• Question: do you think we'll ever have a power source that generates more power than it consumes?

    Asked by anon-165767 to Stephanie on 16 Mar 2018.
    • Photo: Stephanie Mann

      Stephanie Mann answered on 16 Mar 2018:


      Unfortunately not. To make more energy than you consume you break the law of physics that says that ever action has an equal and opposite reaction. This means that if you push something you can put more energy into it than you gave. Some clever things might take multiple types of energy to get more than normal… for example we might get a renewable energy generator that also recycles waste heat into electricity to get even more out than we would before.
      The good thing about renewables is that they get energy from things that won’t run out… like sunlight and wind. So even if we absorb a lot of it at once the sun will keep shining and producing electricity for us!

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