Energy Transfer Through Space Without Adverse Affects
Perpetual motion doesn't exist... or does it? In space planets continuously spin around stars for trillions of years due to inertia and gravity balancing each other out. What if a race of brilliant beings found a way to produce energy from that process and store it locally on a moon?
How then could they theoretically transfer that energy remotely through space to the home planet without incinerating the atmosphere, causing wide-spread cancer, or other ill affects?
Is there a way to harmlessly (everything being relative) transfer stored energy from a moon to the planet, without cables, and then have that planet reliably receive that energy for distribution?
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1 answer
There is one way that we know of that can make this happen, which is tidal energy.
Jupiter's moons Ganymede and Europa both have a lot of water, as does Saturn's moon Enceladus. As they orbit their planets and spin on their axis they have tides that slosh around, break up the surface ice, and erupt in geysers.
On Earth we are starting to use tidal generator to make energy from the moons rotation around the Earth, so it wouldn't be hard for an advanced alien race to set up something that works on the same principal to get all kinds of energy.
For transmission microwave and laser beams to send it to orbiting satellites which would then transmit it elsewhere. There would be a lot of loss with this method, but with enough energy to start with it might not make a difference.
Alternately the power could be stored in other mediums like batteries, which could be much more efficient than what we use on earth, and shipped to places where beamed power would be impractical.
The real problem with "perpetual motion" is the "perpetual" part. Everything runs down eventually, including the universe itself. The best we can hope for is really really cheap, almost to the point of being free, energy.
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