----- Original Message -----
From: "thomas malloy" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Sunday, December 31, 2006 4:32 PM
Subject: [Vo]: What Energy Crisis?
What energy crisis? IMHO, the energy crisis you face is an inability to
generate a suitable income. I have the same problem.
We will, as time goes on, need more and greater sources of energy.
Specifically, ones we can set up here in the USA, and not have to worry
about zinc-plated dictators and Islamic whackjobs overseas.
Over the past year we have discussed a number of areas which might provide
an unlimited source of pollution free energy. Among them are the writings
of Hal Puthoff, last week I posted a review of his paper on EVO's, adding
? after comments that I don't understand. I also mentioned the Frank
Tippler's paper on generating anti matter.
I think I will get attacked for this but.....
What has the ZPE hype ever gotten us? I remember a bunch of stuff years ago
about doing something sort of screwy with hydrogen, I think along the lines
of "squeezing" it through capillaries or somesuch that was supposed to make
the ground-state orbit of electrons shrink around the hydrogen atoms, giving
off energy. Then presumably the ZPE (which supposedly held up the electron
in the ground-state orbit) would "refill" the atom, and get us back to
normal sized hydrogen. It was sort of...far out. To be honest, we don't even
know that ZPE exists in the sense that people rant about.
Robert L. Forward had an interesting line of thought about interconverting
energy and momentum, specifically angular momentum ---> energy. It was a
nice idea, could be possible. But how do we DO it?
Antimatter is not an energy source, it is an energy storage medium, and a
very inefficient one at that. So is gasoline. Thing is, time was on our side
for fossil fuels, and we got here after the hard work was already done. In
that sense, all cars are solar powered, there is just a rather crummy
conversion state in between.
Now, if you want to get into violating baryon number and lepton number,
maybe there is some way to "burn" matter into energy directly, say, make
some sort of thing that converts 50% of your matter feed stock into
antimatter, and the leftover 50% of normal matter does the rest. Better
convert an equal number of baryons and leptons too, otherwise we get into
charge conservation violations. If we can do that, then we are all set. But
how do we do that?
At some point, people were making blocks of very heavy, poisonous metals and
got the idea to set a couple blocks close to each other, and then energy
came from apparently nowhere. Who would have ever thought that something so
*stupid* would ever do anything? Yet, here we are with nuclear reactors. The
point is, the answers are undoubtedly there; but finding them is probably a
mixture of (hopefully correct) insight, prayer, and pure damn luck. Trying
to avoid aplastic anemia in the process is also probably a good thing. Now
back to the subject....
We don't even NEED a breakthrough right now. We can build solar
concentrating thermal collectors in the desert, and wind farms as well just
to be safe, and solve this whole bloody problem. With today's technology.
Actually 1970's technology. But I seriously doubt it is going to happen with
Republicans or Democrats in power. Who else is there though? I don't know.
If nothing else, we have fossil fuel reserves enough to last for 1000
years. Now there are a number of problems which are going to have to be
resolved, like where to get enough air to burn it, and your children will
have to convert to Islam.
Fossil fuels are far more valuable, I think, as chemical feedstocks than to
be literally sent up in smoke. We need them for fertilizers, plastics, all
sorts of synthetics, etc. Why waste them by burning them up? No, we need to
make our electricity from the only known fusion reactor that actually works
and self sustains (the Sun, for those denser'n lead), and make our own
synthetic fuels from them.
I too hate the idea of "conservation". So why not build ourselves such an
energy resource that we no longer need to conserve? And one that is clean to
boot? I have serious doubts that we are causing "global warming", but if we
have a nice solution that doesn't pollute, why not use it?
--Kyle
