Its not going to be a battery breakthrough. Sodium batteries already work, but they are still heavy. What is needed is a breakthrough in energy manipulation. Since energy cannot be created or destroyed, we need a simple way to pull it from where it already is.
A simple way? Did you really say a "simple way" ?
The bonds between atoms already store megajules of energy.
And we harvest the bonds between atoms all day long every day in thousands of different ways. You do it right inside your own body, when you light the wood stove, and when you turn the key on your car.. We harvest all the energy we can from breaking those bonds apart and recombining them into other bonds. We call this "Chemical energy".. and at its core, its nothing more than shuffling electrons (charge) around, and its all governed by the electromagnetic force.
Thats why atom bombs work.
No it isn't.. Not even close. Yikes! That's on the same level as spreading life thru the galaxy with our space probes. I don't mean to be rude because you're trying, but chemical bonds and atomic bonds are are two very different fundamental forces. Atom bombs do not work by breaking or combining the bonds between atoms.. That's called chemical energy.. Atom bombs work by breaking the strong nuclear force between the protons INSIDE the atoms.
Whenever you break apart the groups of protons in the center of an atom, or when you combine the protons from two different atoms into a larger group, mass is converted to energy in the form or radiation, and the resulting atom(s) are always missing mass.. the missing mass is what was converted to energy.. IE: E=MC²
Disclaimer: I am intentionally leaving out any discussion related to neutrons.
If we can find a way to just redirect that energy to do work, we wont need batteries.
We already do that.. we call it Nuclear Fission. Batteries are chemical energy..
Water is most likely the best source. God made sure we have a LOT of water. Water is made from Hydrogen and Oxygen, and both burn ( weird that water doesn't burn right? ) when they are apart from each other.
In normal conversations the term "burn" refers to the process of chemical combustion.. which is basically the exchange of electrons and charge between one atom and another. Its just electrons (atomic charge) being moved around...
Combustion is chemical energy where combining two or more elements on the periodic table ( IE: oxygen+hydrogen) result in the release of thermal energy as new molecules are formed.
And the most basic level, the physical process that causes combustion is the same fundamental process that causes steel to rust. The reason we call it combustion is that the process is dialed up to 11 and it happens fast enough that you can feel the heat.. Combustion, rusting, and you running a mile after eating a Snickers bar, are all the same fundamental process.. just electrons moving around causing atoms of different charges to form different molecules. We call this the "electromagnetic force" and it dominates everything you see, feel, or touch.. in fact, it even allows you to see, feel and touch.
When you pick up your coffee cup and you feel your grip putting pressure on the cup, what you are actually feeling is the electromagnetic repulsion between atoms.. and because no two electrons can occupy the same space (Pauli Exclusion Principle), you feel the atoms fighting back and you interpret this as your grip, or the pressure you are exerting on the coffee cup. If there was no electromagnetic repulsion, your atoms would pass right through the atoms of the cup and you wouldn't be able to touch anything. You wouldn't even be able to touch yourself.
The electromagnetic force is why we have chemistry.. IE: chemical combustion, chemical energy, and groups of atoms that make up things like coffee cups and I-phones.
No elements are ever changed under this process. No matter what kind of chemical reaction you have, a hydrogen atom(1) will always be a hydrogen atom(1) and an oxygen atom(8) will always be an oxygen atom(8). They're just no longer singles hanging out in a bar looking to hook up.. They're married! And the honeymoon was HOT Baby!
Those numbers I listed as (1) and (8) ? Wonder what they are? That's how many protons the atom has.. Not how many neutrons, but how many protons.. Hydrogen only has 1 proton. As we move down the periodic table, each element has more protons. It is the number of protons that determine what we call the element..
It would be easy for an alien civilization to communicate element descriptions to us.. all they would have to do is to represent the number of protons with dots we can count, or some other collection of symbols. We would just count the dots to determine which element they were referring to.
Currently, fission just makes shit hot, and a nuke reactor uses that heat to make steam, to turn a turbine.
So we only know how to use the by product of all that energy. Pretty silly.
The byproduct of all that energy? It's not a byproduct, THAT IS THE ENERGY.. That's the energy released when the Strong Nuclear Force is overcome. We've taken an atom and broken it apart (fission = splitting).. the combined mass of the resulting two individual atoms is less than the mass of the original atom that was split. The missing mass is converted to energy in the form of radiation, which we then use to heat water.
The missing mass is actually the "binding energy".. (Energy and mass are the same thing sort of like water and ice)
And it's extremely difficult to do.. Breaking atoms apart requires massive atomic nuclei that are so unstable that they tend to break apart all on their own. This is called "radioactive decay".. We call these atoms "radioactive elements" because they have so many protons they don't want to stay together, the protons tend to spontaneously fly off.. Which then changes the number of protons within the atom and it becomes a different element, minus some energy. Also, when these protons fly off, a whole bunch of other stuff (energy) also flies away with it... The act of nuclear fission is speeding this process up by putting lots of these atoms in close proximity to each other so the stuff that flies off one collides with another, which speeds the process up.
There is no combustion taken place here.. Fission takes a large group of protons (an element) and changes it into two smaller groups of protons (a different element). This releases a bunch of energy.
Fusion may be the answer if they figure out how to do it at room temperature.
There can be no such thing.. I didn't say "there is no such thing", I said "there can be no such thing" that's like asking for fire to be at room temperature... or expecting warm ice.
And what good would it be anyhow? If its cold, then by definition of the very title it's not producing any energy.. When you take two lighter atoms (lighter means fewer protons in the atom) and force them together, energy (mass) is also given off.. The mass of the atoms you combined to form a single atom, is less than the sum of the atoms you started with. In other words, in Fusion, the resulting helium atom weighs less than the sum of the hydrogen atoms used to make the helium.
The missing mass is the energy you capture.. which makes the very concept of "cold fusion" a sort of an oxymoron in itself. Like warm ice or cold fire.
Lots of areas to explore, but we all have our heads stuck up our asses worrying about the climate cause the folks running things need a way to keep us all in check and afraid, so they can rape us for money and control.
If you understood the basics of science, you would understand why man made climate change is a serious problem.. But the problem is that you don't understand even the basic physical principles that govern everything. The result is that you will "believe" what someone tells you even though you don't understand even the basic fundamentals.
People "believe" in man made climate change, or they don't "believe" in man made climate change. Either position is just ignorance at work.
Lots of ignorant people out there don't believe in man made climate change and they don't understand the physical science.
Lots of ignorant people out there do believe in made made climate change, and they don't understand the physical science.
Either position results in "stupid is as stupid does.. "
When you understand the physics and the underlying science, you understand man made climate change. When you don't understand these physics and science, you are forced into an opinion handed to you by someone else. That someone could be Joe Idiot, or a movie star, or someone pandering ideology for profit, or someone just being paid to use their position under the authority fallacy. Regardless of the underlying information source, you are putting your trust into someone else who may (probably) have other interests.. and worse yet, almost universally someone you don't even know. Not very smart or wise if you ask me.
news.climate.columbia.edu
