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Re:MIT-designed project achieves major advance toward fusion... by Aeolun on Thursday September 09, 2021 @06:11AM (#28468114)
> The extremely high (but still finite) amount of energy required to evaporate the Pacific Ocean is still much less than the infinite energy you need to accelerate even one single space traveler to the speed of light.

True, but how many tons of space junk can you accellerate to 95% of light speed for the same amount of energy?

Re:MIT-designed project achieves major advance toward fusion... by codethief on Thursday September 09, 2021 @01:17PM (#28472109)
Quick back-of-the-envelope calculation:

    Approx. mass of Pacific Ocean[0]: m_ocean = 7.1×10²⁰kg
    Specific heat of water: c = 4.2kJ/(kg · K)
    Temperature of Pacific Ocean: T_1 ~ 293K
    Temperature at which water starts boiling: T_2 ~373K
=> Energy needed to make Pacific Ocean boil:

    E_heat = c m_ocean ΔT = c m_ocean (T_2 - T_1) ~ 3×10²⁶ J
On the other hand, the relativistic kinetic energy formula is:

    E_kin = (γ-1) m c²,
where γ = 1/sqrt(1-v²/c²) = 1/sqrt(1-0.95²) and m is the space junk's mass.

Setting E_kin = E_heat therefore yields:

    => m = E_heat / [(γ-1)c²) = 3×10²⁶ J / (2.2×10¹⁶ m²/s²)] = 10¹⁰ kg 
For comparison: The mass of all of humanity combined is somewhere between 10¹¹kg and 10¹²kg. Now those numbers do look somewhat comparable but:

- We haven't taken into account the space ships required to transport everyone

- E_heat was waste heat but since practically all energy will become waste heat at the end of the day, E_heat gives us a pretty good estimate of the total energy we will have (had) access to.

All in all 0.95·c doesn't seem feasible for moving humanity to Proxima Centauri, given E_heat. For moving 10¹⁰ kg of space junk, sure, though I'm not sure what you were planning to do with all that space junk in the first place?

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Ocean