Microsoft's underwater data centre resurfaces after two years • Hacker News Board

Re: Microsoft's underwater data centre resurfaces after two years

#81

Post by bluGill » Mon, Sep 14, 2020, 4:48 PM UTC

mlyle wrote: post #71

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it doesn't really matter how much heat you generate Doesn’t matter is strong. It won’t in the short term. But as we continue increasing our energy use as a species, the simple thermal problem of waste-heat management will certainly surface.

If you use renewables, you're using heat that is already around on the planet. As long as you don't change planetary albedo, equilibrium temperature is the same. Of course, heating water locally, etc, can cause its own environmental impacts.

Not necessarily - if (I think this is true but am not able to prove it) the earth is on a slight negative carbon slope, and renewables reduce that slope we are still making an impact on long term temperature.

Re: Microsoft's underwater data centre resurfaces after two years

#82

Post by luma » Mon, Sep 14, 2020, 4:49 PM UTC

t0mbstone wrote: post #68

serjester wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It takes about 80 watts to heat up a liter of water 1° celsius. Global data centers used about 4.16 x 10^14 watts last year [1]. Let's assume we still have a lot more data centers to build so bump that number up 10,000X. Assuming every watt of energy is actually converted to heat and we moved every data center on earth underwater it'd raise the temperate of the oceans (1.3x 10^21 liters) about 0.01°C. This is a very…

You are making the assumption that moving data centers underwater would also come along with a 10,000-fold increase in the number of data centers? That seems like an unnecessarily hyperbolic approach. That would mean going from 8.4 million data centers to 840 billion data centers. I mean, come on... But hey, let's roll with it. What would be the effect on the environment if we literally had 10,000 times more data cen…

Sounds like they're just using pessimistic numbers to make the point. Even if you multiply the existing datacenter footprint by 4 orders of magnitude, it still only results in a 0.01C raise in temperature.

Re: Microsoft's underwater data centre resurfaces after two years

#83

Post by CDSlice » Mon, Sep 14, 2020, 4:49 PM UTC

t0mbstone wrote: post #68

serjester wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It takes about 80 watts to heat up a liter of water 1° celsius. Global data centers used about 4.16 x 10^14 watts last year [1]. Let's assume we still have a lot more data centers to build so bump that number up 10,000X. Assuming every watt of energy is actually converted to heat and we moved every data center on earth underwater it'd raise the temperate of the oceans (1.3x 10^21 liters) about 0.01°C. This is a very…

You are making the assumption that moving data centers underwater would also come along with a 10,000-fold increase in the number of data centers? That seems like an unnecessarily hyperbolic approach. That would mean going from 8.4 million data centers to 840 billion data centers. I mean, come on... But hey, let's roll with it. What would be the effect on the environment if we literally had 10,000 times more data cen…

I think you are arguing for the same thing your parent comment is? That comment is trying to show that even in the absolute worst case of no efficiency gains and 10,000x increase in data centers the impact that using the oceans to cool them would have on the ocean is absolutely minuscule.

Re: Microsoft's underwater data centre resurfaces after two years

#84

Post by falcolas » Mon, Sep 14, 2020, 4:49 PM UTC

ChuckMcM wrote: post #63

jacquesm wrote: post #10

Why heat the oceans indirectly when you can just place the heatsource directly in them? Much less chance of losing precious ergs. Seriously though, what is the direct ecological impact of doing this at scale, would the local increase in temperature have an immediate effect on the life around it? If so how much of an impact? What about the effect on surface life and life in intermediary layers of the water? After all,…

The scale is off. Things that affect local ecosystems are cooling multi-gigawatt nuclear reactors with nearby ocean water, you would be lucky if one of these drew a megawatt of power. That said, the physics are "heat is heat". If you put it into the air or you put it directly into the ocean the only way it leaves the planet is by black body radiation. As a result locally heating some seawater nearby has (on a global…

> the only way it leaves the planet is by black body radiation

But, if you're heating the oceans, you're putting an entire other mass (the atmosphere) between yourself and space. So you're heating the water, the water is heating the atmosphere, and the atmosphere is radiating that into space. It's adding a step to the overall cooling process.

Re: Microsoft's underwater data centre resurfaces after two years

#85

Post by whiw » Mon, Sep 14, 2020, 4:49 PM UTC

whiw wrote: post #78

serjester wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It takes about 80 watts to heat up a liter of water 1° celsius. Global data centers used about 4.16 x 10^14 watts last year [1]. Let's assume we still have a lot more data centers to build so bump that number up 10,000X. Assuming every watt of energy is actually converted to heat and we moved every data center on earth underwater it'd raise the temperate of the oceans (1.3x 10^21 liters) about 0.01°C. This is a very…

This seems to confuse Power with Energy. Watts measure Power, which is a rate of Energy. The specific heat of water is 4182 Joules/kg and its density is close to 1kg/litre, so 4.128 kJ (Energy) will be required to heat 1 litre of water by 1 degree C. The temperature rise of the oceans will be complicated to work out. Taking the OPs figures, 4.16x10^14 watts / 1.3x10^21 litres gives 3.2x10^-7 watts per litre of ocean,…

To clarify: 0.32 microJoules of energy are added to every 1 litre of the ocean every second.

