← Back to context

Comment by Calwestjobs

10 months ago

ok so are you saying that it is so much that we need 450 more planets worth of people to be able to use that

or

you're saying that if we can harness that much energy amount/density then we can just make matter on spot and we do not have to travel anywhere anymore, because we can make gold bricks or platinum sieves in particle accelerators just for fun? (this is same argument as why alcubierre drive is nonsense, having capability to manipulate such energy density makes us not want to travel anymore)

We would find new things to do with that energy.

Making matter from energy would still be inefficient though. c^2 is a really big number.

  • No we wont. Because if you can drive car to your weekend house 6 miles away, you wont be taking Boeing 747. If you can manipulate such insane energy density you can do anything already even before you reach that capability.

    Also Dyson sphere is old school idea, new more efficient idea is to make small black hole right next to star and harvest energy from that more concentrated flow. So actually black holes colliding (gravitational waves) can be sign of civilization...

    Previous post with all those calculations says that you can power 4 149 473 current earths with that amount of energy. I write this with assumption that person is correct (im lazy to calculate that by my self, but it roughly has proper orders of magnitude).

    My amazon joke was sarcasm.

    • > if you can drive car to your weekend house 6 miles away, you wont be taking Boeing 747

      No, you will take that elusive flying car because you can afford the energy for it now. And it will be much less efficient than a 747.

      2 replies →