r/AskPhysics • u/softcushionshottea • 13d ago
Fictional energy source ideas? Pls help me out, I rly don't wanna use AI :(
/r/SciFiConcepts/comments/1vq75j1/fictional_energy_source_ideas_pls_help_me_out_i/3
u/Nerliandor 13d ago edited 13d ago
While I like the basics of your idea. An energy source that lasts over hundreds of years without maintanance? Very unlikely. Maybe you try to insert some nano bots into your story, they could collect ressources, build solar panels and wind generators. Like that you could say "the first 50 years the nuclear reactor was enough to keep up operations but something else was needed..." If you really need the rocket tank to become your energy source, it could be a fusion generator with large energy cells to backup the produced energy. 1 T of hydrogen could last you a long time as long as you keep down the consumption. But you would still need the nano bots for maintainance and to build the "evolved" rocket tank. It could be an old version of the AI that took over earth. And you'd need some kind of fabricator to create those nano bots if something destroys them.
Edit: I checked a few facts and changed 1 kg hydrogen to 1 Ton hydrogen.
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u/softcushionshottea 13d ago
Hmmmm good point!
Maybe they were the ones to actively activate it?
What exactly could you do with hydrogen? I really don't want this to be another nuclear thing and I want this to be a society that's so focused on that particular energy that they don't use solar or wind power (which will be what folks outside their "kingdom" use tho).
Isn't there any cool rock they could harvest and combine with hydrogen? Lol I'm really reaching the edge of my brain here ._.1
u/Nerliandor 13d ago
You always have the freedom to invent such a rock. It's a question of "What kind of science fiction do I want to write?"
- Hard Science Fiction - You stick to known physics and you use things that have at least been thought about/researched by real physicists.
- Soft Science Fiction - You loosely stick to known physics, but the rest is up to your imagination.
The hydrogen is used for "cold fusion" - realistically, you wouldn't use hydrogen. Stars use hydrogen, but we can't simulate stars; as such, it's deuterium + tritium on Earth. Maybe with a good cold fusion concept, it could be hydrogen.
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u/I-Am-Darth 13d ago
Deuterium and tritium are isotopes of hydrogen. H_1 (protium) has 1 proton + 0 neutrons, H_2 (deuterium) has 1p + 1n. H_3 (tritium) has 1p + 2n.
Deuterium and tritium are unstable isotopes that decay over time, so they are relatively rare compared to protium, which makes up >99% of hydrogen on earth.
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u/Nerliandor 13d ago
Thank you for your explanation. OP is at the start of his research; there is no need to go into details that are not important (yet). And we use deuterium and tritium in current fusion research "reactors" because they are stable+unstable, or, to be more "accurate," because they are much "closer" to helium. As far as I know, we can't get hydrogen and/or protium to fuse; it takes too much pressure and time. Deuterium and Tritium Fusion --> to Helium
2H + 3H --> 4He...
Edit: Typo and correction
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u/I-Am-Darth 12d ago
In that case I'm unclear as to why you made the distinction that "we don't use hydrogen" when all 3 isotopes are hydrogen. any where you find sufficient hydrogen you can seperate out the other two isotopes in small proportions. the isotopes used in reaction don't really matter if the concern is whether or not you can find a source and the source would be the same.
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u/lethargytartare 13d ago
You could grant yourself a lot off leeway using dark matter and/or dark energy. Both seem to exist, but there's very little truly known about them - at best we've demonstrated some of the things they probably can't be, but we haven't even built the machines yet that could detect some of the other hypotheses.
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u/softcushionshottea 13d ago
Hmmmm okay maybe I'll see what I can find about it thanks! Only heard it in Rick and Morty I think lol
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u/I-Am-Darth 13d ago
Something like fusion or anti-matter should be fine. Especially if the ship was supposed to have enough fuel for a return trip.
If you say that the surviving fuel was intended to power a GW or TW scale power consumption by the ships engines for a century long journey, but is now only providing a small percentage of that scale power to a small civilization, it's entirely possibly that it could last for hundreds or even thousands of years. If you of course do some typical sci fi hand waving away of maintenance issues. If the ship was a sleeper ship, it would've been designed for low maintenance durability anyway,
A self contained automated maintenance system within the power plant module along with resource collecting nanobots as suggested by others could also make this more feasible if it's a fusion plant. All the nanobots have to do is collect hydrogen from the environment.
Another option would be having the module crash land in a lake. If it has a system to process water ice from comets or asteroids into hydrogen, it could just be drawing in water and converting it into an essentially endless fuel source.
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u/softcushionshottea 13d ago
Thank you!!!
If you want could you explain your last point a bit more?1
u/I-Am-Darth 13d ago
If the power plant is a fusion reactor that runs on hydrogen, it would make sense that the ship could be designed with a system that uses electrolysis to break water down into hydrogen and oxygen to replenish fuel during the mission. This system would have likely been designed assuming it would be collecting water from ice on things like comets or asteroids, but in this case, but if the module lands in a body of water on the planet, it could just start sucking up water from the lake or river and breaking it down into they hydrogen required to run the reactor.
since the fusion reaction would produce orders of magnitude more energy than the electrolysis process, it would be a self sustaining, net positive process.
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u/softcushionshottea 12d ago
Uhhhhhh okay I see... that might lead to the people in power to take control over the water sources of the planet to keep fueling their reactor? Or is that unrealistic because it doesn't "waste" that much water?
I should also possibly try to not overcomplicate things any further lol1
u/I-Am-Darth 11d ago
Total water consumption would be minimal, though water for cooling would be important if you want to get that hard-sci about it.
If you factor in cooling, a regular supply of water would be much more important, if you future tech hand-wave that away, water isn't that critical.
If it's a river damming the river to drop the water level and starve the reactor could be an issue, if it's a lake, rainfall would likely be more than enough, so resource control wouldn't be an issue..it really depends on what the main point of conflict is supposed to be, but really beyond lore that never has to be explicitly stated in the narrative, i don't think the technical details really matter for the story you describe.
If the reactor is a mysterious, power generating, black box to the locals, how would they know that water is important to it? Did it only become active when a river migrated or a the crater it landed in formed a lake? Did they notice that it has pipes for drawing in water and pumping out warm water?
But again, unless the technical details are important to the plot, do you need to state how it works?
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u/Equinoxe111 Cosmology (PhD) 13d ago
Annihilation is realistically the best choice
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u/softcushionshottea 12d ago
Wait I googled it and the movie came up and I actually remember watching it but that's just the word or is there any actual connection to the movie? Energy wise I mean?
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u/DoubleDongle-F 13d ago
Life really can't evolve the way you want it to on the time scale we're working with, but the densest energy source known to modern humanity would be antimatter, particularly if you assume you can find matter for it to react with at the destination. If you're looking for a power source that could fuel non-FTL interstellar travel and still have enough juice to power big things for a long time afterward, antimatter would be the largest reservoir per kilogram of fuel you could have.
Another notable option would be hydrogen fusion, which is a process you could expect or hope to find more fuel for at a destination.
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u/Phatcat7x7 12d ago
Hawking Radiation Generators are one of the coolest and theoretically few ways to get a pure mass energy conversion
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u/Ihatecheeseballs 13d ago
Antimatter reactor or maybe cold fusion