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You are very resolute with words like "never" and "ever" missing the fact that we don't even need to replace non-renewables completely. If we reach a market share of let's say 50% we increase our window of action, allowing us more time to create better tech and find better solutions.

"We'll take good care of <decedent>, sorry for you loss."

You do not know enough to form a valid opinion. Learn more.

What they mean to say is that they'll steal AI tech from outside sources.

Have you heard of the Dead Sea? It is dead because of too high salinity.

Theorising about alien processing systems removes human/earth bias and CAN/MAY allow us to approach how we process data and computations.

Look at how the quantum computer can about. We started by ourselves what if the entire internet could be stored in a grain of salt but we’ve been busy mucking around with silicone and binary states.

Everything that processes today is based on the premise of Morse code. We just advanced the shit out of it

Excellent summary, ChatGPT derived?! J/k 😁

For "he was a really nice guy" press 5

Doctors hate them!

It’s a massively outlandish idea. However, can we draw ideas from this?

From what I gather, scientists are tinkering with the validity of the idea that an object in space that was not manufactured can be used to compute.

Can we do this with tree roots? Can we apply this concept within a reachable grasp?

The concept in its raw unadulterated form sounds like something from startrek.

But let’s water it down, can we take advantage of this concept here, on earth?

It’s an interesting concept,

Increasing salinity in coastal areas is already a major problem for local governments. The associated damage is not hypothetical. When these plants are built, they won't be pie-in-the-sky technology but with whatever fits a tight budget. Don't fall in love with a single technical solution.

Hyperloop is a literal pipe dream, just invest in rail for gods sake

That’s inefficient. Just go to a plant where x grows naturally, like beer bootle trees etc.

The "nearly 100%" is in comparison to regular electrolysis.

From the abstract of the paper:

>[...]and similar performance to a typical PEM electrolyser operating in high-purity water.

The BS claim in the article is being used to push this research on social media. I don't know how many times I've come across this "news" in the last few weeks.

It's misleading. The "100%" being pushed here are in regards to regular electrolysis. They have basically come up with a less efficient way to split water.

Headline makes it sound like splitting seawater was the hard part that we couldn't do before.

Claims being made in the article are misleading and the research itself - which is actively being pushed on mutliple social media channels in a way that borders on the absurd - is massively overstated.

>“We have split natural seawater into oxygen and hydrogen with nearly 100 per cent efficiency

No, that's a BS claim. The process is not "nearly 100%" efficient. What they have actually done is that they achieved nearly the same efficiency as with conventional electrolysis using standard catalysts and pure water.

As per the abstract from the actual paper: >[...]and similar performance to a typical PEM electrolyser operating in high-purity water.

This whole thing - i.e. "we need to solve seawater electrolysis to make the hydrogen economy happen" is absolute BS, for the simple reason that the problem doesn't actually exist, because conventional electrolysis coupled with reverse osmosis (SWRO) is basically as efficient as it gets:

>Our analysis reveals there are limited economic and environmental incentives of pursuing R&D on today's nascent direct seawater electrolysis technology. As commercial water electrolysis requires a significant amount of energy compared to SWRO, the capital and operating costs of SWRO are found to be negligible. This leads to an insignificant increase in levelized cost of H2 (<0.1 $ per kg H2) and CO2 emissions (<0.1%) from a SWRO-PEM coupled process.

>https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2021/ee/d1ee00870f

"Direct electrolysis" results in insignificant gains. Purifying seawater is not what makes the process inefficient and not having to purify the water doesn't make it markedly more efficient let alone cost saving.

What's "preventing the hydrogen economy from happening" is not that we have to deal with seawater - it's that electrolysis itself takes massive amounts of energy and isn't efficient. You don't improve the underlying economic obstacles by slashing less then 10 cents from the price of a kg of hydrogen.

The "obstalce" is not seawater, it's the inefficiency of electrolysis. And the people pushing this research just told you that somebody has come with a way that's less efficient than regular electrolysis.

They just figure we'll nuke ourselves back to the stone age before we get around to blackhole supercomputers

Lots of hypotheses involve unproven data points

This is dumb. Everyone knows that we aren't sure if alien life exists, and no part of the title is claiming to have discovered them. You guys should really look at context

LOL, sure. And if you believe that, I have a bridge to sell you in Brooklyn! How, exactly, are they going to have cutting edge AI without any chips to run it on?

OK, tech has had immediate bad effects in the sense of, cars replaced horses and what did all the carriage drivers do, or farm machinery made 80% of farmers obsolete, etc. But it turns out they find something else, usually safer, less tedious, and better compensated to do in short order. Partly because the economy grows as a result of the new tech. I didn't mean to imply that there was never displacement or inconvenience. But net net, as they say, the effects of tech are OVERWHELMINGLY positive. We live longer, healthier, freer, and richer with each advance in tech, and it's silly to pretend otherwise. I'd never be so foolish as to say potential negative effects should be ignored; they should be thought about and planned for and minimized, obv. But something new and magical shouldn't be thought of as "the thing that will take our jobs and immiserate us and out-evolve us and compete with us and take over" as one commenter or maybe the op pretty much said.

> Even today there is much more salt/minerals in the oceans than water can hold.

No, not at all. Where have you heard something like this? The salts are dissolved in the water, they aren't supersaturated at all. Yes, they can precipitate out if conditions change but you can pretty much take a container of seawater and let it sit for a long time without any of it precipitating out.

It's also worth noting that even with a very efficient process it takes a lot of energy to split water into hydrogen and oxygen. In addition, the storage/delivery of the hydrogen takes a lot of equipment and energy, the hydrogen itself tends to escape easily and corrode equipment, and converting the hydrogen back into energy does not happen with 100% efficiency.

Hydrogen has a few key uses but it is really not a good replacement for most uses of fossil fuels because of these issues.