Very weird of me to comment 2 weeks in the making, but this comment gave me a worm brain for some reason, like I’m RFK or something. Based on the idea that something is solar powered if it has any involvement with the sun at all, I wondered if I could think of a way to tie all non-solar powered sources to the sun.
Tidal used solar tides, but non-tidal hydro can also be solar power if you consider that earth was formed in Sol’s accretion disk and water likely comes from comets pulled into the solar SOI (none of this is researched, just off the dome, no clue whether my yr 10 astrophysics is either outdated or completely misremembered)
ergo, the use of earth’s gravity to power turbines via waterfalls etc is also solar power.
Originally, I thought I had a gotcha with nuclear power, bc uranium DEFINITELY doesn’t have anything to do with Sol, no trees involved. But, because it uses water, you can use the same logic as hydro
even for Voyager, which afaik just uses the heat directly sans water, you can say that the uranium itself was first attracted to Sol’s SOI before either being deposited on earth by asteroids or included in the accretion disk during earth’s formation. (tangentially, not sure how you make a fission reactor without steel, which uses organic hydrocarbons. Titanium?)
The formation of the earth also allows attributing thermal and wind power to Sol.
As a result of me realising I’m wrong despite desperately thinking I was right, I’ve decided to dedicate all 3 rubles in my possession to develop a power plant that only uses cosmic rays and other interstellar radiation (as well as neutrinos if I’m allowed to say they’re not really captured by the solar gravity well despite having mass, which I’m pretty sure I won’t be allowed to do :c ) as well as fund interstellar colonisation efforts so that we can have extra-solar sun power, maybe hawking radiation and other fun stuff too. Escape the tyranny of the sun with me, brethren! Forego local Dyson-Swarms in favour of non-solar fossil fuels!
Now you’re just splitting hairs. I mean we’d still call solar panels “solar panels,” even if they were collecting energy from another star (say, on an interstellar spaceship).
Every power source is a solar power source if you follow the trail back far enough.
Deep sea vents aren’t, unless you’re including the formation of the solar system as ‘solar’
Also geothermal and nuclear power aren’t
I did say “if you follow the trail back far enough.” Same goes for uranium. Born from supernovae (exploding stars).
I only use pure clean hydrogen unchanged from the big bang.
*stellar, not solar, the carbon in coal wasn’t formed by our sun but a different star far in the past
Yeah but the trees that made it into hydrocarbons were fuled by our sun.
Very weird of me to comment 2 weeks in the making, but this comment gave me a worm brain for some reason, like I’m RFK or something. Based on the idea that something is solar powered if it has any involvement with the sun at all, I wondered if I could think of a way to tie all non-solar powered sources to the sun.
As a result of me realising I’m wrong despite desperately thinking I was right, I’ve decided to dedicate all 3 rubles in my possession to develop a power plant that only uses cosmic rays and other interstellar radiation (as well as neutrinos if I’m allowed to say they’re not really captured by the solar gravity well despite having mass, which I’m pretty sure I won’t be allowed to do :c ) as well as fund interstellar colonisation efforts so that we can have extra-solar sun power, maybe hawking radiation and other fun stuff too. Escape the tyranny of the sun with me, brethren! Forego local Dyson-Swarms in favour of non-solar fossil fuels!
Now you’re just splitting hairs. I mean we’d still call solar panels “solar panels,” even if they were collecting energy from another star (say, on an interstellar spaceship).