All of humanities technological advancements can be summed up in ever more complex ways to boil water
That's why photovoltaics need much more R&D. They are the only true advancement in electricity production since the inception of broadly adopted electrification.
Exactly why we should ditch them. We shall not break tradition. Praise be the turbine
Hollowed be thy pipes
Anoint me in condensate
It doesn't rotate to generate electricity? Must be blasphemy.
Blessed be the holy turbine, we seek guidance in its rotation. Long may it spin and bring forth a bounteous current.
Also fuel cells.
Hey we burn things just for heat too.
Yeah, heat to boil water
We heat homes, smelt ore, many industrial things.
We heat homes by heating water and putting the hot water through pipes into wall mounted iron tanks so that the water cools down again...
Not everyone uses radiators. My system is a forced air furnace.
We heat water molecules in air.
I think to be more general it boils down to just oxidate stuff.
/pun intended
Most of the biggest advances in technology is just about moving liquids. Rocket science is really just large scale HVAC.
Oh boy just wait till you hear how fossil fuels work
That's just steam power with extra steps!
I've got bad news for ya bruv
Wait till you find out how nuclear fusion makes electricity
You mean, how it will in 20 years?
Perpetually so
It's like Musk time. In 20 years it'll only be 20 years away.
Helion's approach is actually different. They are attempting to capture energy directly through induction. I hope it pans out for them, seems like a really interesting approach.
That seems inefficient
Here's a video I saw a few months back you might find interesting:
We can do it now, just haven't found a way to scale it and make it economical yet.
ITER is doing a great job on that front
There's actually two (at least that I know of) ways for fusion to generate electricity, this is a newer one https://youtu.be/uRaQLZaaHWo?si=DTwV26inm1pyrYn8
Our entire society* has been based on burning things. Then we progressed to... burning atoms.
(*Exceptions I can think of is solar, wind, hydro.)
Then we're leaching off the sun burning atoms.
Ohhhhh!
Solar farms did start out as using the sun to boil water. Basically mirrors redirecting light to a central point to super-heat a pipe flowing with water.
ACKSHUALLY you're not burning atoms in a nuclear reaction. You're creating a chain reaction of neutrons colliding with Uranium isotopes. No combustion.
Wind and hydro still have to spin a turbine. Solar is the one true stand out advancement in electricity production since we started using electricity.
To be fair, the atoms were going to burn anyhow. We just clumped them together to make better use of them.
They can't all be photonic inversion.
I like RTGs way more
Well Rotating a rotor on a generator is the most convenient way to make electricity with parts that last a long amount of time. Also doesn't help that we use AC power while other sources like photovoltaic produce DC power which needs to be converted to be used.
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