Wave/Sea Power - What Are the Dangers?

worldwide_ants writes: "My main worry about power generation from waves, is that we would put the earth in danger by accellerating the descent of the moon into the earth, since the moon would have to expend more energy in generating tides, and thus lose it's kinetic energy. How serious a problem is this? What are the solutions? Could we send a rocket up to give the moon a 'kick' once in a while?" This reminds me of an Isaac Asimov novel I once read ...

Comments

Late post? And TLP.

[leonbrooks]

This question belongs in April 1, methinks.

The Moon is receding from Earth, and doing so rapidly enough that that their surfaces would have been touching about a billion years ago. The infinitesimal amount of wave and tide energy that we can extract, even if we work on every section of coastline, woun't even slow this recession down noticeably. Plain, ordinary vannilla-flavoured physics is slowing the recession several orders of magnitude faster than we eevr could.

BTW, lightning damage (like Schroter's Valley) and other more or less Transient Lunar Phenomena hint that dear old Luna isn't as inactive as has previously been thought.

The catch still to come?

[chabotc]

Maybe the catch is still to come tomorrow or so, A poll with the questions

o one of the stories posted on april 1st was serious?

o one of the stories was remotely funny

o I submited all stories posted april 1st

o Huh? Did they post anything different then usual?

Must admit, im gonna have trouble picking my vote :)

-- Chris Chabot
"I dont suffer from insanity, i enjoy every minute of it!"

yes, and earth's rotation will stop too

[Eil]

This reminds me of something funny I once heard a few years back. I was talking to one of my dad's friends who was postively convinced (and just a little drunk) that mankind was slowing down the rotation of the earth by launching lots of rockets and space shuttles from it.

I shit you not.

Nevermind that a rocket's thrust is completely insignificant in any timeframe compared to the inertia of the earth. And that they take off vertically rather than horizontally.

As he was trying to explain this apparent trajedy to me, he got pretty pissed because I had fallen off my chair laughing. Oh, where would we be today without people like this to provide us with this sort of knee-slapping hilarity...

Only the tip of the iceberg.

[Da Penguin]

Using solar energy means that the sun will have to generate more, thus making it burn out and making us all perish.

Sitting is making the laws of gravity work harder, so they will have to stop soon sending us all out into outer space except for those who grab onto something who will have the joy of plumetting into the sun as the orbits misalign spelling death for everything.

Today is Apr 1, but...

[tetrad]

You know, the really sad thing is, tomorrow's stories won't be much different.

This had better be April Fools joke

[tulare]

Or else I'm going to seriously gripe about my article on "the courtship and mating dances of orange and black umbrellas" not getting posted.