Questions tagged [energy]
For questions about sources of power, generation, storage, how much is needed to perform different tasks, etc.
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Collectible energy resources in sci-fi world [closed]
I am exploring a post-apo sci-fi world TTRPG game where the PCs need to collect some kind of treasure. Unlike fantasy games, gold doesn't seem adequate. I thought collecting energy sources would be ...
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Solar Flare/CME Range Limits
The Setting:
A binary solar system comprised of a KV-class Orange Dwarf, and an M-Class Red Dwarf which orbits roughly 600AU away. The Orange Dwarf has 4 planets orbiting around it, including one ...
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Keeping tech at 1890s levels without fossil fuels [duplicate]
How can I explain the technological stagnation at a level roughly equivalent to the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The world is Earth-like and has the following characteristics:
Absence of ...
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Is it possible to store the gravitational energy between planets somewhere in space? [closed]
Say I have a space station operating between Mars and earth. Can it somehow steal energy from
Mars- Earth
Earth - Sun
Sun - Mars
Combinations of gravitational pulls?
Would it distort he orbits?
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How would perpetual motion technology (and "free" energy) affect poverty?
I'm writing a near-future story in which a form of teleportation has been invented. It's only been around for few decades, and is still very complicated (and expensive) to build, so it's only used for ...
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Potential problems with magic creating energy
Context
When hit by sun rays, the moon creates excess energy, it increases the energy & reflects it back to earth as mana rays to make magic possible (the exact process is not important). Most of ...
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How much smaller would the industrial revolution been if it had relied on wood/biomass? [closed]
Terra: People burned mostly wood for their heating/fuel needs. Then they figured out steam engines. Their fuel needs exploded. They could have kept burning biomass, and they did a little bit, but the ...
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If magic is programming, then what is mana supposed to be?
So it turns out the universe is a computer. Or at-least that is how it can be analogized to our puny mortal minds.
Human souls/consciousness are simultaneously the equivalent of emergent AI, players, ...
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How do I store enormous amounts of mechanical energy?
Imagine a typical steampunk setting. Now, let's make two grand assumptions about it:
Steam engines here are MUCH more efficient than those in our world. Yep, we have to violate laws of physics for ...
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Would a diamond mountain floating in the mantle cause a supervolcano or lava pool in the crust above it?
I was looking for ways to make gigantic mountains, and found Willk's answer to such a quandary, where a giant diamondberg forms in an ice giant and is incorporated into a terrestrial planet's crust, ...
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Frozen Stars - Alternate sources of electricity
As in my previous question, I was talking about survival, when the parent star of a planet, Eridanus, froze due to some unknown cause. So the residents of this planet Taurus, the Villagers, have done ...
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Energy consumption of magnetic levitation train compared with ordinary train
I'm refining my previous question about magnetic levitation trains on Mars. In my story, set on Mars, two settlements are connected by a railway line. Currently, it is an ordinary train of the type ...
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Could a subterranean river or aquifer generate enough continuous momentum to power a waterwheel for the purpose of producing electricity?
The imagined scenario is of a small city built inside of a chasm that draws most of its water from an aquifer or underground river. The place and time in which the scenario takes place is Earth and ...
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How to move a large amount of energy being generated as electricity in a situation where a powerline isn't a usable option?
There is a very very large dam in the middle of a desert; it operates similarly to the Qattara Depression Project, and was constructed both to power the areas south of it, but primarily for political ...
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How can I heat my buildings without fire in a low-fantasy setting?
In my low-fantasy setting there is a civilization of blind people living in a very safe and isolated region of the world. Thinking about how this civilization could have developed throughout the ...
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Weaponizing the return-energy channel of a one-way portal
In my world, portals are magical devices that, when activated by some command, create a connection to a linked portal device. Portals allow objects to pass from the source (the portal device that was ...
