In a message dated 03/05/2000 9:04:52 PM Eastern Standard Time,
spike66@ibm.net writes:
> In principle, if it takes energy from the atmosphere,
> "even subzero" it needs a still colder thermal energy reservoir. If not,
> its
> bogus, simple as that.
>
> As an entertaining aside: when I tell fellow engineers about the
> "extropy institute" I often must immediately explain that this is
> not about making energy by violating the third law. {8^D spike
Yes indeed, however there is a basic "trigger effect" that can sometimes
cause
humans to be rather fortunate in energy development. Examples are the chain
reactions seen in nuclear reactions; but also basic thermal reactions of
wood, coal, oil, and natural gas. It takes a lot of ergs to produce oil from
an oil filed, but getting the gushers out to the retorts is what makes the
business hum. More significant is extracting energy from more benign
sources, wind, methane, hydrogen,biomass and if we can even get it working
efficiently, fusion.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Jul 27 2000 - 14:04:35 MDT