4 ms·

A couple of years ago I learned it is possible to create glucose directly from solar power. The estimates from the authors of the paper were that earth could fe

• gooseus 2y ago
  True, but the systems that do this most effectively require a lot of other limited resources besides solar power - most notably arable soil, fresh water, time, and usually also some additional processing to render that glucose ingestible for one of those people. So maybe the Earth could supply 1 trillion people with food if it was turned into a farm planet devoid of any other biodiversity but those required to support human life, assuming those 1 trillion people were living and doing all their non-agricultural industry somewhere else.
• pfdietz 2y ago
  Sounds about right. That's the limit from direct thermal pollution. It involves basically turning the Earth into a space station, with air and water cleaned and recycled.
• buescher 2y ago
  Now if we could just find a way to iterate on methods of doing that, maybe use evolutionary methods, eventually we’d have practical, efficient methods of using solar power to make food!
• DoctorOetker 2y ago
  Do you have a reference to the paper? If the same could be done for amino acids, starting from feces, and if the electro-biological transducer could be mineaturized people could get it installed in their stomachs & bowels, with an extension cord coming out the exit orifice, like a vacuum cleaner...