dmckee‭

Any mechanism for generating a neutrino beam starts with a way to generate neutrinos, and there is only one underlying means right now: weak decay (including beta decay in radioactive nuclides). Th...

posted 4y ago by dmckee‭  ·  edited 4y ago by dmckee‭

Convert mass density to energy density, to get $9 \times 10^{-11}\,\mathrm{J/m^3}$ which isn't very much. After all, an adult human is on order of one eighth to one quarter of a cubic meter. So, a...

posted 8y ago by dmckee‭  ·  last activity 8y ago by dmckee‭

Preconditions Bank's The Algebraist and many other works feature galactic scale civilizations connected by wormhole networks, but with only relativistic (i.e. slow and expensive; possibly very slo...

posted 7y ago by dmckee‭  ·  last activity 7y ago by dmckee‭

Any light source is a propellant-less drive (often called a "photon drive"), it's just extremely energy inefficient. With perfect conversion efficiency, the impulse of the device is (energy suppli...

posted 7y ago by dmckee‭  ·  last activity 7y ago by dmckee‭

Practical issues with the whole cut-a-planet-with-a-beam idea. Your fundamental problem is that if you dig the trench by sequential applications of a beam with shallow penetration the time scale i...

posted 6y ago by dmckee‭

Dung Charcoal A staple fuel for grassland people is dried dung. It generally doesn't burn particularly hot, but if you a assume a source of dung that is both unusually dense and comes in cohesive...

posted 6y ago by dmckee‭  ·  last activity 6y ago by dmckee‭

Using thermal energy for power generation is a thing, but you need a temperature difference to make it work. You implanted device is likely to be essentially uniform in temperature meaning that it ...

posted 7y ago by dmckee‭  ·  last activity 7y ago by dmckee‭