3 ms·

Semi-related: I find the seemingly simple (or basic?) issue of cooling to be really interesting. Mainly because so much energy, effort, and cost is spent on coo

• sebzim4500 3y ago
  If you are trying to cool something to <10K, I don't think it matters all that much what temperature you start at. Unless you start at space, which is already that cold (in shadow) but sending and operating stuff in space is hardly a cheap alternative.
  • ajcp 3y ago
    Yeah that's was what I suspected. Outside of space-based infrastructure or at massive crush-depths in the ocean the "naturally" cool places wouldn't really make a dent in the required temperatures. I don't wonder then if, when the cost of build goes down and speed of transmission goes up, space based infra for these things will be a big industry.
    • jamiek88 3y ago
      If anything it’s a lot harder to cool things in space because you are limited to radiating it. The ISS has massive radiators almost as large as the station itself at 1800 square ft of radiator panels.
      • ajcp 3y ago
        That makes sense. I don't know why I just assumed the vacuum of space would provide a perfect and passive cooling environment, but of course that's not the case.
        • r2_pilot 3y ago
          There are a lot of examples in movies and the zeitgeist, even where other harder Sci fi Is obeyed, so it's hardly surprising if you'd never stopped to think about it. Welcome to the 10,000.
        • Kim_Bruning 3y ago
          Qua intuition: Think vacuum flask aka thermos flask. (though these also try to reduce radiative cooling with a mirror-finish) Convective cooling is a very efficient form of cooling, but obviously doesn't exist in a vacuum. Typically people resort to radiative cooling in space. This requires larger radiators.
• aDfbrtVt 3y ago
  I fail to see how you could "disrupt" something like cooling solutions in the way I believe your post implies. First, the ability to remove large volumes of heat from a DC (or analogous plant) is largely dependent on the local geography/environment. In modest cases, that may come down to average ambient temperatures and the cost of electricity. In more extreme cases, access to a massive heat sink such as a body of water may be necessary. Second, the technology used to evacuate heat is very mature. The modern world depends on HVAC and has for a very long time. While there are incremental advances such as new refrigerants and compressor technology, there is always a cost to performance tradeoff. Note that the theoretical limit on cooling performance (CoP) of a Carnot engine is ~7.8. Check out this report by the IEA (page 43) https://iea.blob.core.windows.net/assets/0bb45525-277f-4c9c-8d0c-9c0cb5e7d525/The_Future_of_Cooling.pdf https://iea.blob.core.windows.net/assets/0bb45525-277f-4c9c-...
• creeble 3y ago
  Disrupting the 2nd law of thermodynamics has proven hard, yes. I for one wouldn’t bet against it.
• jjk166 3y ago
  Cooling in space is actually very difficult. While unlit space can be thought of as "cold" (ie you're in thermal equilibrium with a very cold resevoir) vacuum is an incredible insulator so once you get any heat coming in (including the onslaught of heat from the local giant nuclear fireball) it's very difficult to dissipate. More generally, ambient temperature is irrelevant, what matters is heat transfer rates. If you just stick something someplace cool, it'll heat up. You need something like a flowing river to carry the heat away. This is one reason that things like power plants tend to be built on rivers. For things like computing, total heat production is much less of an issue and can easily be conveyed away from the building by airflow. The difficulty is cooling within the building, as tightly packed server racks are not very conducive to airflow, so you need active cooling.