• agentTeiko@piefed.social
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      1 day ago

      Its even more metal they heat salt that heats water to spin the turbine. This keeps the power generation well after sun down.

    • AzuranAurora@piefed.ca
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      17 hours ago

      That’s what they want you to think. I bet it also powers a secret orbital space laser. I should know, a man with a theoretical degree in physics told me.

    • Gladaed@feddit.org
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      21 hours ago

      That technology is a relic of the past. Solar panels are cheap and efficient now. Just use solar panels.

      • Fleur_@aussie.zone
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        1 day ago

        If you think about it coal fired power plants are also solar powered 🤔

        • nexguy@lemmy.world
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          1 day ago

          True, just that an intermediate step(of many steps) is to continually destroy the atmosphere.

          • Aneb@lemmy.world
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            1 day ago

            It’s not like we need it to breath anyways. We’ll just pay corporations for oxygen masks and “Atmo-tanks” to breath. We have commodify everything because Capitalism requires it.

        • psud@aussie.zone
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          24 hours ago

          Only that sun fell on plants millions of years ago. We really don’t want that million year old carbon dioxide in the atmosphere alongside the recent stuff

          • Fleur_@aussie.zone
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            22 hours ago

            Very true, the conclusion I’m drawing is that solar power is actively harming the environment and causing climate change. No new solar!

          • simcup@discuss.tchncs.de
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            22 hours ago

            AFAIR you can’t get new coal/oil because in the meantime there are fungi in the ground that would process the dead plants/alge/whatever was pressed to make the hydrocarbons. but i can’t find the source of that info, so grain of salt

            • Riverside@reddthat.com
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              21 hours ago

              Most coal comes from the carbonipherous period, a period in which plants evolved wood but microbes funghi (shutout to Lyrl’s below comment) still hadn’t evolved wood-eating.

              You can get new coal in marshes because I think the process to eat wood requires oxygen, and flooded areas don’t allow for wood to decompose totally. That’s why they can pull out wooden ships from 500 years ago from the bottom of the ocean in relatively good condition!

              • Lyrl@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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                21 hours ago

                That it took 400 million years for one fungus to evolve wood eating is wild to me. And no other microbe has ever evolved that ability: my understanding is all wood decay fungal species today evolved from one shared ancester.

                  • Lyrl@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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                    20 hours ago

                    I wasn’t intending my comment as a correction - microbe is a more general term than bacteria, and most fungi are indeed microbes - but just saw an opportunity to add on what I think is a cool fact. Thanks for bringing up the carboniferous period!

            • untorquer@lemmy.world
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              22 hours ago

              Stupid science and its “biology” ane “evolutionary timelines” always trying to ruin my fun…

              Are you referring to lignen developing before there was a bilogical process to break it down?

        • mrgoosmoos@lemmy.ca
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          1 day ago

          do you not know how those work?

          the sun shines on the side angled upwards and heats it up. everybody knows hot air rises, so this raises the blade, creating the spinning motion.

          it’s basic, really. third grade stuff.

    • T156@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      Although they’re falling out of use these days, both because they’re not very environmentally friendly on account of being instant bird death-rays, and also because regular solar panels are cheap enough that it’s not worth it to make a big thermosolar plant.

      • untorquer@lemmy.world
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        1 day ago

        Habitat destruction, air pollution, and pesticides are unfathomably worse for birds.

        • A_Chilean_Cyborg@feddit.cl
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          12 hours ago

          And I’m not sure how much alive things are in the Atacama (except when there is a blooming desert fenomenon.

      • A_Chilean_Cyborg@feddit.cl
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        1 day ago

        Idk, my country just inaugurated a gigantic one of these.

        Also, fotovoltaic pannels decay with time and have to be replaced, 15 years I think? Their manufacturing isn’t also the greenest thing on earth.

        You build one of these, and you can run it for a long long time.

        • Tja@programming.dev
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          20 hours ago

          Solar panels are still cheaper and easier. Most spaceships and probes rely on them.

        • PrettyFlyForAFatGuy@feddit.uk
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          22 hours ago

          Not a lot of atmosphere on the moon.

          Transmitting heat across distances in effectively a vacuum doesn’t work too well.

          Just look a the size of the radiators the ISS has to have, and they’re not even sending heat anywhere in particular, that’s just getting it off station

          • A_Chilean_Cyborg@feddit.cl
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            12 hours ago

            Or in the Atacama, the Desertiest desert on earth!

            Where the gigantic Cerro Dominador Termosolar Power Plant opened a couple years ago.

          • Doxin@pawb.social
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            21 hours ago

            You’re getting thermal radiation and convection confused. The ISS has giant radiators because it’s a right pain in the ass to turn heat into thermal radiation, and it cannot rely on convection to cool things like you can here on earth. Turning thermal radiation into heat on the other hand is pretty trivial. Just don’t reflect it and it’ll turn into heat. These things aren’t transporting heat across distances. They are transporting thermal radiation across distances. That works as well in a vacuum – if not better – as it does on earth.

            If thermal radiation doesn’t work in a vacuum, how is the sun heating anything up?

          • Riverside@reddthat.com
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            21 hours ago

            The mirrors on Earth don’t transfer the energy using the air between the mirror and the collector, they just bounce the spicy photons which can travel even better in a vacuum.