Counterpoint: all that is happening is that mechanical energy that kept the water pressurized (stored in the water itself and the surrounding rocks) is being released, and partially converted into work. Planet X is no different from a planet that conveniently comes with a lot of compressed springs buried underground. Nothing of which is particularly mind-blowing.
You seem to be missing the main point. Boiling pockets of water is a mechanism that over a long time convert ambient heat into something else, in a process were useful work can be extracted. In a steam driven train it is not just that you have a lot of initial pressure in your tank. Boiling is what makes the pressure remain over time. Please read my response to cousin_it for a deeper explanation for why the setup goes deeper than you think.
I’m not convinced any of this makes a significant difference. The reason why the water didn’t boil already is that it was pressurized. This is slightly less intuitive than the compressed spring because unlike that example, it involves also configurational entropy, not just energy. And the boiling is prolonged because of the inherent kinetics of the process. But once you remove the pressure, the thermodynamic equilibrium goes from “a lot of liquid water” to “a lot of vapour with less free energy”; and you can use the energy flow that moves to make it happen to exploit that difference for useful work, as long as it lasts.
Case in point: we use this kind of compression and evaporation mechanism to cool stuff all the time, just not with water, it’s called a fridge. In that case it’s made cyclical by the compression step, and overall uses up free energy and produces entropy.
It made a difference for the androids on Planet X. They built their civilization around a novel initial condition on their planet (much like our usage of fossile fuel).
I want to plant a conceptual seed, though: Perhaps there are more structure to be found, that would allow us to convert ambient heat into useful energy, as the initial structure gets depleated. This post is also the starting point for introducing a more perplexing thought experiment in another post (that I can’t post yet, due to lack of Karma).
I guess I have so much physicist-brain that to me it doesn’t seem like there’s a big difference—all I can spot is “thing has high free energy content, we can extract free energy from thing”.
It just so happens that the densest free energy resources in our immediate neighbourhood hold it in either chemical or nuclear form. I really doubt there’s any greater insights here to be found because anything that simply begs to roll to a lower free energy minimum will when given the chance. There’s no large untapped reservoirs of low entropy stuff just begging to absorb heat from the environment so that it can undergo a phase change on Earth’s crust or nearby space that I can think or speculate of.
Thanks! That seems like a fruitful way of looking at things, most of the time.
There’s no large untapped reservoirs of low entropy stuff just begging to absorb heat from the environment so that it can undergo a phase change on Earth’s crust or nearby space that I can think or speculate of.
That is not the only place one might look. I certanly do not know the future, but I do know this: Many a times have humanity dismissed things like novelity, that have later on turned out to be very important. The way I see it, you are a physicist, where as I am more of a head in the clouds visionary (with a Masters degree in Physics). I love interacting with those who know more than I do! My second thought experiment is still not useful, but perhaps you will find it more novel, once I post it.
Counterpoint: all that is happening is that mechanical energy that kept the water pressurized (stored in the water itself and the surrounding rocks) is being released, and partially converted into work. Planet X is no different from a planet that conveniently comes with a lot of compressed springs buried underground. Nothing of which is particularly mind-blowing.
You seem to be missing the main point. Boiling pockets of water is a mechanism that over a long time convert ambient heat into something else, in a process were useful work can be extracted. In a steam driven train it is not just that you have a lot of initial pressure in your tank. Boiling is what makes the pressure remain over time. Please read my response to cousin_it for a deeper explanation for why the setup goes deeper than you think.
I’m not convinced any of this makes a significant difference. The reason why the water didn’t boil already is that it was pressurized. This is slightly less intuitive than the compressed spring because unlike that example, it involves also configurational entropy, not just energy. And the boiling is prolonged because of the inherent kinetics of the process. But once you remove the pressure, the thermodynamic equilibrium goes from “a lot of liquid water” to “a lot of vapour with less free energy”; and you can use the energy flow that moves to make it happen to exploit that difference for useful work, as long as it lasts.
Case in point: we use this kind of compression and evaporation mechanism to cool stuff all the time, just not with water, it’s called a fridge. In that case it’s made cyclical by the compression step, and overall uses up free energy and produces entropy.
It made a difference for the androids on Planet X. They built their civilization around a novel initial condition on their planet (much like our usage of fossile fuel).
I want to plant a conceptual seed, though: Perhaps there are more structure to be found, that would allow us to convert ambient heat into useful energy, as the initial structure gets depleated. This post is also the starting point for introducing a more perplexing thought experiment in another post (that I can’t post yet, due to lack of Karma).
I guess I have so much physicist-brain that to me it doesn’t seem like there’s a big difference—all I can spot is “thing has high free energy content, we can extract free energy from thing”.
It just so happens that the densest free energy resources in our immediate neighbourhood hold it in either chemical or nuclear form. I really doubt there’s any greater insights here to be found because anything that simply begs to roll to a lower free energy minimum will when given the chance. There’s no large untapped reservoirs of low entropy stuff just begging to absorb heat from the environment so that it can undergo a phase change on Earth’s crust or nearby space that I can think or speculate of.
Thanks! That seems like a fruitful way of looking at things, most of the time.
That is not the only place one might look. I certanly do not know the future, but I do know this: Many a times have humanity dismissed things like novelity, that have later on turned out to be very important. The way I see it, you are a physicist, where as I am more of a head in the clouds visionary (with a Masters degree in Physics). I love interacting with those who know more than I do! My second thought experiment is still not useful, but perhaps you will find it more novel, once I post it.