this post was submitted on 11 Feb 2025
348 points (99.4% liked)

Science Memes

12097 readers
1808 users here now

Welcome to c/science_memes @ Mander.xyz!

A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.

Rules

  1. Don't throw mud. Behave like an intellectual and remember the human.
  2. Keep it rooted (on topic).
  3. No spam.
  4. Infographics welcome, get schooled.

This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.

Research Committee

Other Mander Communities

Science and Research

Biology and Life Sciences

Physical Sciences

Humanities and Social Sciences

Practical and Applied Sciences

Memes

Miscellaneous

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
348
At this rate, why not. (mander.xyz)
submitted 2 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
90 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Well, I'm sure controlled slow-paced mining is more energy efficient and will emit less carbon to create...

But I'm not stopping that guy. Go on. I'll just watch from a safe distance.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Going of the value in the paper and wikipedia it would take the energy used by all of humanity in two months.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

You either spend a truckload of resources during decades to make a bomb that explodes releasing the same energy humanity spends in two months, or you spend a truckload of resources doing the end task at a slower pace for decades.

The later is guaranteed to require a smaller truckload.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Why is the second guaranteed to be smaller?
We know how nuclear bombs work. The majority of the energy comes from nuclear fusion, a highly exothermic process, that can (in the foreseeable future) only be used in bombs.
If we don't need to drop the bomb, but rather assemble it in place, it can just use deuterium as a fusion fuel. Deuterium can be distilled from normal water for much less energy that it generates in fusion.

Edit: mixed up fusion and fission in the first statement

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

The majority of the energy comes from nuclear fission

Yes, from an extremely inefficient fission reaction that can be improved by an order of magnitude by doing it slowly in a reactor.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Mixed up fission and fusion there, they sound so similar in English.
The comment talks about fusion.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Most of the energy does not come from fusion.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago

It does in modern designs, the first time it happened was in 1952.

To quote Wikipedia:

The first thermonuclear weapon detonation, where the vast majority of the yield comes from fusion, was the 1952 Ivy Mike test of a liquid deuterium-fusing device.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_fusion