61–70 of 231 posts
Wouldn't this eventually slow down Earth's rotation? The rotational kinetic energy of our planet is 1/5 M * R^2 * w^2 with (approximately) M = 6e34 kg, R = 6.3e6m, w = 7.4e-5 rad/s, which gives approximately 5e36 joules. Yearly we need roughly 3e16 Wh. Yeah ok there's plenty. Woah! (also, I may be off by some orders of magnitude)
Doesn’t driving west to east on a highway slow down the Earth’s rotation, via the power transferred into the ground?
It's incredible the lengths humanity is willing to go to avoid adopting nuclear energy - despite the US navy driving mobile reactors millions of miles over the last 70 years.
The Navy isn’t constrained by economics. Nuclear doesn’t make sense economically compared to things like solar and batteries.
Also, remember that nuclear, unlike solar, has a lot of room for improvement still, both in how it's done, and how it's regulated. Solar has already been tremendously optimized, while nuclear has not.
The cost argument seems to be advances by the same people who impose or support the additional operational requirements, and who also just have a philosophical aversion to nuclear power.
There are hundreds of nuclear power plants already in operation, many decades old. There have been only a very small number of minor accidents (3 come to mind: Chernobyl, Three mile island and Fukushima), in which only a few dozen people were killed. Nuclear, even using old technology, has proven to be far safer and better for the environment than any scalable alternative, including solar. New designs are even safer.
It's incredible the lengths humanity is willing to go to avoid adopting nuclear energy - despite the US navy driving mobile reactors millions of miles over the last 70 years.
I used to have a neighbor who worked for the DOE, all of the viable solutions are blocked by people who don’t want it in their backyard. Can’t really move forward until that is solved..
I had an idea somewhat related to this where we use the solar winds as a sort of road and the earth's magnetic field as a sort of rotor to convert kinetic energy from the sun into electricity.
I wonder how many wats of power we would be able to generate before earth slows down for i.e. 1 second longer day.
The topic is very interesting. The spin of science, is not. Side story: What's to argue over? There's no shortage of scientists with breakthroughs who are pretty much abused by their profession and colleagues, sometimes for decades, simply for exploring possibilities and capabilities that are more than safe and conservative and incremental. Either it's true, or it's not, and it can be explored, or not. Division breed…
Even happier to get input and maybe learn.
Wouldn't this eventually slow down Earth's rotation? The rotational kinetic energy of our planet is 1/5 M * R^2 * w^2 with (approximately) M = 6e34 kg, R = 6.3e6m, w = 7.4e-5 rad/s, which gives approximately 5e36 joules. Yearly we need roughly 3e16 Wh. Yeah ok there's plenty. Woah! (also, I may be off by some orders of magnitude)
Doesn’t driving west to east on a highway slow down the Earth’s rotation, via the power transferred into the ground?
A bad question, as it has been doing that literally (rotationally) since before life started. This power is busy generating the magnetosphere. We would not be enjoying our nice oxygen atmosphere and would be as dead as Mars if Earth's rotation wasn't also powering a dynamo.