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Do we get energy from the earth's core and magma?
by wgoconnel
+1/-5 Reply

Why don't people just drill close to the magma? Plenty of energy there. Anyone? Probably renewable, though if it truly were, there would be no biosphere over it.

Also, energy from salt water. The sun could renew electron energy oxidized from salt from the ocean so that all anyone would really have to do, is just stick some metal on the ocean and there you have it.

Re: Do we get energy from the earth's core and magma?
by OneEyedJasper

You're done.

You're old news.

You're uncovered and exposed.

You don't need help.

You need a coloring book and a time out.

Like potato clocks.
by DragonTat2

I thought you were leaving the country.

I did that, btw.

Read Slate in Thailand, Korea, China, and Japan. Didn't try in Macao or Cambodia, but I bet I could have read it there, too.

You can't escape it.

What a world, what a world.

And, please. nest your posts. Thanks.

You would have to drill about 60 miles
by justoffal

to get at molten materials I believe. Not possible yet but it may be in the future. Also the crust is many layered and moves quite a bit so that a drill bit that deep would probably be severed and the hole constantly refilled.

But you certainly have hit on a great idea and one that I have oaten thought about. The enormous amount of heat contained in under the surface is partially due to the gravitational pull of the huge mass of our planet which gains weight every year from space debris so yes it is renewable.

Looks like tokomak will be the new hot item though in the next 50 years or so.

Re: Do we get energy from the earth's core and magma?
by bright_virago

[I already regret writing this]

No, really it's not him.

Lurk a while, it helps.

Plus, I like the stick some metal on the ocean thing. That's innovative, that is.

It is also plausible
by justoffal
we have been kept from many innovations that would work well.. Big oil despises competition...but sooner or later.
60 miles?
by ColonelMcPhee

My grandson (little 2Lt McPhee) has a project going out in the back yard on post, trying to dig a hole to China. He plans on sneaking out at night, once he tunnels through to over there. He plans to covertly kidnap Panda Bears that he will then rent out to zoos in Cleveland, Birmingham, St Louis and so forth.

Now I must break the news to him that he has farther than he thought left to dig. Sounds like he will wear out an entrenching tool or two before he makes it.

Maybe I'll get Nanny McPhee to tell him. She has a way with little soldiers.

Yeah...actually that's not as deep
by justoffal

as it sounds and I am sure that in the volcanic regions we could probably find magma just a few miles down though I am not sure how safe it would be to disturb it...come to think of it we could possible encourage the growth of a volcano by piercing the crust. It comes up something like oil does only from deeper and with a lot more power.

We do seem to be ignoring one of the most dynamic energy sources available to us though.

Re: Yeah...actually that's not as deep
by Th Paine

I suppose the geothermal energy that is one of the principle energy sources in Iceland would be an example of how it can work.

Simply drilling into the core would seem like a good way to create a man-made volcano though!

Re: 1I'djazzper. On being "exposed" and glass houses
by wgoconnel

Yes, I've been exposed for creatively arranging ideas everyone else has taken for granted. Not so bad, as far as I'm concerned.

Newton's laws are easy enough to communicate to a high-school freshman, but I'm afraid the various meanings of those laws are not conveyed very well, as my geometry text disproves three of Newton's laws, plus alters his gravitational law. The implications of these laws were meant to be pondered much more deeply than people do today.

As far as glass houses are concerned, I'm fairly sure that people who inhabit them throw more stones than usual considering that glass houses are not humane dwellings, and are specifically built for breaking by the the throwing of stones..

Glass houses don't shelter from light, and therefore the dangerous elements of the day, and are cruel instruments of manipulation and crucifixion, which are figments of past times but have outlasted their reasonable uses and position via the reasonableness and progress of society. Show me a tribal, or primitive culture, and I'll show you a glass house. Show me unreasonableness, or "reasonableness" not adapted to present circumstances and I'll show you a glass house

So should people in glass houses throw stones? Do they care if, they, or anyone, shatters their glass houses? Do they without sin throw the first stone, or are they people used to throwing stones and having them bounce off glass walls for so long that by the time they break the walls of their glass houses they have no idea the difference between a person and a type of glass wall.? Is murder perpetrated by someone seeking to shatter his own glasshouse as much as that of another which might have contours and thicknesses of walls differing from the glass walls of the first, but yet are still glass walls??

