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Unlimited geothermal energy might just be one step closer! [11:27]

13 miles down and 1000 degrees! Hot enough for you?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g95Moz2Ub_0

There's enough energy just in the very thin crust of our planet to run human society for hundreds of thousands of years. Getting to it and bringing it to the...

There's enough energy just in the very thin crust of our planet to run human society for hundreds of thousands of years. Getting to it and bringing it to the surface is the challenge. Now a new team of engineers, scientists and entrepreneurs, who were clearly Star Wars fans as children, has developed an immensely powerful 'ray gun' that can vaporise rocks down to twenty kilometres.

2 comments

reksas

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Is there a risk of cooling the core down if that thermal energy could be properly utilized? If we assume we could create as big facilitys as laws of physics and materials we have access to allow, is it possible to damage the planet in this way? Because humanity will exploit and overuse any resource we get our grubby hands on. Though this would be great to have soon so climate change might lessen or stop.

huginn

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Tldr: no

Theoretically yes but in practice the heat reservoir of the earth is so vast that we're never going to deplete it. It's not just the current thermal energy either: the majority of the heat in the Earth is from radioactive decay. Geothermal just functions as a nuclear powerplant except the fuel is 99% of the Earth's mass.