So while pondering infinite energy sources it dawned on me that I wasn't creative enough think of any practical uses...

So while pondering infinite energy sources it dawned on me that I wasn't creative enough think of any practical uses for theoretically infinite sources.
It's easy to say you would drop energy bills to strictly maintenance fees but that's boring.
Operating under the assumption that this is electrical energy what would Veeky Forums do with an infinite energy source?
Of course in practice there is likely no such thing, but it serves as a fun thought experiment.

>(((what could you possibly gain from not having to pay an electric bill)))

Desalination and hydroponics could be practically costless in such a situation, changing geopolitics. Cargo ships would see a cut in their transporting costs, meaning price drops throughout the world, until demand is met.

Cargo ships are also one of the biggest sources of pollutants, so, potentially, that situation would be improved as well.

Hugh Everett's interpretation leads me to interpret infinite energy.

Well the rest of the world would still need to pay for maintenance of the power lines and the paychecks of the people who maintain them.
Imagine you had a safe, scalable, energy source in your backyard. What would you do with it?
I had thought about that too. Transportation would boom once it was fully transferred to this theoretical energy source so getting around the world would become a lot cleaner and easier.
I still can't help but feel like we would only be scratching the surface of possibilities.

Super computers would be a lot cheaper and more prevalent.

Probably humanoid robots would take a giant leap forward.

We finally could sley big oil. Most people would have electric cars and fast powering stations.

Indoor farming would be a lot more exciting.

Basically, the future would get here a hell of a lot more faster.

>electrical energy what would Veeky Forums do with an infinite energy source?

Giant rail gun to destroy my enemies, fling things into space, blow up moon, etc

I like the idea of super computer research making breakthroughs in artificial intelligence leading to an exponential growth in discoveries.
You said it better, the timetable for reaching the singularity would be moved up by a century.
I also played with the idea that philosophy might see a boom as well given that whenever a hell of a lot of problems are solved like this a hell of a lot more show up elsewhere. Of course that might just be the pseud creeping out.

These are some of the small things that make these though experiments worth having. The world needs more railguns.
Small question for the electrical engineers out there; given a high enough current/amplitude/voltage is there an upper limit to how fast a railgun can accelerate an object?

That sounds cool! You should recreate Teslas death ray while you are at it

Terminal velocity maybe? Eventually the friction would build up no?

Theoretically speaking, infinite power sources could lead to time travel. By using that energy to make a comic string approach light speed, and passing through it's angular defecit, you could regress in time. Using infinite power sources would make it easy to:

- Find cosmic strings;
- Accelerate them;
- Build a spaceship able to get to them.

Anyway, that's one of the more popular theories, but there are other cool but unrealistic ones.

just having infinite energy isn't enough to make a rail gun, if you just take a 'normal' rail gun and pump absurd amounts of energy in to it it'll just short out and/or melt

So material sciences would have to progress first. I see. Thanks for the clarification.

Time travel had popped into my head but I wasn't sure by what avenue one could achieve it given only energy and lacking fantasy materials like time crystals.

Not if you coat it in Teflon.

Well, that's one way. You could also use kerr black holes too.

Kerr black holes you say?

You otaku bastard, ruining physics!


El Psy Congroo...

Even if most of the actual science in it was baseless, it was a hell of an entertaining show.
It does have me thinking about the actual process of using a Kerr black hole to travel through time. Bullshit lifter aside.
El Psy Congroo

Huh? Steins;gate is obviously fiction, but it's one of the most scientifically accurate shows out there... of course, some of the things are made up to make it more entertaining (how do you even survive inside a blackhole??), but it's actually very well based on current scientific ideas - especially the VN

Huh? Steins;gate is obviously fiction, but it's one of the most scientifically accurate shows out there... of course, some of the things are made up to make it more entertaining (how do you even survive inside a blackhole?? Or build a time machine with a microwave and cellphone...), but it's actually very well based on current scientific ideas - especially the VN.

We could vaporize rocks or garbage into a plasma, and pass said plasma through a mass spectrometer to separate it by element.

We could get all the materials we ever need this way

I suppose most of my distaste for the science is in how much hand waving it does. Even if the concepts are theoretically sound it's actual implementation leaves something to be desired. One of the biggest issues is the afformentioned 'lifter' CRT TV and it's relation to the Kerr black hole producing microwave.
That said, I do believe we've gotten a bit off topic.

This idea... tickles me.

Perhaps centrifuge the plasma to separate by atomic weight?

I desire my question to be expanded upon.

It would need to be highly regulated to ensure that it's only used for certain purposes, like powering a home.

The limitations on something like a transcontiental hyperloop being built would be broken. Cargo ships would be a thing of the past, as a hyperloop with unlimited energy could reach speeds far faster than a cargo plane.

I don't think electricity prices are the limiting factor for building such a structure rather it's the enormous capital cost, combined with hyperloops being kinda bullshit.

I don't think it would be cost effective. Again CAPEX >>> electricity. Even if you had free power in unlimited amounts vaporising rock is surely unnecessarily more difficult than mining and refining.

Unless this power source is tiny, you'd still have to synthesise methane or other hydrocarbons, lithium wouldn't possibly cut it here.

I find this thread interesting but I'd like to add a more practical angle. Let's say we don't have unlimited free energy, just much cheaper. On the order of 1ยข/MWh, let's say, that's three orders of magnitude cheaper than now. What happens? I think desalination is a huge one, because it's so energy intensive. How about hydroponics though? Could you concentrate and automate farming vertically so that its at least an order of magnitude cheaper than traditional farming?

Biggest problem that I can see is the fact the electricity price reduction wouldn't get that much to the end user. Huge investments would have to be made in infrastructure to compensate for the usage increase. Other is that it would paradoxically kill electric cars. With energy prices that cheap you can synthesise hydrocarbons in enormous quantities from literally water and air and sell them vastly cheaper than now, which would help traditional cars (cheaper to make than Tesla, no cost of switching).

What other things are very energy intensive?

Are time crystals real or not? I cannot tell pls help

I would laugh in the face of entropy with infinite energy
Both metaphorically, and physically.

Yes, they are a theoretically proposed structure.

>Basically, the future would get here a hell of a lot more faster.

How horrible. I already have trouble keeping up with the quick demands of modern society. Life is so rushed now a days. I never have any time to relax.

I need to take a nice slow walk to in park to enjoy nature a bit and slowly think my life through.

As much as I hate UBI fags, we'd probably transition to some sort of post scarcity society with literally free energy. You'd have plenty of time to do nothing and feel like a waste of space and resources.

>Operating under the assumption that this is electrical energy what would Veeky Forums do with an infinite energy source?
kill the president

You could move the earth from its orbit

The Birkland currents are an infinite energy source, they also shorted out NASAs tether project because they had a trillion times more power than NASA had anticipated. Tesla was trying to harness this power source

Now that's an interesting prospect. Something along the lines of Planetary Annihilation?

Hmm maybe not.
Why not go travel through the universe?

build a bridge from Alaska to Russia

I have an idea for a free-energy machine. I'm not gonna say what it is tho so don't ask.

I actually told the idea to a non-scientist, hoping they would choose to become a scientist and pursue it, but no avail.

I'd rather be an architect than develop my mechanism tho, even if that means it's never made.

because the person is absolutely brill. they have chosen the shittest career hopefully ironically

depending on how it's set up, we could get right of fossil fuels in the span of a year or so, because even with the less-than-stellar electrical power storage we have today, it wouldn't matter, you just go to an outlet and top off your battery five or six times a day

Don't worry, I already know it doesn't work.