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.
Low key this is a great way to convince people to switch away from fossil fuels.
Most people seemingly don't know that coal/gas stations work by essentially boiling water. Most are horrified at how trashy and underdeveloped the concept is compared to high tech alternatives like solar, wind, or hydro.
Well, hydro is just spinning water again, wind is spinning air. Solar is stealing electrons from the sun (i think?) So that's cool
stealing
reappropriating :D
Getting electronics knocked around by photons.
Domestic Appliance Violence
They pump water through it. The water gives energy, all our energy is hydrogen baby
Why is that a problem, exactly?
Because it's not as cool as directly harvest the energy itself like in scifi.
geothermal is boiling water too, and it's pretty neat
I've been thinking that for a while. Issue is that it's risky, if you fuck up there's a pretty high chance that there are going to be a lot of houses with cracks in their walls (assuming you're doing it in a relatively densely populated area that doesn't normally see earthquakes).
You mean, like fracking (for oil power) minus the poisoning groundwater part?
Any powerplant will usually done in a pretty isolated area for safety reason, so i'd assume the chance of it happen is very, very slim. If location isn't permitted it's probably shouldn't be build, especially for the type that need to dig very deep to access the heat, so solar panel on roof is probably the best way for any power generation that is placed close or in the populated area.
It's not really a problem, it's just funny that so many forms of power generation we have are just boiling water to make steam that spins turbines.
It only feels odd because that is genuinely an incredibly effective means of generation, and we found it very early on because steam is so fundamental. Nothing wrong with sticking to the best method ever discovered.
Every damn power plant is a glorified steam engine
Except solar. And wind. And hydro.
Some solar is also boiling water
And some of it is boiling salt!
Which then boils water, of course.
But some of it is electrons from photonic impact, no water involved! In the process of energy generation anyway. Statistically and perhaps somewhat ironically, the electrons from that photonic impact may well be used to boil water regardless... Humans just fucking love boiling water.
Isn't salt like the main bees knees these days?
I don't know, but the Ivanpah solar power station near Primm NV, which is a set of three molten salt towers is reportedly getting decommissioned, removed, and replaced with PV panels. Word is PV technology had improved in efficiency and stopped in cost enough that the whole molten salt thing is no longer economically viable, at least in comparison.
Oh, absolutely. It's very cool technology! Molten salt is corrosive as fuck, but that just kinda makes molten salt solar towers even more awesome.
I'm assuming ceramics to the rescue?
Expect for solar, it's all just flowy stuff through spinny stuff: wind, water, steam. GRAAAAAAAAAA
you forgot the electrochemical battery
Spinny stuff is basically the universe on all scales, so it makes sense. And that's fucking cool, IMO.
I watched a video a while ago about a new approach to fusion which uses induction iirc https://youtu.be/uRaQLZaaHWo
Why don't we just pipe our water all the way out to the sun and pipe the steam back to earth.
What a stupid suggestion...
Let's instead move the earth closer to the sun and boil the oceans directly.......
One of the fusion startups says they can use the plasma B field directly. Basically making the plasma the rotor in an electric generator to induce current in a wire.
I really like this concept, wonder how viable it really is though.
It seems promising, they're acting like they're close. They've been promising concrete deliverables, I think they're supposed to have a working model that can actually capture the energy next year
You never know, but they're called Triton if you want to check them out. They don't share progress often, but when they do it seems pretty candid about their progress
Reminds me of one of my favorite photos, a steam engine being delivered by steam engine!
Somebody was using the push against magnetic confinement in a pulse reactor to harvest magnetic - > electric directly but it's been a while since they've been in the news.
edit: Just looked up where they (Helion) are, looks like they might have overstated their position for venture capital. TBF, they are collecting energy from the spike in the confinement pulse, it's just pretty likely less than they put in to create the pulse :)
