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When Aliens Offer You Free Unlimited Energy
(lemmy.world)
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this post was submitted on 17 Aug 2025
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if we were given easy unlimited energy, it would at some point be used as a weapon and likely blow up entire solar system
The very first thing anyone would do is try to horde it, control it, and keep others from having access to it without paying for it, which would increase the likelihood of it being used as a weapon.
I grew up in the Cold War. None of this is new.
only after extracting profits from everyone on the planet - it's free for whoever they give it to, not for the rest of the species. knowing us, we'd probably bury it and keep buring coal.
Unlimited energy doesn't mean infinite amounts to harness at once, just that it produces more than you put in
The fantastic gift of a perpetual 1 W energy source ๐
Yeah and we could build 10s of thousands of them
I thought part of the premise is that this technology is so far beyond our comprehension that we couldn't even begin to contemplate replicating it.
Imagine gifting a modern jet aircraft to the Roman Empire, a nuclear reactor to the Egyptian empire, or a modern computer to a caveman: How much do you think that would speed up the development of said technology? My guess is: Not a lot, if at all. The tech is so far beyond what they had in the era, and there are so many intertwined developments in science and engineering needed to replicate it, that it might as well be magic to them.
Even for the Romans to replicate a jet, they would first need to make around 2000 years of progress is fuel refining and metallurgy. Not to mention that they would need to understand fluid dynamics and thermodynamics that weren't developed until the 1800's. This again relies on mathematics that weren't developed until the 1600's-1700's.
Now imagine this "perpetual 1 W source" relies on stuff we won't develop for the next 20 000 years. We wouldn't even know where to start if we were to replicate it.