717
power generator
(sh.itjust.works)
Can't wait for fusion and magnetic hydrogen.
What's the original comic?
I actually don't know why people get so hung up on this. When you are making energy it's easiest to make heat, and boiling water through a turbine is a really efficient way to turn heat into motion and we're really good at doing it and turning motion into electricity. The fact that multiple ways of making heat exist is not surprising, the fact that different methods of making heat use the same, most efficient, well understood method for turning heat into electricity is even less surprising.
If we develop a more efficient way to turn heat into electricity it won't be "a new way to make energy" it will be "a new more efficient heat engine"
Because it feels archaic and inefficient, maybe?
We also have developed solar panels, wind turbines, hydro-electric dams as well as tidal/wave energy devices in the intervening years - so adding another method to boil water just feels “outdated”.
I’m not trying to cast judgement myself, just trying to explain that it feels like it’s just “vibes based”.
I had an idea for a dumb Star Trek meme, based on the episode where they explain how Romulan warp drives work, but extrapolating that to "it boils water and spins a turbine". Maybe one of the Star Trek memers can take this and run with it?
Nuclear power is just steampunk with magic rocks.
Spicy rocks
Too spicy for Ukraine, circa 1986.
3.6M Scoville. Not great, not terrible
So spicy they make everything around them spicy.
The idea .....
Send water on a 150 million kilometer pipeline to the sun to super heat it ... then pipe the steam back to power a turbine
What if the pipeline already existed... But it was made of light
Shut up science
Baby Dyson Sphere go brrr
Dyson Straw.
dyson tube
There could be a whole industry of Dyson Dudes that run back and forth with the tubes
I don't know why you made me laugh so much, thanks for that post.
I think it's because it turns the concept into something so low tech and banal
right? like a potato gun for space
You just described every rocket ever made by man.
The pipe can double as a space elevator
Wouldn't even need to run it out that far and we don't have the material science to handle temperatures near the sun.
"I have an idea for a comic!"
"Is it you getting angry and sulking on the couch?"
I'm an EE by schooling and I've worked in both gas turbine and wind power. Photovoltaics blow my fucking mind. Everything else is just spinning magnets to extract power. PVs are insanely cool
Personally, I like the mirror plants that use the suns energy to superheat salt.
And then use that to boil water. /s
For real, what China is doing with PVs is pretty fucking cool.
Your name makes me think you're about to lather your own naked body in vasoline, and hide inside the couch.
I'm known to lather a bit, as a treat.
Take a look at reverse electro-dialysis.
It's pushing thermal energy into electricity directly by the force of entropy.
Yeah, it's a super rad tech! A bit pricey but a neat renewable that almost generates opposite to solar in a way, in that if it's raining you're getting some energy in the form of fresh water
Can you ELI10 an intuitive explanation on why the salinity gradient provides energy? It doesn't make intuitive sense to me and never has. Like why is fresh water mixing with salt water energy positive?
why the salinity gradient provides energy?
It doesn't. It's the thermal energy that is converted to electricity.
The salinity gradient provides an entropy dump. The dialysis machine is built in a way that the only possible way for that entropy to increase is by generating some electricity.
Where wind
Step 1: boil the ocean
Isn’t that was unchecked capitalism is already doing?
Boiling water, obviously!
No, wind is spinning magnets. Everything except photovoltaics and fuel cells is spinning magnets. (Everything with boiling water is also spinning magnets)
There's peltier devices, too, which use heat traveling via different metals and maybe some sort of sorcery to generate a voltage.
Also teslacoils use a different mechanism (friction I believe), though that's a static voltage.
In theory, you could translate a magnet through a coil instead of just rotating it to produce a current. Lol spinning a ring magnet through a rounded coil could be a different way of using spinning magnets (assuming it isn't already done).
And wise-ass got outwiseassed. Chapeau
PS: you forgot to mention piezoelectricity
You could always spin some wire and let the magnets stay still if you wanna be different.
Well… if a wire moves in a magnetic field, a current is induced. If a current runs through a wire, it generates an electromagnetic field.
So in this case: spinning wire = spinning magnet
We're kinda just using magnets to push around other magnets remotely.
And then there's other stuff attached to those magnets.
Also primary battery cells.
It's also due to water being boiled. Just in a different, many steps removed manner.
The new supercritical CO2 generators are pretty cool. Pretty much the same thing but no water!
Those systems are interesting, but also nightmares to build and maintain.
Supercritical co2 is a powerful solvent and can corrode most metals.this problem is worse when you increase the temperature.
Material scientists are working on it, but so far, the few test systems that have been built can't quite live up to the hype.
Well when you invent a new way to convert rotational energy into multi-phase AC please let us all know
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Boil water and spin magnets
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this post was submitted on 21 May 2026
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