Is chemical energy more readily available from plastics than from wood? You'd have to imagine it is if evolution is adapting these timescales.

I'm not really sure what you're asking or getting at. Could you be more explicit?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminium_recycling

Aluminium recycling is the process in which secondary commercial aluminium is created from scrap or other forms of end-of-life or otherwise unusable aluminium.[1] It involves re-melting the metal, which is cheaper and more energy-efficient than the production of virgin aluminium by electrolysis of alumina (Al2O3) refined from raw bauxite by use of the Bayer and Hall–Héroult processes.

Recycling scrap aluminium requires only 5% of the energy used to make new aluminium from the raw ore.[2]

Cans and glass are infinitely recyclable. Recycling aluminum saves 96% of the energy of producing new.

Paper is semi recyclable, but it degrades, so it can only go through the process a certain number of times.

Plastic is marginally recyclable. Only about 10% of plastic that goes into a recycling bin gets recycled. It was a hoax by petro-chem to make plastic seem more sustainable than it is.

Always warms my heart to see the amount of respect these athletes have for their competitors. Sometimes people are awesome!

You think one imaginary number is crazy? Just wait till you learn about quaternions. One real number and 3 imaginary numbers forming a four dimensional coordinate system. It's the basis for quantum mechanics and most video game engines. Who thinks of this shit?

I honestly needed to hear this today, so thank you. I'm at work trying to work out someone else's uncommented code and have just been staring at it mumbling to myself. I'm new to the position so I'm anxious my new coworkers will think I'm just dicking around... This is the validation I needed. Thanks everyone!

It is a politically savvy and ethically correct move. Really nice when those line up.

But we can't get a database for firearms?

Wow, sharks @439mya, Polaris @70mya. They're more than 6 times older! This is NUTS!

Then you plead the 5th. Pretty sure that's exactly what it's intended for.

Ok, I see a lot of false info in here. EE chiming in here.

Minor efficiency improvements: consumer electronics, batteries, solar panels, CPUs/GPUs

Major efficiency improvements: power transmission, wireless power transmission, electric motors, high density electro-magnets (used in fusion, MRI, etc), 'traditional' energy generation techniques that spin a thing to produce electricity (wind, nuclear, hydro, gas, (even coal, but let's pretend coal doesn't exist)).

Outside of my expertise, but I'm speculating major improvements: wired and wireless data transmission (antenna tech)

The implications that excite me the most are mostly around transportation.

-Realistically, of existing technologies I think electric motors are the biggest winner with superconductors. For the most part, the size and power of electric motors are constrained by how to get the electrical waste heat out. With superconductors you don't have electrical waste heat. You can create incredibly small, powerful, efficient electric motors with super conductors. This means efficiency gains in so many of our big 'energy sinks' right now. Transportation, air conditioning, manufacturing... I mean it would be a largely unnoticed improvement to almost every aspect of our modern lives.

-Cars with close to 100% regenerative braking (superconductors+capacitors for temporary energy storage) You could stop at a red light and accelerate back to the same speed 'for net-zero energy'. THAT IS BANANAS! A current conventional gas car burns fuel for ~30% efficiency, the other 70% is waste heat. Then after you've done all that inefficient work to get moving you hit the brakes and USE FRICTION TO TURN YOUR MOMENTUM INTO MORE WASTE HEAT! Bugs the bajesus out of me! Superconductors would make it much more practical to recoup energy when stopping a vehicle.

Then you can get into cool new technologies:

-Mag-Lev trains would be super cool. I don't see a huge practical benefit since the mechanics of train wheels on rails are pretty efficient as is, but come on... levitating trains? so cool!

-Rail gun style space launch systems (unfortunately, this comes with rail gun style weapons too, sorry everybody!)

-Tokamak nuclear fusion reactors are currently constrained by the strength of the magnetic fields they can produce using electromagnets. The limiting factor is largely cooling for these electromagnets and the associated superconductors. Room temp superconductors allows for much more compact designs for the magnetic confinement infrastructure used in these facilities.

-You could make a friggin mag-lev skate park. Hoverboards! REAL FRIGGIN HOVERBOARDS could be produced!

-(I think) We can actually start talking about 'active support' structures. Buildings that would not be possible because of the compressive or tensile strength of known materials can be supplemented by active support through electromagnets!

-This removes probably the biggest constraint in electrical engineering and design. We will see amazing technology come out of this that none of us can predict.

EDIT (I'm just gonna keep adding these as they get mentioned elsewhere):

-Magnetic energy storage. Similar to how an electrical transformer works: You induce a current to flow which 'stores' the energy in a magnetic field. In the case of magnetic energy storage you just leave that current flowing. No resistance means it will flow indefinitely. You can then extract it directly or through interaction with the magnetic field.