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Engineering considerations for a hand-held railgun carbine [closed]
The Design
The R-10 (1-2 decades pre-fall)
The SRDA's Terraforming and Colony-building Prospect is phase 2 of The Plan, started by the Theia, Tanu and the Aurea long-haul ships, which gave us access ...
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How large of a magma chamber do I need to geothermally power a small city?
I have a fictional civilization that lives on a continent (or world) with a perpetually cold, wintry climate. The continent does have a large number of volcanoes of varying sizes and levels of ...
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Can gravitational waves generate matter?
I am thinking about what would happen in a very-very distant future when most of the stars have already died out into black holes or other catastrophic events, leading to severe lack of light in the ...
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How could magic slowly be destroying the world? [closed]
Hypothesis: A world with magic users is (unbeknownst to them) slowly dying because of magic usage
Question: What would be the underlying cause of this slow decay?
Conditions:
The magic in this world ...
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How to store and release vast amounts of electricity for industrial processes?
What Is It For? (skip if desired)
It's been less than a decades since the Ilus system was cut off at its interstellar phase-gate, a few short years after the keidran were created and a disaster forced ...
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How can a magic civilization stop their sun from dying?
Hypothesis: In application of the laws of thermodynamics (conservation of energy) it could be that the sun's energy was (almost) depleted to perform feats of magic (energy was taken from the sun).
...
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If the laws of conservation of energy remain the same, can I change everything else? [closed]
This universe is boooring.
I don't care that today's science is basically magic, and being a programmer is the equivalent of a fantasy ''rune shaman''.
I want actual magic, the type of magic people ...
user100394
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Renewables on rail, balloons, ships etc.: science fiction or fantasy?
I was wondering whether it could be technically and economically sound to put renewable energy plants on rail wagons to deal with the intermittency of the sun and/or wind and/or... or to deal with ...
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How could my solar-powered fairies exist in outer space?
There have been instances of flashes in space that were attributed to sprites and fairies. Now, I know these phenomena can be explained by natural means such as blue/purple lightning. But the concept ...
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Fuel for vehicles in an abruptly abandoned world
The scenario: in September 1985, almost everyone abruptly disappears. Humans, domestic animals, carried/worn possessions, and vehicles currently in motion, vanish, while everything else stays as it ...
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How could a 1 TW power plant be built?
As of 2021, global electrical production was about 7 TW. And the largest single power plant is the Three Gorges Dam at a capacity of 22.5 GW. My hero needs a single power plant with 50 times more ...
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Fire Planet as a light/heat source for my planets
So, basically, I was looking for a alternate light/heat source for my science-fiction novel which I am planning to write. I didn't rely on stars due to some reasons that I omitted from the original ...
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Could a moon made of fissile uranium produce enough heat to replace the sun?
This was my answer to this question:
Retrofitting geocentrism - what replaces the star?
I spent long enough on it and got an interesting enough result that I wanted to share, so that it might be a ...
user86462
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How much electric power would instantly kill a person (volts, amps, etc.)?
Context:
It is a near-future sci-fi and they adopted electrolasers as main weapons, because you wouldn't need to worry about propellant, ammo etc. "Just" battery and fuel.
An electrolaser is ...
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How can I hit a planet with an energy beam from ten lightyears away?
My interstellar empire is powered by a quasar.
Or at least it will be once I finish my scheme.
See that cloud of glowing dust? That's called the quasar's accretion disc. When stuff falls into the ...
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What is the most biological energy-dense fuel for a giant unicellular organism?
Jimmy Hopkins (yes, that's his name) is a extremely weird organism. For one thing he is extremely large, but on the other hand, he is extremely weird, because of one thing- He is an unicellular ...
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What are the most compact batteries to store energy from my quazar power plant?
In my previous question, I dealt with the possibility of harvesting the energy of the accretion disk and jets of a quasar Milky Way, by the use of multiple mirrors and panels that are orbiting around ...
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How much energy would flashtubes/rods need to receive to emit a pulsed laser strong enough to kill a human at 300 yards in less than a second?
