earthquakes: a usable power source ?

[science_man_88]

Think about it if a 1.0 produces 1 joule in 1 second = 1 watt. With a logarithmic scale a 8.9 over that same time could produce as much as about 79 megawatts.
the problem is the longer it releases the energy over the less power it technically can produce because time is a factor in power.

[Batalov]

Meteorites are another source. Let's start thinking about clever ways to direct them to hit the Earth and collect all the released energy.

[science_man_88]

Originally Posted by Batalov

Meteorites are another source. Let's start thinking about clever ways to direct them to hit the Earth and collect all the released energy.

You don't think the mass of the life on Earth helps? I know you are just trying to make fun of me.

[ixfd64]

Originally Posted by Batalov

Meteorites are another source. Let's start thinking about clever ways to direct them to hit the Earth and collect all the released energy.

Sounds like a great idea. The only things we'll need to worry about are the side effects.

[lavalamp]

Originally Posted by Batalov

Meteorites are another source. Let's start thinking about clever ways to direct them to hit the Earth and collect all the released energy.

If you could make them hit the same place over and over again, you could have a largish lake of lava wherever you like, would certainly save having to do all that pesky digging for geothermal power.

Do you have any suggestions on how to extract energy from Earthquakes sm88? They are somewhat unpredictable and sporadic.

Perhaps it would be easier to mount a linear motor across two continents and let the very slow drift generate enormous amounts of electrical energy, probably need superconducting coils to handle all the current.

[science_man_88]

Originally Posted by lavalamp

If you could make them hit the same place over and over again, you could have a largish lake of lava wherever you like, would certainly save having to do all that pesky digging for geothermal power.

Do you have any suggestions on how to extract energy from Earthquakes sm88? They are somewhat unpredictable and sporadic.

Perhaps it would be easier to mount a linear motor across two continents and let the very slow drift generate enormous amounts of electrical energy, probably need superconducting coils to handle all the current.

force plates? Mythbusters use them.They generate a signal based on the force imparted. Could this not be harnessed ? For the meteorite idea could we not use magnetized spacecraft ? using that we could use geostationary satellites to attract them into the strongest magnetic field. The bad part to both is the attempt to be reusable the force plates might need constant repair.

[Christenson]

I do know *one* way to extract usable power from an earthquake...when the device involved is trying to record the earthquake itself...then building a reasonably high-Q mechanical resonator and extracting the energy in stopping it could operate a small data recorder and GPS receiver during the earthquake. However, unless you can think of a *very* bad spot for earthquakes, this won't come into play very often....once a decade if you are very, very lucky.

The problem is knowing where that earthquake is going to be, and when...there might have been a few days warning, but that's not going to be enough to get in place a large, practical structure to capture the energy.

Now, had we known a decade ago that this particular earthquake near Japan was going to happen, a dam could have been built to capture some of that water that went miles inland....but that is just a pizzle of energy compared to the available energy and also a pizzle compared to what is needed to make much difference.

You would do better to figure out how to capture the energy in a lightning bolt, which can be at least predicted and happens on a semi-regular basis, at least in my neck of the woods. The problem is very similar -- a very large amount of energy is available in a very short time...

[em99010pepe]

Originally Posted by lavalamp

If you could make them hit the same place over and over again, you could have a largish lake of lava wherever you like, would certainly save having to do all that pesky digging for geothermal power.

I think USA is the best place...

[xilman]

Originally Posted by em99010pepe

I think USA is the best place...

Perhaps, but I suspect that there would be too much collateral damage done to places we actually care about. Does the phrase "nuclear winter" mean anything to you?

Note that the "meteorites" would have to be quite large just to get through the atmosphere. Let's be clear: we're really talking about (at least) small asteroids.

A better idea, IMO, would be to use the Moon as an impact site and ship the energy down from there. Microwave beams are the classical transport mechanism.

Anyway, once we've the technology to make good use of the kinetic energy of asteroids to power our technology, we'll almost surely be able to run deuterium / helium-3 fusion reactors. At that point, there is an almost unlimited amount of remarkably clean and high energy-density fuel lying around the solar system. We'd mine it from the atmospheres of Jupiter and/or Saturn.


Paul

[Christenson]

If we are going to go into extra-terrestrial possibilities, the ideal landing spots are, of course, various national capitals such as Washington, DC! There are lots of ways to gather energy from the moon and send it down....quite a bit of energy just getting mass into the earths gravitiational well.... I'm sure someone knows the approximate price of such schemes.

[xilman]

Originally Posted by Christenson

If we are going to go into extra-terrestrial possibilities, the ideal landing spots are, of course, various national capitals such as Washington, DC!

Again, too high a likelihood of unacceptable collateral damage.

There are lots of ways to gather energy from the moon and send it down....quite a bit of energy just getting mass into the earths gravitiational well.

Yes and no. Yes, the energy required to get an asteroid to impact the earth could be quite large. However, the energy required is almost free as long as you are prepared to wait for a while for impact to happen. For instance, attach a solar sail to a moderate sized asteroid and use that to alter its orbital parameters in such a way that either the course correction leads to a direct impact or to extract orbital energy from other bodies in the solar system by means of by now the well-practised gravitational slingshot mechanism.

Anyway, and as I already posted, I believe there are much more cost-effective and environmentally benign ways of delivering useful energy to the Earth than by harvesting the orbital kinetic energy of asteroids.

Here's another one which, I believe, could be implemented for a price of between 1e12 and 1e13 USD. Use von Neumann machines to build photovoltaic cells from local materials around the Moon's equator. Send the energy back to Earth by any of a number of mechanisms. By the time the entire lunar equator is covered from selenological latitudes between 5N and 5S we'll be generating 1e15W. This is approximately 100 times the current global energy consumption.

(The Moon's radius is about 1800 km, so its circumference is somewhat over 1e7 metres. Assuming that the band around the equator covers 10% of the surface, its area will be around 1e13 square metres. At 1 A.U. the solar irradiation is about 1kW per square metre. Assume 10% efficiency (a conservative assumption) for the photovoltaic cells and the complete installation produces 1e15 W.)

Paul

P.S. This could be implemented with current technology, unlike the D/He3 fusion reactor I suggested earlier.