggest that cut may also have cut into the warming of the state's climate in an unexpectedly big way, preventing temperatures from climbing even higher.
  • "This indeed has major implications for mitigating climate change on a global scale," says Ramanathan. "We have the chance to see a quick global response."
pacome delva

Special relativity passes key test - 2 views

physicsworld.com/...40834

phy quantum_gravity special_relativity gamma_ray_burst

shared by pacome delva on 15 Dec 09 - Cached
  • Granot and colleagues studied the radiation from a gamma-ray burst – associated with a highly energetic explosion in a distant galaxy – that was spotted by NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope on 10 May this year. They analysed the radiation at different wavelengths to see whether there were any signs that photons with different energies arrived at Fermi's detectors at different times.
  • According to Granot, these results "strongly disfavour" quantum-gravity theories in which the speed of light varies linearly with photon energy, which might include some variations of string theory or loop quantum gravity. "I would not use the term 'rule out'," he says, "as most models do not have exact predictions for the energy scale associated with this violation of Lorentz invariance. However, our observational requirement that such an energy scale would be well above the Planck energy makes such models unnatural."
  • Dario Izzo on 16 Dec 09
     
    essentially they made an experiment that does not prove or disprove anything -big deal-... what is the scientific value of "strongly disfavour"??? I also like the sentence "most models do not have exact predictions for the energy scale associated with this violation of Lorentz invariance" ... but if this is true WHAT IS THE POINT OF THE EXPERIMENT!!!! God, physics is in trouble ....
  • pacome delva on 17 Dec 09
     
    hum, null result experiments are not useless !!! there is always the hope of finding "something wrong", which would lead to a great discovery. For the state of theoretical physics (the "no exact predictions" quote), i totally agree that physics is in trouble... That's what happen when physicists don't care anymore about experiments...! All you can do now is drawing "nice"graph with upper bounds on some parameters of an all tunable weird theory !
Eduardo Martin Moraud

Making Mars the new Earth - 4 views

ngm.nationalgeographic.com/...mars

shared by Eduardo Martin Moraud on 27 Jan 10 - Cached
  • Eduardo Martin Moraud on 27 Jan 10
     
    How National Geographics depicts terraforming... in case it gives ideas
  • Luzi Bergamin on 27 Jan 10
     
    "Total Recall" was better, wasn't it?
Dario Izzo

Robotics and optimal control - 6 views

www.cs.washington.edu/...todorov

AI MAD

shared by Dario Izzo on 18 Jan 11 - No Cached
Joris _ and Juxi Leitner liked it
  • Dario Izzo on 18 Jan 11
     
    Home page of teodorov.... He believes optimal control is the path to robot movement.... Not AI!!!
  • ...1 more comment...
  • Juxi Leitner on 18 Jan 11
     
    we were having a discussion about that here recently =) will look into that, grazie mille
  • Joris _ on 18 Jan 11
     
    Isn't it obvious! :)
  • Dario Izzo on 20 Jan 11
     
    I need to modify the first comment "He belives the path to AI goes through optimal control"... Big difference...
Joris _

SPACE.com -- Venus Probe's Problems May Cause Japan to Scale Back - 0 views

www.space.com/...suki-japan-rethink-101217.html

space MAD

shared by Joris _ on 20 Dec 10 - No Cached
  • We have to be more conservative to plan our next planetary mission, so it will never fail in any aspect."
  • the probe's initial failure will have a big impact on how JAXA plans future planetary missions
  • hew to more conservative ideas in the near future
  • Joris _ on 20 Dec 10
     
    what a shame! ambition and innovation have not been fairly rewarded ...
  • ...1 more comment...
  • Ma Ru on 20 Dec 10
     
    Did you try to run your algorithm on their problem as Dario suggested? I'm very curious!
  • Joris _ on 20 Dec 10
     
