Posted on 02/21/2024 11:45:28 AM PST by Red Badger
First, to save energy turn off the AI computer.
Did you know that?
Gemini says:
Understanding “Limitless”:
Infinite, inexhaustible: In this strict sense, limitless energy violates the law of conservation of energy, stating that energy can neither be created nor destroyed, only transformed. So, a source constantly producing new energy without any input wouldn’t be possible.
It stated more, but bottom line, the above is true.
One of my favorite movies.
There has been rumors of a remake for years.
Supposedly Ron Howard was going to direct it and Will Smith would star as Dr. Forbin.
But it has languished in rumor land for years........
https://pureblather.com/2023/12/12/colossus-the-forbin-project/
That’s exactly what prompted me to find that ChatGPT gibberish from today.
Oh boy, AI consensus...
The FreeRepublic stutter got ya....
I once managed to post a comment about 20x
AI lies to support its positions.
What could possibly go wrong if we ask it to solve the containment puzzle? /s
“Lord Swift of Wetwang”.....LOL
They've programmed AI to ignore the laws of thermodynamics.: "Perpetual motion, here we come!"
That’s what they said last year
If we replace all our “fossil” fuels with wind or sun or hydrogen, whence comes all or plastics from most of our clothing and in just about everything we use, large and small?
Before we had plastic we had wools from various animals, sheep, goats, alpacas, llamas, yaks etc. and cotton, silk, linen, and other plants........
The first plastic wasn’t from petroleum at all, but wood......... bakelite...,.......
Really, until someone comes up with a way to get Electricity
directly we are just using the power of the universe to boil water.
Someone who knows his Douglas Adams I see.
:-)
ping
“If we replace all our “fossil” fuels with wind or sun or hydrogen, whence comes all or plastics from most of our clothing and in just about everything we use, large and small?”
You just made the argument a lot of geologists make. Oil is too precious to burn to the sky we need every drop of it for all the other uses other than fuels. Humans have burnt 300+ million years of fossil sunshine accumulations in just under two centuries we have used more than half the recoverable oil at any price. 8 billion people living at EU level energy consumption levels which is half of what the USA is would burn out that last half in a decade or so. This planet is resource limited at 8+ billion souls we would need four earth’s to all live at a USA standard that’s easily verifiable by mathematics. Math is universal it has no politics.
Once it’s gone it’s gone and we have to go the synthetic route using syngas to build CH2nH or CH2+CH2 directly from CO,CO2+H2 gasses where you source those gasses is a wide choice, ocean water, the air itself, terrestrial biomass,coals,peat,micro+macro algae, Sea grasses, halophilic plants grown on seawater, or out right Ocean farming. Either way you need one CO to every three H2 to get alkenes, which are the basis for all the larger CH2 based polymers. To get to cyclic alkanes takes even more H2 to fully saturate the C=C bonds into C-C bonds instead.
In other words it’s very complicated to get from base molecules to.useful polymers let alone medications, and lubricants the polyalpha olfeins being the target plus group V esters. Fertilizers are easier you need a nitrogen source to make Urea or ammonia with that hydrogen. Plastics are the easiest polyethylene is the basic CH2+CH2+CH2.....into the millions for solid high density HDPE. Once you want neoprene,isobutal or styrene you are back to your cyclic alkenes or branch chained not all that easy to synthesis from base molecules without large side reaction loses. You are seeing the point right.Humans need to use our blessings of liquid hydrocarbons to move post haste to long term resource management before we face a case where there is 9+ billion all demanding access to smaller and smaller reserves of resources and the supply that could have been used to bootstrap into a long term resource management strategy that’s sustainable for the species all 8 billion of us.
“Really, until someone comes up with a way to get Electricity
directly we are just using the power of the universe to boil water.”
Lockheed is working on this exact thing. Their fusion is not a donut but a barbell shaped magnetic bottle with the fusion happening in the bar part and each barbell end is a magnetic mirror reflecting back the hydrogen ions but allowing the much higher energy alpha He3/He4 ions to leave the system against a huge electrical gradient as they are slowed down they give up their kinetic energy as electrical.potential in the millions of electron volts then they make contact with the outer collector that is turned into very high voltage DC potential and with a circuit formed HVDC current. Lockheed intends to use proton H1+boron11 fusion to only have He3/He4 ions no high energy neutrons which make everything they touch radioactive even normal steels.
Personally I’m a fan of fusion fisson hybrids you don’t even need breakeven in the fusion part of the reactor core. The fission blanket can have up to a 100x energy multiplication factor at a Kef of .98 which us safely subcritical. melt down is not possible in a subcritical system. The other choice is go deep subcrit at a Kef of .6 or less and you then have a multiplier of ten or so enough to run the fusion part at a loss while breeding enormous amounts of PU239 enough to that a one gigawatt hybrid would fuel ten once through PWR or nearly twenty or the twice as efficient CANDU reactors. Effectively unlimited fissile material for a fleet of regular reactors. There is enough mined uranium sitting depleted in storage to fuel all of humanities energy needs for a thousand years with basic reprocessing and fusion hybrids or fast breed reactors they both breed huge amounts of Pu239 the perfect fission fuel other than Pu241 and NP237 which you also get in spades in a hybrid or fast breeder. In the fast spectrum every transuranium is fuel regardless of isotope number. Humans solved our long term resource issues when.we unlocked the binding curve of the atoms now it’s a marshmallow test for our species.
“Before we had plastic we had wools from various animals, sheep, goats, alpacas, llamas, yaks etc. and cotton, silk, linen, and other plants........”
Most people do not realise that the discovery of oil in 1869 in Pennsylvania and its use as better replacement for whale oil in lamps and especially industrial lubrication saved the whales from outright extinction. There is only two ways to lubricate high pressure and temp bearings. Whale oil or petroleum and its synthetic counterparts. Vegetable and animal oils gum up or fail completely. The industrial Revolution was built initially off whale oils the only oils that can be used in steam engines, and factory spindles driven by steam engines.
There is no substitutes for hydrocarbon based lubricants, be that hydrocarbon a whale oil ester or transfat, a natural petroleum linear alkane or a synthetic polyalpha olefin they are what works and only what works. You can’t run a jet turbine using corn oil as it’s lube for sure same for power plant turbines be they steam or gas. Although some gas turbines are now using air foil bearings ironically you need hydrogen gas to lube and cool the huge generators in power plants it’s one of the largest users of pure hydrogen gas that no one thinks about.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.