Context:
It is a military sci-fi story where they use technologies that are expensive today because they already became common place. For example, laser-induced-graphene supercapacitors, carbon ...
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Could this automaton be powered with low-tech means?
The automaton is a human-sized machine made primarily of wood, clay, cork, wax, and plant cord. It is designed to move around and use tools, and has roughly the same physical abilities as a human. It ...
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Is it possible to use energy from past trauma to be a payment for current spellwork [closed]
I've endured some pretty horrific things in my past. There's a lot of trauma and I don't know if I can say bad luck? It's possible but the circumstances were very unfortunate and definitely unfair. So ...
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Is a shapeshifter's transformation exothermic or endothermic?
I'll start by saying that whilst my scientific knowledge is pretty basic (if ever-increasing) it would be good to hear answers that can give a layman's summation as well as a more scientific ...
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Is there a way to turn plants into energy without burning them?
I'm thinking of an energy source where you could put organic life forms in and get out energy that could power something (edit: something that can be transported in a small space; where you can put ...
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Harvesting wind energy for vehicles
Theoretically, what would the possibilities/drawbacks be of harvesting wind energy created by the momentum of the vehicle to charge that vehicle's batteries?
Imagine that the vehicle had a dual power ...
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Mirrors used for focusing sunlight in outer space - could they be automatically oriented towards the sun using sun sail rudder, like windmill rudder?
To be most effective, a windmill must face into the wind. Some windmills achieve this with a passive yaw system, where the wind automatically adjusts the direction the windmill is facing, often with ...
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Could an alien civilization discover electricity before fire, if their planet lacked significant oxygen but did hold common storms?
Let’s say there was an early alien civilization, not yet advanced. They hail from a planet with little to no oxygen. If this planet had electrical storms relatively frequently, could they harness the ...
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How much energy would it take to keep a floating city aloft?
My fantasy novel features a floating city. I wanted to know how much energy (joules/second) it would take to keep a floating city aloft, but the definition of joules has "distance displaced" ...
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Would radioisotope thermoelectric generators be more effective on Titan than in space?
Since radioisotope thermoelectric generators (RTGs) operate by turning the flow of heat into electricity, and Titan's atmosphere can absorb heat faster through conduction than a vacuum through ...
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The "Exciting" Drilling company dug an underground canal connecting Death Valley to the Pacific. How much electricity can it generate on tidal forces?
Badwater Basin, part of Death Valley, is 282 feet (86 m) below sea level at its lowest point.
The "Exciting" drilling company, based in Nevada (they are exciting and not at all like their b**...
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How much gasoline does there need to be to ignite and cause a fire in a small shed? [closed]
I'm trying to write a story where a gas leak causes an explosion. How much minimum gas would there need to be for a small shed/small room to ignite when a match is lit in there?
The doors and windows ...
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Is there a way to generate energy using a planet's angular momentum?
The most common answer is "tidal forces" "wind" since all of these are by-products of the planet's Coriolis force.
Or there are rnd into generating energy from the earth's magnetic ...
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Hypothetical energy sources for a picotech utility fog civilzation?
Imagine an (ultra) high-tech civilization that has access to, say 1031 bits of unique usable data (Type Z on Sagan's "Information Mastery" scale), and is capable of harnessing and utilizing ...
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What does a post-industrial world look like if there was no oil or gas, only coal?
What might the world look like if easily accessible oil and gas wasn’t available and coal was the only option?
I’m trying to understand was a post-apocalyptic industrial society might look like (I’m ...
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How would an element behave that's a plasma at room temperature?
I'm considering a world where there's an element that has an element that's naturally a plasma. I'm wondering what the broad behavior of such an element would be. Would it be inherently unstable, ...
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Can moon people generate electricity using a gravity dynamo that is turned by the gravity of their host planet?
On Earth, we generate electricity from the Moon's orbit using tidal turbines. Would it be possible for denizens of the Moon to generate electricity using the Earth's gravity, using a windmill-sized ...
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