🍄 Electric Swans, ARPA-E to ZPE

Electric Swans™, the alternative to alternatives

Sep 30, 2024

Exploring every rabbit hole there is. For more wanderings, become an Alice in Futureland subscriber—it's free.

🍄 AudioDose Alice on Sonic Mushrooms: Listen to Chasing Shadows
🎧 Alice podcasts
📘 Alice books

Energy is everywhere

Energy links us to the cosmos, nature, each other, and the microbial networks around us. Over the centuries, we’ve mastered the ability to harness energy, powering our cities, transportation, homes, and more—though often at the expense of the environment that supports us. Wealth and energy are deeply intertwined, but alternative energy sources offer immense potential. Hello, we’re Alice and always in a state of wander. Welcome to the Electric Swan frontier.

Preventure Funders

Our first stop on the Electric Swan tour is with the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E). This is a well- funded military think tank, inspired by DARPA, that has helped invent everything from the GPS system to the internet. Its job is to fund the kind of transformative technologies that could change the way we view and use energy. ARPA-E funds game-changing energy technologies that are typically too early for private-sector investment—ideas from university skunkworks and under-the-radar start-ups that are far from turning a profit today but that could pay off enormously in the future. They call themselves preventure funders who bankroll ideas that are too risky for Venture Capital firms.

ARPA-E recently announced $18 million for 9 projects to enable the growth of hydrogen as a replacement for fossil fuels. Hydrogen is increasingly seen as a clean energy source and decarbonization agent for industry and transportation. Current global hydrogen production is roughly 100 million metric tonnes per year and, by 2050, the hydrogen market is projected to grow to $1.4 trillion. These projects seek to detect and quantify hydrogen emissions throughout the supply chain to maximize the climate benefits of hydrogen production. “The ability to detect and quantify hydrogen will enable the safe and economical expansion of the hydrogen economy while mitigating its climate impact,” said ARPA-E Director Dr. Evelyn Wang. “These highly sensitive and selective hydrogen sensors combined with quantitative modeling will enable industry to achieve these goals.”

Other preventure ideas being funded are: Electrofuels that use custom-designed microbes to convert carbon dioxide into liquid biofuels; SunShot Initiative—technologies that could lower the cost of solar power to five cents a kilowatt-hour, making fossil fuel obsolete; an electrical grid that could seamlessly store the power generated by the Sun or the wind—enabling renewable power to meet 24⁄7 demand; and ALPHA—fusion energy that holds the promise of cheap, clean power production. Until now, scientists have been unable to successfully harness fusion as a power source due to the high cost of research, but ARPA-E's ALPHA program seeks to create tools to aid in the development of new, lower- cost pathways to fusion power and to enable more rapid progress in fusion research and development.

From ARPA-E to ZPE

Consider this: Scientists have revealed that 96% of the universe is composed of mysterious forces—73% dark energy and 23% dark matter. This means only 4% of the universe is detectable using our current scientific instruments. Astrophysicists tell us that we are surrounded by a nearly infinite source of energy known as the quantum vacuum state. Once humanity learns to harness this vacuum energy, we could move beyond inefficient fossil fuels, radioactive nuclear power, and other polluting technologies that drive global warming.

The Institute for Advanced Studies at Austin is on a mission to explore the forefront reaches of science and engineering. Research interests include theories of space-time, gravity, and cosmology; studies of the quantum vacuum; modifications of standard theories of electrodynamics; interstellar flight science; and the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, specifically as these topics may apply to developing innovative space propulsion and sources of energy. Their goal is to translate these ideas into laboratory experiments.

"If we are successful in tapping ZPE, the benefits are enormous. First thing, it would be a renewable resource. To get a little bit to run our cars shouldn’t be a problem. It could run everything from electric toothbrushes up to aircraft carriers and spaceships. Successful tapping of vacuum fluctuation energy, which is available everywhere, would just open up the future. . . . At this point we are bound within a certain closed system. We have to worry about oil running out, we have to worry about nuclear accidents, we have to worry about planetary continuation over a long period—suddenly, all those restrictions would be lifted with successful tapping of ZPE. I think the cultural, social-political, geopolitical implications would be enormous." — Hal Puthoff, PhD, theoretical physicist, founder of Earthtech International, director, Institute for Advanced Studies, Alice Interview

Zero-Point Energy refers to the potential energy that remains in a system at a temperature of absolute zero. It is an enormous, untapped energy reservoir present in the very fabric of space itself. If we could harness even a small fraction of this energy, it could revolutionize energy production and transform our understanding of physics.

The concept of ZPE has intrigued scientists and has been explored in the fields of cosmology, quantum mechanics, and even speculative futuristic technologies. However, it remains a theoretical construct with significant scientific and technical challenges before it could ever become a viable energy source. So…until we are able to tap into the quantum vacuum state…here comes controlled fusion.

A controlled fusion reaction generates approximately four million times more energy than burning fossil fuels like coal, oil, or gas, and produces four times more energy than nuclear fission, which is the current form of nuclear energy. While it won't be developed quickly enough to combat climate change during this critical decade, it holds promise as a potential solution for addressing future global warming.

Helion, a fusion power company based in Everett, WA is on a mission to build the world's first fusion power plant, enabling a future with unlimited clean electricity. The company, which has drawn big investments from Open AI’s Sam Altman and has a deal with Microsoft, is setting ambitious targets for producing commercially viable fusion power, but is so secretive about its work that skeptics worry it will miss key deadlines and publicly undermine the sector. Helion plans to start operating its seventh prototype reactor by the year’s end, and aims to build a fusion plant for Microsoft by 2028, which would likely make it the world’s first commercial, power-generating facility if it succeeds. Many paradigm changing ideas require decades of research and all kinds of new measures, methods, controls, and technologies before we’re ready to accept them as common knowledge. Considering that it took many years for Michael Faraday to demonstrate the existence of electromagnetism to his colleagues, and still, he did not live to see his theory validated—let’s keep this in mind as we explore the path of Electric Swans.

What else we’re wandering…

China’s Nuclear Fusion Push: The Chinese government is putting an estimated $1 billion to $1.5 billion annually into fusion, according to Jean Paul Allain, who leads the US Energy Department’s Office of Fusion Energy Sciences. In comparison, the Biden administration has spent around $800 million a year. “To me, what’s more important than the number, it’s actually how fast they’re doing this,” Allain told CNN. Energy Singularity, the start-up in Shanghai, is just one example of China’s warp speed. It built its own tokamak in the three years since it was established, faster than any comparable reactor has ever been built. A tokamak is a highly complex cylindrical or donut-shaped machine that heats hydrogen to extreme temperatures, forming a soup-like plasma in which the nuclear fusion reaction occurs.

Major Physics Milestone: Zap Energy and their collaborators at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Los Alamos National Laboratory, University of California, San Diego, and University of Washington published a peer-reviewed article in Physical Review Letters demonstrating electron temperature greater than 10 million degrees (approximately 1 keV, the unit of temperature favored by fusion scientists) in a sheared-flow-stabilized Z pinch. Electron temperatures up to 3 keV were reported. This result is a major physics milestone for Zap Energy and for the broader fusion energy research community.

Craving more?

Electric Swans™
Ideas igniting tomorrow's currency

Alice is freely offering an exploratory virtual gathering for organizations to discover more about Electric Swans and ways to energize innovation and growth strategy. Drop us a note to learn more.

📘 Alice in Futureland books
🎧 Alice in Futureland podcasts