this post was submitted on 11 Sep 2025
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Scenario: Aliens gift humanity some mega power plant that runs off a black hole or some shit. Maybe it's a quantum time battery or perpetual motion machine, whatever.

If we plopped it somewhere on Earth, could humanity build infrastructure across the globe to provide everyone with near unlimited clean electricity?

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[–] insurgentrat@hexbear.net 4 points 1 week ago

Only to spread out the energy for use. Hydraulic and steam power has been routed through cities in the past which is a more complex problem.

I suspect you'd be quite surprised at how much energy you can push through a pipe carrying steam. It's the fundamental technology behind most powerplants. Steam in a pipe can easily handle Gigawatts in nuclear powerplants.

Getting energy out of anything concentrated is hard, but steam is cheap and holds a lot of energy.