Energy
NEW ENERGY ERA In the following article, ANDRZEJ SIKORA, President of the Energy Studies Institute, looks ahead to new untapped sources of energy that promise to satisfy the world’s energy needs.
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new energy era is upon us. Based on renewables and fossil fuels, mankind has reached for the sky, but we are still limited in our efforts. We lack technologies for solar (PV) systems and we still live without appropriate energy efficiency. Our technologies allow us to cross oceans, to reach the Moon and the outer reaches of our Solar System, improving our electric / energy transmission. But can we spread our wings even further to look for new spectacular possibilities so close to us but so far at the same time that our senses do not perceive them? In 1687, Sir Isaac Newton, published his “Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy.” It contains the three basic laws of
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motion: a stationary body will stay stationary unless an external force is applied to it: force equals mass times acceleration, and a change in motion is proportional to the force applied. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. In 1684, Edmund Halley considered the issue of the force attracting the Sun and a planet. His expectation was that the force must be inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them. But he could not prove it. So visiting Newton asked quite the opposite question: “What curve will the planet around the Sun move if the connecting force is inversely proportional?” Newton said ellipse. This was the genesis of Newton’s universal laws of gravitation and of Halley’s collaboration in having them
published. Interestingly, today, the most influential book on physics and the Newton Laws turned out to be a special case. For low velocities and weak gravitational fields, Einstein’s equations change into Newton’s equations. The world of our everyday experience is the Newton world. But I intend to push everybody to the Hawking, Penrose and Higgs understanding of the Universe. Who could expect 50 years ago that in every region of the Universe we find a field of energy, the Higgs fields. Gravitational waves are ‘ripples’ in the fabric of space-time caused by some of the most violent and energetic processes in the Universe. Albert Einstein predicted the existence of gravitational waves in 1916 in his general theory of relativity. His mathematics showed