Super-tough wireless sensors 'to be dropped into volcanoes'

Major flaw: readings may be hampered by thetans

According to Scientology doctrine, that fine author L Ron Hubbard says loads of bad thetans (or something) have been dropped in there.

PS - You need to fork over like £100k to be privvy to that bit of info (OT3), so please send your cheques to the "Church"

From Wikipedia:

<blockquote>

Xenu (pronounced /ˈziːnuː/[1][2][3]), also Xemu, was, according to the founder of Scientology and science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard, the dictator of the "Galactic Confederacy" who, 75 million years ago, brought billions[4][5] of his people to Earth in a DC-8-like spacecraft, stacked them around volcanoes and killed them using hydrogen bombs. Official Scientology dogma holds that the essences of these many people remained, and that they form around people in modern times, causing them spiritual harm.[1][6] Members of the Church of Scientology widely deny or try to hide the Xenu story.[7][8]"

</blockquote>

Aha

Now there's the answer to those noisy fans.

Hot stuff

Paris because, well, she's hot as well.

the molton lava may shield the RF radiation

one serious problem will be that RF from the sensor may not escape through the molton wall

Another serious problem

...may be that you drop the sensor into the caldera only to find that it comes back out again.

IANAV (I am not a vulcanologist), but my impression is that full-scale eruptions are often preceded by a fairly long period in which stuff flows or blows out.

Bring back the fast breader

One of the problems with fast breeder nuclear reactors was the difficulty of instrumenting the primary cooling system, which consisted of liquid sodium (boiling point 883C), so this research sounds idea.

Fast breeder reactors are able to turn the limited stocks of naturally occurring uranium in to vastly more nuclear fuel, which can be used in more conventional reactors. Demand for nuclear power is increasing rapidly to produce CO2 free electricity, and without this technology uranium supplies will limit its potential.

This is an area in which Britain had lead the world, but we've now abandoned, and we are even set to demolish the landmark dome of the pioneering Doonray facility.

Are they using...

...firewall technology?

Other applications - Venus?

Will this be enough to get a Venus lander to last more than a few minutes?

Could the same thing be used for...

...the production of a fine vindaloo?

Over heating?

So the casing will stand up to molten rock.

How are they going to keep the electronics inside the case from cooking?

That's canny hard like

Next up: Newcastle University sensors dropped into the Arctic Ocean wearing a strappy top and a pair of white stilettos.

Howay man, mine's the t-shirt with the snow on it.

But can it survive in a really extreme environment?

Blood boiling temperatures, near 100% humidity, fatally high levels of noise and exposure to liquid and airborne contaminants.

IOW The dance floor of a Newcastle club on a Saturday night.

Playing with numbers

"With an estimated 500 million people living in the shadow of a volcano this is clearly not ideal,"

Ok, so half a billion people out of approximately 6.5 billion live too near a volcano....

According to my dodgy math skills, that's one thirteenth of the World's population....

I'd advise they move... Quickly!

Electronics is just *part* of the problem

You're looking at some kind of power storage or generation system and probably an aerial of some kind to make the most of what's likely to be a fairly small power source. The *obvious* solution to this is some kind of thermoelectric system with lots of couples (although at this temperature using thermionic systems might also be feasible and not require a temperature difference while the system works)

BTW similar conditions apply to the field of oil borehole systems, which also operate in highly hostile environments.