Only 6 years after the weathermen needed a new color for just one spot of extreme temperatures on the map, this is how it looks when that color needs to be used for over 30% of the Australia's area. And that for 3 days in a row, starting today, Dec 18 2019 (like, meh, just a balmy 40C in Melbourne at 18:30, she'll be apples).
[40C is 104F and 50C is 122F --ed.]
Coverage:
BBC - Australia heatwave: Nation endures hottest day on record
Guardian Australia heatwave: records forecast to be broken as temperatures surge past 40C
AFP Australia has its hottest day on record, more to come
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 18 2019, @10:44PM (9 children)
If it is energetic enough to harm someone it is energetic enough to extract energy from. What you really mean is there are easier things to extract energy from instead.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday December 18 2019, @11:05PM (5 children)
Would you like some micrograms of Polonium in your tea? I hear it's smashing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 18 2019, @11:47PM
I'm sure you can use micrograms of polonium to heat up some stuff if it is that dangerous.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 19 2019, @12:07AM (3 children)
https://web.archive.org/web/20120310145431/http://www.ead.anl.gov/pub/doc/polonium.pdf [archive.org]
So 140 uW per ug. You can use 1 microgram to power about 140 watches:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orders_of_magnitude_(power) [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 1) by anubi on Thursday December 19 2019, @01:39AM (2 children)
Until the Carnot tax.
By the time you pay off all the energy to get the remaining energy in the form you want it, usually in the form of electricity or shaft work, you find there isn't much, if any, left.
Kinda like a Cheetah expending 100 calories to catch rodents having 80 calories in them. No matter how many rodents the big cat catches, it's gonna starve.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 19 2019, @02:33AM (1 child)
This is morel like harvesting 100 calories in per microgram of mouse.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday December 19 2019, @12:29PM
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday December 18 2019, @11:16PM (2 children)
No, doesn't work that way. The biological thresholds can be a lot lower than the threshold for viable energy extraction.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 18 2019, @11:45PM (1 child)
You keep using that weasel word "viable". The energy is there to be extracted, it is just that there are easier ways.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by khallow on Thursday December 19 2019, @12:20PM
We can increase the efficiency somewhat by dumping all the radioactive stuff into some sort of insulated warehouse and let it warm up a bunch, but you'll never get more energy out of that than the massive investment of energy and time you put in.