    I didn't have time yet. But formulating the failure with a MTBF or a FIT, you can easily imagine a more robust solution. Instead of one single burn, you would make several smaller burns - It will take more time and require more fuel though. Another "robust" approach is to consider weak stability boundary capture. Again it takes time, but chances of failure are lessen.
  • LeopoldS on 21 Dec 10
     
    would be a pity indeed!
Ma Ru

Phineas Gage - 3 views

www.bbc.co.uk/...health-12649555

neuroscience science

shared by Ma Ru on 06 Mar 11 - No Cached
  • Ma Ru on 06 Mar 11
     
    As I now work in the Centre for Robotics *and Neuroscience*, here's a story for you. Some highlights: "It sent the iron straight up into his skull and out of the top of his head, landing some 30 metres away. (...) Phineas was unconscious before getting up and riding an oxcart into town with, 'a big bleedin' hole in his head'. (...) although Phineas survived, he was a changed man. Now he was reportedly unreliable, partial to swearing and often making inappropriate remarks." I guess If I were him I'd be a little partial to swearing too.
  • ...1 more comment...
  • LeopoldS on 07 Mar 11
     
    what sort of story is this please???
  • Ma Ru on 07 Mar 11
     
    Apparently you didn't read it... This is a story about how science is born :)
  • LeopoldS on 07 Mar 11
     
    now I did ... :-) just had read your comment ....
Ma Ru

Who uses Facebook? An investigation into the relationship between the Big Five, shyness... - 2 views

www.sciencedirect.com/science

science social facebook Web 2.0

shared by Ma Ru on 09 Mar 11 - No Cached
  • Ma Ru on 09 Mar 11
     
    Some introspection's always good...
Luís F. Simões

Why Randomly-Selected Politicians Would Improve Democracy - Technology Review - 4 views

www.technologyreview.com/...26488

CMS politics Ig Nobel

shared by Luís F. Simões on 10 Mar 11 - No Cached
LeopoldS liked it
  • If Pluchino sounds familiar, it's because we've talked about him and his pals before in relation to the Peter Principle that incompetence always spreads through big organisations. Back in 2009, he and his buddies created a model that showed how promoting people at random always improves the efficiency of the organisation. These guys went on to win a well-deserved IgNobel prize for this work.
  • Ref: arxiv.org/abs/1103.1224: Accidental Politicians: How Randomly Selected Legislators Can Improve Parliament Efficiency
  • Luzi Bergamin on 10 Mar 11
     
    I think I start to understand why Italian politics does so horribly bad...
  • LeopoldS on 10 Mar 11
     
    ... because they don't follow this rule!
  • Dario Izzo on 11 Mar 11
     
    According to the authors we have four types of people in the parlement: 1) intelligent people whose actions produce a gain for both themselves and for other people. 2) helpless/naive people in the top left quadrant whose actions produce a loss for themselves but a gain for others; 3) bandits whose actions produce a gain for themselves but a loss for other people. 4) stupid people in the bottom left quadrant produce a loss for themselves and also for other people. According to the above definition it is clear that their model does not apply to the italian parlament where we only have stupid people and bandits.
Luís F. Simões

Shell energy scenarios to 2050 - 6 views

www.shell.com/...shell_energy_scenarios_2050

energy future forecast politics economy climate_change

shared by Luís F. Simões on 09 Mar 11 - No Cached
  • Luís F. Simões on 09 Mar 11
     
    just in case you were feeling happy and optimistic
  • ...7 more comments...
  • Francesco Biscani on 09 Mar 11
     
    An energy scenario published by an oil company? Allow me to be sceptical...
  • Joris _ on 10 Mar 11
     
