Photovoltaics have entered the chat.
Wind turbines have spun into the chat
Hydroelectric also doesn’t boil the water; the water itself turns things.
It’s also an awful idea, destroys ecosystems
This is the most efficient way when you’re burning a fuel, any fuel, always. Otherwise the machine wouldn’t capture the waste heat.
Gasoline engines capture only 25-40% of the the chemical energy in their fuel.
Well, there’s always supercritical CO2 for getting a bit more spin for your heat.
It’s got a pretty fabulous efficiency, pretty fabulous cost too.
we’ve had this discussion so many times, let’s have it one more time, shall we?
electricity is the most valuable form of energy. every time you want to convert energy A into energy B, you almost always do it via electricity energy as an intermediary step.
for example, if you want to convert the potential energy of water into light energy, you go: water potential energy -> turbine rotary energy -> electric energy -> light.
so, the question is, how can electric energy be converted from/to other types of energy? important types:
- electrochemical (direct reduction, batteries, galvanic cell)
- electromechanical (motor, generator)
- photoelectric (solar panel, LED)
there are some others that i’m still thinking about how to categorize (peltier effect / seebeck effect).
these are represented by major 4 integrated circuit types:
- capacitor / supercapacitor represents battery
- coil represents motor / generator (electromagnetic coupling)
- diode represents photoelectrics
- transistor for switching
the first 2 are “linear” (described by linear theory). the last 2 are semiconductor materials.
While I agree that electricity is on top of the power food chain its nothing but steam all the way down below it.
It is well known that “dyson spheres” are pure science fiction without realistic economics or any feasible implementation possibility. The reason is because there is not enough water to boil all that energy into usable electricity.
You can boil other things, like NaK. Wait, I need to look up boiling NaK now
Sometimes even solar is about boiling water
Power tower?
Reminds me of a Frank Zappa song 😁
Hey there people I’m Bobby Brown!
Einstein would like to have a word with his Nobel prize winning discovery.
We have been the steampunk universe all along!
Nuclear energy isn’t new technology nor very advanced nowadays.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_nuclear_fission_reactor
1.7 billion years ago
Not wrong though.
Certainly the development of fusion reactors will be the beginning of something new.
Once we can make those we can boil the SHIT out of water!
And here I was hoping that we could boil the HELL out of water.
No large scale holy water production in sight still?
Is there a quantifiable limit to how much water a priest can bless at once to make it holy? Is that rank based once priests level up? And, if during COVID livestreaming a mass was just as good as attending, couldn’t you put an ipad above every source of potable water before it gets sent to customers and have the priest bless it once a day for a consistent flow of holy water? Could this be used to combat the terrorists putting things in water to make the frogs gay?
brb emailing this to RFK
Iirc, there’s a church (I think in Italy, but I may be completely wrong, and I’m far too lazy to Google it right now), where the priest blessed the pipe that carries the water, and the church has a spigot outside for adherents to come to and get holy water whenever they want it.
I’m sitting pretty with my steamed milk reactor
Or sometimes about melting salt
Hmm, looks like it is also about boiling water
