I was watching the Nova episode Monster of the Milky Way today (featuring, amongst others, famed science fiction author Gregory Benford). This was a pure astrophysics romp showing the people, events, and theories that describe the very nature of galaxies. They discussed neutron stars, black holes, the big bang - frankly, all of what we think of as reality.

Partway through was a description of tidal forces around a black hole which, as it turns out, are very similar (though dramatically bigger) to the tidal forces around neutron stars. And "Neutron Star" is a very good story by Larry Niven which provide and excellent explanations of tidal forces around very massive objects.

There was also a discussion of the black hole that apparently sits in the middle of our galaxy - indeed, in the middle of all galaxies - which Larry Niven also described in A World Out of Time.

Niven was not, himself, mentioned in this - and indeed shouldn't have been as he's not a researcher in this area. However, I could not help but be reminded of his work as I watched this highly informative and entertaining episode.

It's a gas!

I have long believed that hydrogen and oxygen - two of the most common elements in the universe - would one day be the fuel and oxidizer that replaced all other major energy sources. Together they can be burned for heat; by itself hydrogen can be fused for even more heat. The biggest problem is getting the hydrogen, which on Earth is mostly locked up in various compounds.

One technique is using electrical current to break it out of water (hydrolysis) which can be carbon free if you generate your electricity from non-carbon sources. This is done on an industrial scale, and the raw feedstock is abundant, but it takes so much electricity that - so far - it's too expensive to compete with other fuels. Additionally, hydrogen is relatively difficult to work with and can leak out of what would otherwise be considered air-tight containers.

Of course if you could only generate the hydrogen as you needed it where it was needed, then you wouldn't need to store and transport large quantities. You'd only need to store water, which is relatively well behaved and easy to control. Of course, that only makes sense if you want to use the actual gas (say, as fuel for a torch), since there's no point using electricity to split water to recombine to run a machine (say) when you could use the electricity directly.

Yet there are those who claim it does make sense. They claim that something called "Brown's Gas" or "HHO", which is produced by hydrolysis, can be used to boost automobile and truck gas milage. The claim is that the output of a portably hydrolysis unit run by the vehicle's alternator can be run into the fuel stream and will dramatically improve gas milage.

Now, from a strict thermodynamic sense this is ludicrous. It takes more energy to create electricity to split water than you can get in useful work from burning the resulting gas. Yet the internal combustion engine is not a simple heat engine, but a complicated machine. Look at hybrid cars - they manage to get better fuel economy using large batteries that get charged by the gasoline engine and the brakes. Is it possible that these systems are somehow using energy that's otherwise wasted and using it for useful work?

Or consider: only 21% of air supports combustion. Is it possible these portable hydrolysis units - producing an entirely combustible output - is increasing the amount of fuel burned and, thus, increasing the engine's efficiency?

Google produced a lot of qualitative analyses - really opinion pieces no more rigorous than this one - on both sides of the discussion. There are some reports of great results; there are a discussions on why those results are bogus. There are a surprising number of really dopey claims about "Brown's Gas" which, some claim, is in some way different from a mixture of molecular hydrogen and molecular oxygen and is imbued with strange powers - but I digress.

Couldn't someone, I wondered, do a real, rigorous test to settle this once and for all? If it actually worked such a study would be a boon for humanity.

Fortunately someone did. Popular Mechanics ran an article describing the results of what appears to be a very rigorous and repeatable test and the results were:

These devices do no good whatsoever.

This is indeed a blow to those who want to be able to improve their gasoline use by spending a couple thousand bucks, and to those who want to meet that desire by selling a device to do it. But then, isn't it better to know?

A competitor by another name

The last few weeks I've heard a number of people talking about "the public option" that either should or should not be part of the health care "reform" plan that Congress will likely start working on again if ... er ... when they come back from recess. And I've noticed something I think is odd.

Regardless of their views, speakers have chosen to treat this new health plan (or extension of Medicare, whichever) as if it were simply a non-profit competitor to the existing health insurance companies. People in favor say such a competitor will keep private insurance honest; people opposed say that without needing to make a profit, they'll be able to undercut the for-profit insurance companies.

Now, I suppose that the "public option" could be just what they describe. After all, the US Post Office currently runs on a similar basis - it receives no subsidy, it makes its own money, and competes with a variety of very profitable message delivery companies (though I've yet to see someone else offer the equivalent of the first class letter. This used to be reserved to the post office by law - I'm unclear on the current status). Heck, the Post Office could be said to run at a disadvantage - no Congressman is going to prevent UPS from closing a package drop-off point, but the Post Office needs to fight a political constituency when it wants to close a branch.

But it need not be. Consider that as a government entity it, or the organization that backs it, can:

1. Operate at a loss indefinitely. Congress can choose to subsidize it forever.
2. Set the rules that its competitors must follow. Imagine if Yum! brands could set the operating rules for McDonald's - even if the rules were to be applied absolutely the same to both, could we expect that they wouldn't give, say, KFC some advantage?
3. Demand that doctors, labs, hospitals, and other providers not only accept its standard payment schedule but, if times are tough, accept less than they're owed as payment in full. All without declaring bankruptcy, simply because the government decides it doesn't have enough money.

It's also obvious - because people have come out and stated it - that some backers of the "public option" do so because they believe it will eventually become the single payer and that existing private health insurance will be eliminated - maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon and for the rest of our lives.

So why are people understating the level of competition that this could be?