Aeonian cycles of creation and destruction

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Many years ago I read Stephen Hawking’s book, A Brief History of Time.  I remember being captivated by the idea that the universe might be oscillating between phases of expansion and contraction.  The current expansion from the Big Bang might have been preceded, and could be followed, by a contraction to a Big Bang or Crunch.  A contracting universe would be governed by a different set of laws of physics; for example, the second law of thermodynamics would be reversed with every natural process leading to a reduction in entropy.  This idea might seem fanciful; however, it is not original because I recently discovered that the Sanskrit epic, Makabharata describes time as a giant wheel rotating through cycles of creation and destruction leading, over aeons, to the birth and death of entire worlds.

Sources:

Nilanjana Rana, Our time-poor lives, lived against a ticking clock, FT Weekend, May 26th 2023.

Stephen Hawking, A brief history of time, London: Random House, 1998.

Inconvenient data about electricity generation

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Decorative infographicI like a good infographic and this one showing annual energy flows for a country  is one of my favourites [see ‘Energy blending’ on May 22nd 2013].  Some governments produce them annually.  The image shows the latest one for the UK [2021]. It makes interesting but perhaps depressing reading.  Transportation using fossil fuels accounts for 31% (41.6/134.1 million tonnes oil equivalent) of the UK energy consumption while electricity output accounts for only 21% (28.6/134.1 million tonnes oil equivalent).  This implies that if all vehicles were powered by electricity then the output of our power stations would need to increase to 70.2 million tonnes oil equivalent or between two- and three-fold (excluding conversion & transmission losses).  You can perform a similar analysis for the USA [see 2021 Energy flow chart from LLNL].  Fossil-fuelled transportation accounted for 25%  (24.3/97.3 Quads) and electricity output 13% (12.9/97.3 Quads) so converting all transportation to be electrically powered requires a three-fold increase in electrical output from power stations. It is more difficult to find equivalent data for Japan; however, in 2014 [see Energy flow chart from I2CNER Kyushu University] fossil-fuelled transportation accounted for 32% (3.03/9.52 EJ) and electricity output 38% (3.66/9.52 EJ) so converting all transportation to be electrically powered requires a two-fold increase in electrical output from power stations.  None of the above takes account of space heating mainly via fossil fuel or that many existing power stations are fossil-fuelled and need to be replaced in order to achieve net zero carbon emissions.  Hence, the required scale of construction of power stations using renewable sources, including nuclear, solar and wind, is enormous and in most countries it is barely discussed let alone planned or started; leading to the conclusion that there is little chance of achieving net zero carbon emissions by 2050 as called for by the Paris agreement.

Work, rest and play in Smallville

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Decorative imageI am comfortable with the lack of certainty about us not being in a simulation [see ‘Are we in a simulation?‘ on September 28, 2022].  However, I know that some of you would prefer not to consider this possibility.  Unfortunately, recently published research has likely increased the probability that we are in a simulation because the researchers set up a simulation of a community of human-like agents called Smallville [Park et al, 2023].  The generative agents fuse large language models used in artificial intelligence with computational, interactive agents who eat, sleep, work and play just like humans and coalesce into social groups.  The simulation was created as a research tool for studying human interactions and emergent social behaviour which completely concurs with the argument for us already being part of a simulation created to study social behaviour.  Smallville only had 25 virtual inhabitants but the speed of advances in artificial intelligence and computational tools perhaps implies that a simulation of billions of agents (people) is not as far in the future as we once thought thus making it more credible that we are in a simulation.  The emergent social behaviour observed in Smallville suggests that our society is essentially a self-organising complex system that cannot be micro-managed from the centre.

Sources:

Oliver Roeder, Keeping up with the ChatGPT neighbours, FT Weekend, August 26/27 2023.

Camilla Cavendish, Charities could lead new age of community spirit, FT Weekend, August 26/27 2023.

Park JS, O’Brien JC, Cai CJ, Morris MR, Liang P, Bernstein MS. Generative agents: Interactive simulacra of human behavior. arXiv preprint arXiv:2304.03442. 2023.

Image: Ceramic tile by Pablo Picasso in museum in Port de Sóller Railway Station, Mallorca.

 

Difficult or inconvenient data about electric vehicles

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photograph of a MDI Airpod 2.0The embodied carbon (i.e. the greenhouse gas emissions produced by its manufacture and assembly) of a typical small (compact) battery electric vehicle (BEV) is about 14 tonnes CO2 compared to about 7 tonnes CO2 in a compact internal combustion engine vehicle (ICEV) [see brusselblog.co.uk for overview of estimates from several sources].  This is mainly a result of the embodied carbon in the batteries.  My compact ICEV does about 50 mpg and we drive about 8,000 per year so we burn 160 gallons per year and one gallon generates about 9 kg CO2; thus, the carbon emissions from my ICEV are about 1.4 tonnes CO2/year. Hence, with our driving habits, building and using a compact ICEV car for five years is equivalent, in carbon emissions (= 7 + (1.4 x 5)), to just building a small electric car.  This does not account for the carbon footprint of electricity generation for the electric car which will not be zero and be dependent on how the electricity is generated; nor is recycling of your old vehicle included.  If you already have a ICEV car then your additional emissions resulting from its continued use will take about a decade to be more than buying a new electric car though by buying an electric vehicle you will move the pollution away from where you live and work.  If you buy an electric SUV, as about 45% of new car purchasers do worldwide [see IEA data], then many more years will be required to acheive a net reduction in carbon emission because the embodied carbon in an electric SUV can be five to ten times more than a compact ICEV.  The challenge for engineers is to develop vehicles that have both zero emissions in use and also zero embodied carbon.  Meanwhile, the bottom line is to use public transport whenever possible but if you need a car then have a small one and keep an electric one for much longer than an internal combustion engine vehicle – neither helps achieve net zero.

Image: the MDI Airpod that runs on compressed air [see ‘Hot air is good for balloons but cold air is better for cars‘ on May 19th , 2021.