We need to double our current generating power if we wall want electric vehicles, and double also if we want AI agents to serve our whims in 2030. AI may prove self-limiting then because we just can't generate the power required to feed the beast, or so says Sabine Hossenfelder.

Nuclear power has a political problem, the fear of meltdown leading to a large release of radiation. One way that companies have been seeking to move forward in this sphere is to develop reactors that never reach criticality. Instead of using a chain reaction, they use a fuel that isn't dense enough to sustain a chain reaction. To release energy, they bombard a fuel stack with neutrons that they create using a conventional neutron source, such as a proton accelerator that launches high energy protons into heavy nuclei. That shatters the nuclei and release a pulse of neutrons in the process. These neutrons can then be used to create excess (more than the energy required to create the neutrons) energy. They can't produce much energy compared to standard fission reactors--only tens of megawatts. But they might be sufficient to power data centers and other stand alone power sinks. In this video, Sabine Hossenfelder summarizes the current state of the art. Enjoy

In a recent YouTube video, Sabien Hosenfelder reported on a new paper that claims that the fact that we haven't captured signals from extraterrestrial civilizations provides a constraint on the time that high technology civilizations tend to survive before going silent. (Spoiler alert--It's 5000 years.) Personally, while I agree the paper is worthy of publication think this argument is irrelevant. I think a far more likely reason why we haven't seen an alien radio transmission is that eavesdropping on random radio chatter in star systems that is many light years away isn't easy. If an alien civilization wants to be seen by its distant neighbors it would have to create a beacon that would broadcast signals that were designed to attract attention and do so over a wide solid angle, and they would have to commit to continuing that research effort for about 100,000 years to have a high likelihood of success. What intelligent species would commit resources to continue such a program for many thousands of years? When talking about alien civilizations it not just about physics. It's also about the social factors that might be driving them. I think that element is sorely lacking in these discussions. I hope you'll check you my favorite contrarian on YouTube and let me know what you think about all this. Enjoy

Here's a wonderful little blend of physics and simple engineering to build what may be the simplest heat engine possible. It's called a Fluidyne engine. The concept was handled pretty thoroughly in the April 1985 edition of The Amateur Scientist. You can follow the link here to read the original article. The Amateur Scientist--Fluidyne Engine The Fluidyne engine is a simple type of Sterling engine. It's easy to build and could be one of the simplest home-brew ways of converting solar energy to electricity. I found a few videos describing how to build one on a bench top. For some reason most of the videos on YouTube did a terrible job. But this one provides, I think, a good and practical introduction. This video doesn't show how to construct a solar power generator, but it describes how it could be done. The content creator suggests floating a cork on the top of the water column with a magnet on top of the cork and then driving the magnet through a coil. Induction in the coil should tend to pull the cork off the top of the water column during the downstroke, but this would be a fun idea for mad scientists to play around with. Anyway, enjoy!

https://n33.a70.myftpupload.com/TheAmSci-Library/content/amsci01/1997/04/1997-04-fs.html On the rejuvenating power of birding... Enjoy