I am just thinking out loud, and sharing--
What is life? A living thing has the ability to use energy to perform some task. When it no longer processes energy, it's dead.
Energy is the thing we are focusing on here. Specifically, looking for new ways to process energy and use it to do "work." Do I see a parallel here?
It seems that nature (God if you prefer) has been doing the sort of things we are looking for. So, I have a hypothesis to offer---
HYPOTHESIS: Any energy source that we are likely to find has already made itself evident in the universe around us. If you hope to succeed in finding an abundant, free energy source, you can do no better than to observe the natural world. If you don't see evidence of it there, then it probably doesn't exist.
I hope you readers can see this as an optimistic view. I'm not intending to solve any big problems here, but I am just sharing some ideas. As I look out into the heavens, I can easily see what the most conspicuous energy source is-- the "burning" of hydrogen in stars. Isn't that interesting. People have already harnessed this energy in a few ways. To intimidate the Russians. And, they us. Now, we (the U.S. and others) are trying to find ways to do hydrogen fusion on a "power plant" scale. A tough problem, but at least we know it should be possible because we see it being done in nature. Some years back, Pons and Fleischmann said they had succeeded in carrying out the following reaction in the laboratory--
1H2 + 1H2 ---> 2He4 + energy
In words, two deuterium atoms combine to form a helium atom, with plenty of mass-energy left over.
Elementary quantum theory indicates that this reaction is impossible. And, as far as I know, so far, nobody has conclusively shown this reaction to exist. On the other hand, the similar reaction between one deuterium atom and one tritium atom ( 1H3 ) does exist and is the energy source for the hydrogen bomb. Maybe the cold fusion folks were looking in the wrong place the whole time, they should have been trying---
1H2 + 1H3 ---> 2He4 + Neutron + energy
Well, I've gone beyond my area of expertise, so I better stop where I am here. But, I would like to go back to those nuclear furnaces we see out in space, the stars and our sun. Here is an abundant source of radiant energy we see everywhere every day (some more than others). Should I point out that this is "free" energy that is available to just about everybody?
Okay, how should we harness this abundant, free energy source? Maybe I can make a list--
1. Quantum conversion from light to electricity (PV)
2. Quantum conversion from light to a chemical, for example
to a proton and then to glucose (example is photosynthesis)
3. Absorption to heat, and then convert heat to work---
a. by expanding a gas
b. by thermionics
c. by thermoelectric effects
d. by expansion of a solid or a liquid, then to electricity or work
That's all for now. Did it give us any new ideas? How about a bimetallic strip connected to an electric generator?
Ernie Rogers