    Indeed, Shell is an energy company, not just oil, for some time now ... The two scenarii are, in their approach, dependant of economic and political situation, which is right now impossible to forecast. Reference to Kyoto is surprising, almost out-dated! But overall, I find it rather optimistic at some stages, and probably the timeline (p37-39) is unlikely with recent events.
  • Luís F. Simões on 10 Mar 11
     
    the report was published in 2008, which explains the reference to Kyoto, as the follow-up to it was much more uncertain at that point. The Blueprint scenario is indeed optimistic, but also quite unlikely I'd say. I don't see humanity suddenly becoming so wise and coordinated. Sadly, I see something closer to the Scramble scenario as much more likely to occur.
  • LeopoldS on 12 Mar 11
     
    not an oil company??? please have a look at the percentage of their revenues coming from oil and gas and then compare this with all their other energy activities together and you will see very quickly that it is only window dressing ... they are an oil and gas company ... and nothing more
  • Joris _ on 14 Mar 11
     
    not JUST oil. From a description: "Shell is a global group of energy and petrochemical companies." Of course revenues coming from oil are the biggest, the investment turnover on other energy sources is small for now. Knowing that most of their revenues is from an expendable source, to guarantee their future, they invest elsewhere. They have invested >1b$ in renewable energy, including biofuels. They had the largest wind power business among so-called "oil" companies. Oil only defines what they do "best". As a comparison, some time ago, Apple were selling only computers and now they sell phones. But I would not say Apple is just a phone company.
  • LeopoldS on 14 Mar 11
     
    window dressing only ... e.g. Net cash from operating activities (pre-tax) in 2008: 70 Billion$ net income in 2008: 26 Billion revenues in 2008: 88 Billion Their investments and revenues in renewables don't even show up in their annual financial reports since probably they are under the heading of "marketing" which is already 1.7 Billion $ ... this is what they report on their investments: Capital investment, portfolio actions and business development Capital investment in 2009 was $24 billion. This represents a 26% decrease from 2008, which included over $8 billion in acquisitions, primarily relating to Duvernay Oil Corp. Capital investment included exploration expenditure of $4.5 billion (2008: $11.0 billion). In Abu Dhabi, Shell signed an agreement with Abu Dhabi National Oil Company to extend the GASCO joint venture for a further 20 years. In Australia, Shell and its partners took the final investment decision (FID) for the Gorgon LNG project (Shell share 25%). Gorgon will supply global gas markets to at least 2050, with a capacity of 15 million tonnes (100% basis) of LNG per year and a major carbon capture and storage scheme. Shell has announced a front-end engineering and design study for a floating LNG (FLNG) project, with the potential to deploy these facilities at the Prelude offshore gas discovery in Australia (Shell share 100%). In Australia, Shell confirmed that it has accepted Woodside Petroleum Ltd.'s entitlement offer of new shares at a total cost of $0.8 billion, maintaining its 34.27% share in the company; $0.4 billion was paid in 2009 with the remainder paid in 2010. In Bolivia and Brazil, Shell sold its share in a gas pipeline and in a thermoelectric power plant and its related assets for a total of around $100 million. In Canada, the Government of Alberta and the national government jointly announced their intent to contribute $0.8 billion of funding towards the Quest carbon capture and sequestration project. Quest, which is at the f
  • Joris _ on 14 Mar 11
     
    thanks for the info :) They still have their 50% share in the wind farm in Noordzee (you can see it from ESTEC on a clear day). Look for Shell International Renewables, other subsidiaries and joint-ventures. I guess, the report is about the oil branch. http://sustainabilityreport.shell.com/2009/servicepages/downloads/files/all_shell_sr09.pdf http://www.noordzeewind.nl/
  • LeopoldS on 16 Mar 11
     
    no - its about Shell globally - all Shell .. these participations are just peanuts please read the intro of the CEO in the pdf you linked to: he does not even mention renewables! their entire sustainability strategy is about oil and gas - just making it (look) nicer and environmentally friendlier
  • Joris _ on 16 Mar 11
     
    Fair enough, for me even peanuts are worthy and I am not able to judge. Not all big-profit companies, like Shell, are evil :( Look in the pdf what is in the upstream and downstream you mentionned above. Non-shell sources for examples and more objectivity: http://www.nuon.com/company/Innovative-projects/noordzeewind.jsp http://www.e-energymarket.com/news/single-news/article/ferrari-tops-bahrain-gp-using-shell-biofuel.html thanks.
« First ‹ Previous 81 - 100 of 134 Next › Last »
Showing 20▼ items per page