Samuel
Has any single technology evolved as much as the steam engine? From the aeolipile to the nuclear reactor, that is a legendary glowup
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Jake
The beauty of it is that all the real innovation has basically been around how we make the steam vs the steam-turning-turbine part. Nuclear power - hot rock make steam, steam turn turbine, turbine make electricity ☢️
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Nick
It is amazing that after all this time the main way we have to generate electricity is using water/steam to turn a magnet in a coil. Where’s the ZPM we were promised?!
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Samuel
@samuel.fm
In 1000 years we’ll use a multi-dimensional antimatter reactor to boil water to spin a magnet in a coil
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Orual
It's one of the most efficient ways to make heat energy do useful work, and it scales up like nothing else. RTGs use the thermoelectric effect, but those are limited in application and not real moment-to-moment efficient, just incredibly long-lasting due to how radioactive decay works.
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Orual
Most forms of energy production produce a lot of the energy as heat. And it's very easy to convert other forms of energy to heat. We can convert heat into movement pretty efficiently and convert movement into electricity very efficiently. Partially just due to physics. Hence steam turbine generator.
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Nafnlaus 🇮🇸🇪🇺🇺🇦
Yep. Lower-temperature cycles tend to be efficient; we're for the most part stuck with Rankine cycle, Brayton cycle, and combined. If you have plasma you can do MHD generation, but we rarely have plasma to work with. You can get good efficiencies with fuel cells, but higher capital costs.
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