Re: Microsoft's underwater data centre resurfaces after two years

#86

Post by fblp » Mon, Sep 14, 2020, 4:50 PM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #10

Why heat the oceans indirectly when you can just place the heatsource directly in them? Much less chance of losing precious ergs. Seriously though, what is the direct ecological impact of doing this at scale, would the local increase in temperature have an immediate effect on the life around it? If so how much of an impact? What about the effect on surface life and life in intermediary layers of the water? After all,…

Ocean water is already used to cool nuclear and coal power plants. I suspect these would radiate far more heat than a data centre.

I'm surprised msft wouldn't propose to pipe the ocean water in like these power plants before going through the challenge of building under the ocean...

Re: Microsoft's underwater data centre resurfaces after two years

#87

Post by ithkuil » Mon, Sep 14, 2020, 4:50 PM UTC

mlyle wrote: post #71

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it doesn't really matter how much heat you generate Doesn’t matter is strong. It won’t in the short term. But as we continue increasing our energy use as a species, the simple thermal problem of waste-heat management will certainly surface.

If you use renewables, you're using heat that is already around on the planet. As long as you don't change planetary albedo, equilibrium temperature is the same. Of course, heating water locally, etc, can cause its own environmental impacts.

this! another way to look at it: your solar panels are temporarily "stealing" heat generated by sun rays hitting a surface of equivalent color. When you use electricity to do some work, it will be turned back to heat. so if you want to be 100% "heat neutral", all you have to do is to ensure that for every square meter of solar panels you also paint an proportionate area with a color that reflects the right amount of sunlight to compensate the difference between the color of the solar panel and the area that was there before you installed the solar panel.

If you think that's silly (and rightfully so), then perhaps that can sharpen your intuition on how insignificant is the total amount of heat produced by our devices (even if cumulatively they are a big looking number); the total amount of radiation that comes from the sun down to earth is staggering.

Re: Microsoft's underwater data centre resurfaces after two years

#88

Post by Retric » Mon, Sep 14, 2020, 4:50 PM UTC

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #40

StavrosK wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue is CO2, though, not heat per se. Yes, the two are correlated, but if you use renewables to power your things, it doesn't really matter how much heat you generate. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

> it doesn't really matter how much heat you generate Doesn’t matter is strong. It won’t in the short term. But as we continue increasing our energy use as a species, the simple thermal problem of waste-heat management will certainly surface.

The similarly extreme version is kind of an interesting comparison, and similarly irrelevant.

The 84,000 ppm for 60 minutes is roughly the lethal CO2 concentration. Local CO2 concentration is often several times atmospheric CO2 levels. That’s clearly addressable but I suspect around 8,000 ppm atmospheric we would start to see deaths from this which is achievable from coal deposits. Reaching a fully lethal atmosphere is of course much harder.

So, I think you’re right temperature pollution at extreme levels is worse.

Re: Microsoft's underwater data centre resurfaces after two years

#89

Post by badRNG » Mon, Sep 14, 2020, 4:51 PM UTC

noisy_boy wrote: post #50

znpy wrote: post #7

Interestingly in the original article it said that the datacenter was meant to stay under water for five years. I wonder why they have pulled it out ahead of time. (source: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-44368813 -- see video) edit: just to be clear, my questioning isn't meant to be read in a denigratory way. just wondering. Also thank to Kydlaw for pointing out that it actually said "up to five years".

Some executive probably said "I think it would be good to take stock of the experiment now to reduce time-risk and arrive at a decision point regarding future strategy".

It increasingly seems that public businesses seem incapable of making long-term plans, even rather trivial ones, if the cost of ending the experiment results in immediate gains. The driving force is the single most important metric: this quarter's upcoming earnings report. Businesses that tend to place bets on multi-year investments are either privately held (e.g. SpaceX) or are participating in specific public/private partnerships.

While I do think we are seeing the limits of what a publicly-traded company can actually realize, there are of course counterexamples: Google always seems to have multiple irons in the fire, and there are many other examples in the comments on this discussion of corporate research labs: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24200764

Re: Microsoft's underwater data centre resurfaces after two years

#90

Post by smaddox » Mon, Sep 14, 2020, 4:51 PM UTC

shuntress wrote: post #36

Etheryte wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ocean is host to a very wide number of creatures and bacteria, some live in arctic cold waters, others on volcanic vents, and every range in between. There's a good saying for this, roughly translated, that nature doesn't love an empty spot — if one type of plant or bacteria won't live in an area, someone else will quickly settle in.

I am familiar with that sentiment expressed through the phrase "nature abhors a vacuum"

The irony is that this phrase predates the Torricelli experiment, in which he used a glass vial and mercury to produce a vacuum, and the eventual discovery that the vast majority of nature is a vacuum (outside of the atmosphere of planets and stars).