A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.
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This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.
It is pretty funny that as advanced as our technology gets, we're still basically just at the higher end of the "steam engine" phase.
I explained this to my oldest when he learned about the steam engine and how cool it was. When I told him it was the peak in power he was like "but we have nuclear and gas" and I told him that nuclear power is basically just a super charged steam engine, and nuclear rods boil water better than coal or gasoline, but it's basically a steam engine. I went over how gasoline in cars was basically the same, but instead of steam, it used tiny explosions. We watched a few how it's made type videos.
But I don't WANT to boil water, I want ELECTRICITY. Like, future electricity!
We're honestly almost past that at this point. Solar is devouring the world. Total global electricity production capacity is about 10 TW. China is currently producing 1 TW of panels annually. And the panels are still getting better and the prices are still dropping. We will quickly reach the point where the vast majority of global electricity production is solar, and everything else is a rounding error.
There just isn't going to be any reason to build fusion plants. Maybe in the distant future colonies in the outer solar system and beyond will use them. But for anything inward of Mars, solar is the way to go. Solar+batteries is already, in 2026, the cheapest form of baseload power available. Material limitations are not a problem with modern battery chemistries. Daily swings in power demand will be solved by batteries. And we simply won't have to worry about seasonal power swings. We'll build enough solar panels to meet all our winter needs. We'll build enough to power our cities during the coldest, cloudiest months. And then the rest of they year we'll have super-abundant dirt cheap power.
The future is one of vast energy abundance. We're going to find all sorts of ways to use energy that we've never even dreamed of before - mostly to take advantage of the abundance of dirt cheap energy we'll have during all but the coldest months.
The days the steam engine are numbered. With the exception of remote polar outposts, everything's going solar. It's simply the cheapest most abundant form of energy we've ever discovered. Nothing can match it.
I still think nuclear (probably fission rather than fusion) has a place, at least in terms of materials and land usage. It's just obscenely efficient in terms of energy per resource investment. Solar generation requires square miles of space and hundreds of tons of materials to match the output of a single reactor.
The US can provide for far more than its total electricity usage, with just the land area we currently use to grow corn for ethanol. You can put solar panels on parking lots, over roads, on train tracks, on rooftops, etc. You can even use the same land for both solar panels and growing certain crops. It's called agrivoltaics. And that's before you even get into panels in deserts, floating on water, etc.
There simply isn't a shortage of land for solar. Unless you're talking about tiny city-states, there just is no shortage of land needed for electric purposes. Land usage just isn't a significant factor. Yes, land footprint is an advantage nuclear has, but it's an advantage that really doesn't matter much in the real world.
Turns out heat engines are like... pretty good at turning arbitrary energy sources into useful work! Who knew!
Yeah about that.
Those are termosolar powerplant, they use the sun to boil water and spin a turbine.
Why do I have an overwhelming urge to climb that
You know if you're a moth, you can just fly up there.
No brother!
BRotHeR i cRaVe foR tHe ForBiDDen liGhT
Its even more metal they heat salt that heats water to spin the turbine. This keeps the power generation well after sun down.
Although they're falling out of use these days, both because they're not very environmentally friendly on account of being instant bird death-rays, and also because regular solar panels are cheap enough that it's not worth it to make a big thermosolar plant.
Habitat destruction, air pollution, and pesticides are unfathomably worse for birds.
Ahkshually, those tend to boil salt...which is later used to boil water.
Solar panels are all nice and stuft, but what about some boiled water?
Fun Fact: Since 2006-2007 Uruguay’s power infrastructure has mostly relied on green energy, making up over 90% of their power infrastructure, also making them fully self sustaining power wise
china already have a supercritical carbon dioxide system integrated into a functioning powergrid and operating commercially. The system exploits an exotic phase of co2 which expands to fill a volume like gas, but moves frictionlessly through tubes as a liquid. There are concerns about lifespan because of how caustic the system is, but apparently some new materials are being trialled which negate this.
Link with description for those who are unaware of this like me
Heat pumps are the next evolution of the "it's just steam again isn't it?" meme.
Harrumph
All that yet microwaves still leave my burrito frozen in the center.
Gotta lower the power setting and increase the cook time. One minute at 100%? No! One and a half minutes at 80%!
also, offset from the center of the microwave on the spinny plate. centered will only get you a portion of the waveform, moving the food around through a larger cross-section of the waveform = more thoroughly cooked stuff.
ACKSHUALLY we're going to put special solar panels inside the reactor.
People are essentially internal combustion engines that burn food. Trying to capture that energy in ways that increases the load on us just causes us to need more calories. That's counter productive as you could just burn said food itself to get energy, and agriculture is an energy and environmentally intensive industry to begin with.
