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A comment on NASA mission to Venus in 1978 may have detected phosphine, a gas related to life. Parent comment

Re:NASA mission to Venus in 1978 may have detected phosphine... by darkerside on Sunday March 28, 2021 @11:19AM (#26611084)
Grade school me always thought it was actually pretty simple. More heat means more energy. Just because we don't know how to harness it yet doesn't mean we can't. We live off of the sun. Why would were go farther away instead of closer?

Maybe naive thoughts, but are they wrong?

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Re:NASA mission to Venus in 1978 may have detected phosphine... by tambourine_man on Sunday March 28, 2021 @11:32AM (#26611178)
You need a heat gradient to take advantage of it. An uniformly hot place like Venus is a hard thermodynamic place.

Mercury and our moon are actually interesting in that regard. I had similar fantasies as a kid, a huge pipe with a thermal fluid taking advantage of the difference in temperature between the cool and warm side of the planet/moon.

But with today’s prices on solar panels, this will probably never happen.

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