Dr Rajiv Desai
An Educational Blog
Solar Technologies
Solar Technologies: Solar is the only renewable energy source which could, in principle, easily meet all the world’s energy needs. _ “I’d put my money on the sun and solar energy. What a source of power! I hope we don’t have to wait until oil and coal run out before we tackle that.” Thomas Edison in 1931 ____ Section-1 Prologue: Currently, our civilization consumes around 17.7 Terawatts (17.7 terajoules/second) of power taken from all sources of energy, namely oil, coal, natural gas and alternative energies such as solar, wind, hydropower and others. Fossil fuels—including coal, oil, and natural gas—have been powering economies for over 150 years, and currently supply about 80 percent of the world’s energy. The environmental ramifications of using fossil fuels, combined with their expected remaining abundance on earth places limits on how much longer we as a species can rely on them as an energy source. If […]
Desalination
Desalination: _ The history of water is equivalent to the history of the world and the history of water quality is equivalent to the history of life. —Andreas N. Angelakis _ Section-1 Prologue: All early civilizations were built on the banks of rivers. Whether it was the Euphrates in the Fertile Crescent or the Tiber in Rome, rivers gave early settlements easy access to abundant streams of fresh water, essential not only for drinking but also for irrigating crops. The availability of water was one of the biggest constraints on the growth of settlement and population size. The layout of Ancient Egypt reflected this. It stretched out like a long snake, hugging the banks of the Nile River. The invention of aqueducts by the Romans first enabled water to be carried long distances, providing the crucial utility to remote stretches of its sprawling empire and allowing populations to […]
Extraterrestrial Life (Life Beyond Earth)
Extraterrestrial Life (Life Beyond Earth): _ Figure above shows Earth, as seen by NASA’s Voyager 1. In this image, taken from 4 billion miles away 33 years ago, Earth appears as a “pale blue dot” representing less than a pixel’s worth of light. Would this light reveal Earth as a habitable and inhabited world? Our search for life on exoplanets will depend on an ability to extract information about life from the faint light of faraway worlds. _ “Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.” -Arthur C. Clarke, science fiction author and former Planetary Society board member _____ Section-1 Prologue: Is mankind alone in the universe? Or are there somewhere other intelligent beings looking up into their night sky from very different worlds and asking the same kind of question? Are there civilizations more advanced than ours, civilizations that […]
Is artificial intelligence (AI) an existential threat?
Is artificial intelligence (AI) an existential threat? _ _ Section-1 Prologue: On September 26, 2022, without most of us noticing, humanity’s long-term odds of survival became ever so slightly better. Some 11,000,000 km away, a NASA spacecraft was deliberately smashed into the minor planet-moon, Dimorphos, and successfully changed its direction of travel. It was an important proof of concept that showed that if we’re ever in danger of being wiped out by an asteroid, we might be able to stop it from hitting the Earth. But what if the existential threat we need to worry about isn’t Deep Impact but Terminator? Despite years of efforts from professionals and researchers to quash any and all comparisons with apocalyptic science fiction and real-world artificial intelligence (AI), the threat of this technology going rogue and posing a serious threat to survival isn’t just for Hollywood movies. As crazy as it sounds, […]
Mirage of Fusion Power
Mirage of Fusion Power: _ “We say that we will put the Sun into a box. The idea is pretty. The problem is, we don’t know how to make the box”. Pierre-Gilles de Gennes _ Figure above shows ITER fusion reactor tokamak. A tokamak is a device used in nuclear fusion research for magnetic confinement of plasma. It consists of a complex system of magnetic fields that confine the plasma of reactive charged particles in a hollow, doughnut-shaped container. The tokamak (an acronym from the Russian words for toroidal magnetic confinement) was developed in the mid-1960s by Soviet plasma physicists. It produces the highest plasma temperatures, densities, and confinement durations of any confinement device. Fusion energy scientists believe that tokamaks are the leading plasma confinement concept for future fusion power plants. _____ Section-1 Prologue: The demand for energy is ever growing, as more people around the […]
