News Google now powering data centers with geothermal energy harvested using oil drilling techniques

[bit_user]

Let me articulate my point and the potential consequences of mass energy extraction of the earth.

It's a pointless hypothetical, because it's neither feasible nor what anyone is proposing.

If you even could cool the core at a meaningful rate, extracting heat at such a rate would probably boil the atmosphere.

 

[helper800]

You're going by gut instinct. This is an engineering problem not that different than sucking heat out of a CPU. The correct answer is arrived at via math and science - not a gut feel.

You are correct that there exists an answer, the problem is we do not have accurate enough measure to get to the answer. The article you linked to has no idea how long this would take, and has no idea if it would be successful even if they did know how long it would take. I snagged a quote in my last post. The size of the 2 magma chambers is estimated to be at roughly 55,000 cubic kilometers of magma. How much heat is exactly contained in the magma is unknown.

 

[helper800]

It's a pointless hypothetical, because it's neither feasible nor what anyone is proposing.

If you even could cool the core at a meaningful rate, extracting heat at such a rate would probably boil the atmosphere.

Its not a hypothetical. This is an if-then statement of fact based on the mass extraction of energy from the earth.

 

[bit_user]

Randall Munroe, the author of XKCD, trained as a physicist and wrote a couple of books to explore such questions. Based on the excerpts I've read on the web and what he's said, it seems like a lot of them end with boiling the atmosphere or the oceans. I'm sure they're a good read, if you're into that sort of thing.

• https://what-if.xkcd.com/
• https://xkcd.com/what-if-2/

Here's a fun talk he gave at Google:

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[bit_user]

You are correct that there exists an answer, the problem is we do not have accurate enough measure to get to the answer. The article you linked to has no idea how long this would take, and has no idea if it would be successful even if they did know how long it would take. I snagged a quote in my last post. The size of the 2 magma chambers is estimated to be at roughly 55,000 cubic kilometers of magma. How much heat is exactly contained in the magma is unknown.

If more research is needed, then I'm sure it would happen before large investments were made, trying to implement the plan.

 

[bit_user]

Here's a fun one I've read. I'm humble enough to admit my "gut feel" on this was way off:

"If every person on Earth aimed a laser pointer at the Moon at the same time, would it change color?"

Laser Pointer

 

[Order 66]

I just don't understand why we're messing with things beyond our control in the first place. I feel like there is potential for disaster as others have said.

 

[bit_user]

I just don't understand why we're messing with things beyond our control in the first place. I feel like there is potential for disaster as others have said.

By the sound of it, the risks are well enough understood and easily enough managed.

Let's be clear, nobody is about to just pull a cowboy move and decide to drop a tap into the heart of a supervolcano from out of the blue. There'd have to be a ton of further research and small-scale, carefully-monitored pilots, before anything was done at scale. Risks of actually triggering one would have to be understood and mitigated to virtually zero (if they're not, already).