A nuclear fusion reactor in China, dubbed the "artificial sun," has broken its own record to bring humanity one step closer to near-limitless clean energy.
I think if we figure out nuclear fusion there will be induced demand for energy, in applications that were previously infeasible: desalination via distillation instead of reverse osmosis, direct capture of CO2 from the atmosphere, large scale water transport, ice and snowmaking, indoor farming, synthesized organic compounds for things like carbon sequestration or fossil fuel replacement or even food, etc.
Geoengineering might not be feasible today, but if energy becomes really cheap we might see something different.
I’d even say that it would make it “easier” to generate elements that are rare on earth for aplication purposes.
The first example already sort of feasible is production (and storage) of Helium.
And if we master (in the far, far future) both fusion and fission, then we can make almost any element “with ease”.
Basically we would be able to do what the alchemist dreamed and be able to “turn stones to gold”.
But nowadays, one of our “new gold” are rare earth like Neodymium for making magnets
And there are other elements that are even rarer and would have massive applications only if they were little bit more abundant than they are now
Now, again, that would be only true in a far, far future if (and a big if) we can truly master both fusion and fission (what I actually want to mean is that my comment is basically an “hallucination” similar to those on r/futurology)
The specifics are a pipe dream but the general principle holds: if energy suddenly becomes more plentiful and cheaper by orders of magnitude, society will find a way to use that new plentiful resource in ways that we can scarcely imagine today. That’s always been true of new inventions, where much of the post-invention innovation comes in the form of finding new applications for a thing that has already been invented.
I think if we figure out nuclear fusion there will be induced demand for energy, in applications that were previously infeasible: desalination via distillation instead of reverse osmosis, direct capture of CO2 from the atmosphere, large scale water transport, ice and snowmaking, indoor farming, synthesized organic compounds for things like carbon sequestration or fossil fuel replacement or even food, etc.
Geoengineering might not be feasible today, but if energy becomes really cheap we might see something different.
I’d even say that it would make it “easier” to generate elements that are rare on earth for aplication purposes.
The first example already sort of feasible is production (and storage) of Helium.
And if we master (in the far, far future) both fusion and fission, then we can make almost any element “with ease”.
Basically we would be able to do what the alchemist dreamed and be able to “turn stones to gold”.
But nowadays, one of our “new gold” are rare earth like Neodymium for making magnets
And there are other elements that are even rarer and would have massive applications only if they were little bit more abundant than they are now
Now, again, that would be only true in a far, far future if (and a big if) we can truly master both fusion and fission (what I actually want to mean is that my comment is basically an “hallucination” similar to those on r/futurology)
This seems like a pipe dream but I don’t disagree that it could open up some new applications
The specifics are a pipe dream but the general principle holds: if energy suddenly becomes more plentiful and cheaper by orders of magnitude, society will find a way to use that new plentiful resource in ways that we can scarcely imagine today. That’s always been true of new inventions, where much of the post-invention innovation comes in the form of finding new applications for a thing that has already been invented.
Indeed