Or take it another way. A good order of life, is that those who build glass houses, or can recognize the glass walls surrounding others, could wait to catalyze reactions between people, who are living in glass houses, and this is the sort of manipulation most feared by those tenants of glass houses. Those who remind others of the glass walls around them and tempt the inhabitants to anger, and to break their glass walls, throw gas on the fire of this fear of manipulation. Most people coming off the cross would kill first those they thought spit on them, much like the breaker of a glass house would want to throw rocks at the perceived builders of their glass houses.

Fear of manipulation is key here, because builders of glasshouses hope to spit on their unlucky tenants without the knowledge of the partially crucified, and then, later on, direct that anger toward their own ends. Hence stones are thrown, the glass house broken, the unlucky inhabitant breaks free, and more stones are thrown at what the initial glass house breaker blames for his initial experience via a glass house, as well as those who taunted him before he could break the walls.

Scapegoats become apparent. This is why I lean more towards, not a faith in Christianity as it is, but what it was meant, historically, the time of its creation, I think. Newton, now that was quite the builder of glasshouses, unfortunately. But the mystery of the Trinity, perpetuated by Catholicism, is the much thicker glass house Newton broke free from, which allowed him to set up a thinner walled glass house for people afterwards to break with smaller rocks - allowing, ideally, less manipulation of people and the more reasonableness of society.

The reason why children have no privacy should be because parents live with the children inside a house, but it can never be a glass one, or else why need a parent live with a children if they can be seen from afar. Parents living in a glasshouse cannot govern their children because the children can too easily see that their parents are not free. Society breaks down. Yes, the parents cannot be parents if they live in glasshouses.

And so, after a long exploration of this metaphor which every small child has heard of and yet doesn't know at all the implications of, nor bothered to explore the implications thereof, I draw this post to a close, and consider OneEyedJasper someone who already knows these things but is taunting me while I abode somewhere he considers glassy.

I can only presume that One Eyed Jasper is, or is the instrument of, someone who sees me as living in a glass house, and fit for the sort of taunting which leads to manipulation of some sort. And to that, I say, he's exposed himself for what he is, or is an instrument of, and perhaps, sadly, will go live a life somewhere where people think this sort of manipulation is really possible and doesn't flow against people's natural ability to reason and adapt behavior to their actual surroundings, which includes the small minded One-Eyed-Jaspers of this world dotting the scenery and the Newtons and the Pope and Slate and whoever is surreptitiously, and without my permission, adding their insults to their own unintentional and unwitting injury.

Re: Yeah...actually that's not as deep
by wgoconnel
I don't htink it would have to go all the way to the magma, just until it gets hot enough.
Ya know, that sounds downright plausible
by OneEyedJasper

And in this time of energy crisis, YOU, O'Connell, could be the savior the world is looking for!

I say go for it! Drill right down to where it's hot enough but not magma hot and let good ol' Muther Nachure do her thing!

Of course, since the surrounding crust must be hot enough to boil water and make steam that would preclude any long term human presence (ya know for maintenance and stuff) so the whole thing must be run by highly reliable robots accessible only very infrequently due to the ambient heat.

And since it's electricity we're producing here and since the current is flowing at least a couple of miles to get to the surface of the earth we need to step up the voltage to preclude any "I squared R" losses so in addition to building a power plant a few miles under the surface we'd need to build a step up station right next to it (lots of excavation so far).

Also, since we'd want to drill as little as possible for obvious cost and safety issues we'd want to drill where the heat is closer to the surface say like perhaps the San Andreas fault line. The heat produced by continental plates sliding past each other is probably a lot more readily available than say the heat from magma under Colorado where the granite rich crust is miles thicker.

Of course, that means our power plant built miles below the surface in an immense underground cavern, the likes of which have never been seen except in a James Bond movie, consistently heated to over 212 degrees, and sitting on an active fault line would require extraordinary (but really cool) trusses and shock dampening measures perhaps orders of magnitude more powerful than those in NORAD's Cheyenne Mountain nuke bunker.

Oh yeah. You also have to come up with a way that allows the steam to condense back into water and recirculate. That means more drilling up to higher levels in the crust since you're surrounded by heat so far down.

All for one lousy power plant.

But I'm sure you can do it and turn a profit 'cuz you're smart in a "wacky" kinda way. So get cracking!

whoa! Trippin' dude.
by OneEyedJasper

It's like you know, one little atom in my fingernail might be like an entire solar system.

And if one atom can be a whole solar system then. . . then our own solar system. . .

. . .might be just one atom in this really immense being

who lives in a really big glass house.

Whoa!

I'll bet Newton never came up with that!

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