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If we would collect all energy that get's to planet earth via light, how much of the total energy available to us would that be? Compared to say converting all
by TekMol 10y ago
If we would collect all energy that get's to planet earth via light, how much of the total energy available to us would that be? Compared to say converting all mass of earth into energy somehow.
According to Wolfram Alpha, 1kg of mass contains about 10^17 joule. Let's see how much Kg earth has... about 10^25. So earth contains about 10^42 Joule?
According to a quick googling around, the sunlight that reaches us contains about 10^20 Joules per day.
So hey, if we burn up everything we can outdo the sun for 10^19 years!
- csomar 10y agoInteresting comment. All the talk about renewable energy forget the fact that the Sun energy is equivalent to burning the earth for energy. Except it's much less efficient.
- eklavya 10y agoI couldn't understand, can you please explain in detail?
- csomar 10y agoThe Sun is burning itself in order to create the light that citizens of earth are then collecting a portion of to generate electricity. That's not much different than burning oil or coal here; except that it's happening in earth and at exponentially smaller scale.
- yongjik 10y ago"Transforming matter to energy" != "burning". According to Wikipedia, you can get about 24-35 MJ/kg by burning coal, which is a tiny tiny tiny fraction of what you can get by magically transforming matter to energy. (In other words, transforming one kg of matter to energy releases 9*10^16 J of energy, equivalent to burning 2.6 million ton of coal.) As far as I know, the most physically realistic way of transforming matter to energy involves throwing it into a black hole and capturing the incoming radiation. So... I'll bet it won't be commercially available any time soon.