4 ms·
Stuff like this just boggles my mind. Imagine if we could capture/store even a small fraction of that energy that was released in mere seconds. It could probabl
by cronix 7y ago
Stuff like this just boggles my mind. Imagine if we could capture/store even a small fraction of that energy that was released in mere seconds. It could probably power Earth for millions of years. Sorry if my maths are off a bit.
- marcinzm 7y agoThe energies of even less exotic stars are insane. If we could capture 1 second worth of our sun's output then we could power earth for almost a million years.
- sametmax 7y agoThe earth already does that, we just call it our ecosystem. It's why we have clean water, carrots, coal and, and the end the chain, the internet to talk about it.
- maxerickson 7y agoThey are talking about capturing the full irradiance of the sun for 1 second. You are talking about the little sliver of it that smacks Earth.
- sametmax 7y agoTrue, but it's enough. We don't need more that what we already got. We don't even use most of it.
- human20190310 7y agoNo, we need more. The main barrier to achieving the dreams of science fiction is a lack of energy to accelerate human-scale amounts of material to high speeds (then slow them down later).
- behringer 7y agoI'd add that we not only want, but need, space travel in order to maintain the species. Once our sun or planet dies we go with it, unless we're on a different one.
- m4rtink 7y agoNot just that even more mundane stuff becomes much easier if you have more energy - clean water (desalination), trash (vaporize & collect fractions), raw materials (can trade energy for lower input concentration in ore), polution & greenhouse gases (capture back from th atmosphere and convert to something usable or inert). All this becomes relatively easy if you have a lot of cheap power. And you would not get it just by power saving and eficiency improvements, only with research and building of new sources.
- lbatx 7y agoNo, we need to use more of what we get. We don't use hardly any of what hits the earth. I believe I read that the Sun supplies 50X the amount of energy we consume (if of course we could capture it as energy).
- osamagirl69 7y agoYou are off by a few orders of magnitude, the amount of sunlight hitting just new mexico (after taking into account the losses of converting it to electricity) is about 50x the energy we consume.
- lbatx 7y agoWorldwide?
- noonespecial 7y agoWe're actually getting a bit more than we'd like. If we could get the sun to turn it down a smidge for a few hundred years while we get the gas mix in our atmosphere right it would be most helpful.
- tooHotTooCold 7y agoAh, life in the Goldilocks zone...
- jbay808 7y agoIf you actually did this, the surface of the Earth would melt or catch fire.
- wruza 7y ago>we could power earth for almost a million years With current consumption only. But we will populate its every corner, waste every amount on food production and fantasize what if we could capture just ten seconds a year (and terraform Moon/Mars). Humanity is a virus that cannot stop eating, reproducing in mass amounts and converting their host into a stinky factory. I really doubt that so called Type II civilizations with Dyson spheres are a paradise to live in. Really advanced creatures would simply reduce their demand and live in the same beautiful place instead, occasionally feeding surplus energy to their scientifical interests.
- marcinzm 7y ago>Really advanced creatures would simply reduce their demand and live in the same beautiful place instead, occasionally feeding surplus energy to their scientifical interests. Which works right until an asteroid strikes their planet, a gamma ray burst sterilizes their solar system or a more aggressive species eats them all. The universe is in no way nicer, calmer or more pleasant than the earth itself and look what the earth has produced.
- maxerickson 7y agoIn a hand wavy way, we already access the energy from stellar explosions, that's when uranium is naturally produced.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- everdev 7y agoSupply and demand would rapidly reduce this timeline even at incredible energy amounts. There is a virtually unlimited demand for energy. We'd build more energy intensive machines if the supply was so vast. Powering millions of large fans to break up a tornado or a hurricane would now be possible. We'd keep inventing power hungry ideas until balance was restored.
- marcinzm 7y agoTheoretically we'd eventually cook the Earth with waste heat since energy is never lost so there is an upper limit for energy usage on the planet. Off Earth, not so much.
- craftinator 7y agoAccording to a number of physicists I've talked to, at our current rate of energy release this is already a concern. I've heard that we'll need to worry about this in the next 300-400 years.