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This sounds perfect for space. It's cold in space, power is at a premium, and it can be tough getting rid of heat.
by lallysingh 6y ago
This sounds perfect for space. It's cold in space, power is at a premium, and it can be tough getting rid of heat.
- vincnetas 6y agoIts a bit cold in space. But actually its really difficult to cool down things in space as there is nothing around you to transfer heat to.
- TOMDM 6y agoI'm ignorant of the specific physics, but what if you got it cold before you sent it into a vacuum, and then shielded it from external radiation? Surely due to the massively reduced power usage it would be easier to keep it cool relative to traditional compute
- fastball 6y agoThe problem is that the act of computation is generating heat, so you can't just insulate your superconducting CPU, you need a way to dissipate the heat it must generate (this applies to all irreversible computations). This is difficult, because the only way to dissipate heat in space is radiation (with conduction usually acting as a middleman), which is constrained by the surface area of your radiator. So no, it probably wouldn't be any easier in space.
- akiselev 6y agoIdeally this server farm would attach to a giant rock somewhere in a stable orbit and drill heat exchange pipes deep into the rock, like how we do for geothermal energy here on earth but in reverse. This whole exercise would require a nuclear reactor to be feasible both economically and engineering wise.
- cbozeman 6y agoMass Effect taught me this. I miss old school BioWare.
- rytill 6y agoI have heard this elsewhere, but when I looked into it, it seems like it’s not that big of a challenge compared to the other difficulties of space. More of just a consideration that has to be part of the design. See: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spacecraft_thermal_control https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spacecraft_thermal_control Can anyone give an expert opinion on the difficulty of cooling in space?
- benibela 6y agoIn Sundiver by David Brin they put all the heat in a laser, so they can beam it away from their craft
- jetrink 6y agoIs it possible to do this without violating the second law of thermodynamics?
- reasonabl_human 6y agoI can’t think of a reason it would violate any basic physical laws. Use a peltier cooler in reverse as the transducer from heat to electricity, apply to an appropriately spec’d solid state laser. Surely the devil is in the details somewhere..
- vincnetas 6y agoPeltier generator would need somwhere to transfer the heat to. But there is nothing around.
- titanomachy 6y agoDefinitely possible to put some of the heat into a laser. It's simple to turn a temperature gradient into an electrical potential [0], and if you use that electricity to power a laser it will convert away some of the hat. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermocouple https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermocouple
- m4rtink 6y agoAFAIK it is not and IIRC the author even mentioned it somewhere afterwards, possibly in the next book.
- c1ccccc1 6y agoIn theory, I think it is possible. The laser light just needs to carry away entropy, which can be achieved by modulating the beam so that it contains information. Of course, you'll deplete your batteries to power the beam, and the laser itself will have inefficiencies. So with current technology, the system would likely generate more heat than it removed. A civilization with really good engineering could probably make it work, though even in that case, it would still use many joules of free (i.e. usable) energy to remove 1 joule of thermal (waste) energy. A much more efficient method of heat removal would just be to have radiating fins. So you're still converting heat into photons, but you lose much less energy in the process, because the photons you're radiating have a higher entropy.