Honestly, to do anything like justice to this topic would require a publishable academic paper. That is something I simply do not have time for.
There are (at the very least) 2 reasonable places I can think of off the top of my head in which to look around for answers -- both are organizations that run annual meetings on the topic of geothermal energy.
One is the Geothermal Rising professional organization [1]. There is a claim on the website that the papers from the annual meeting (roughly a month back) are available for free download by anybody. I can't find the actual head-link for those papers. A search engine is your friend. (I would not trust an LLM for this particular job.)
A second one is the Stanford Geothermal Workshop [2]. That is also an annual meeting. Again, use a search engine.
Sorry to not be more helpful, but this is a pretty large topic.
The general shape of geothermal, where you're up here where it's cool, and you push a fluid down there where it's hot, and you bring the heat back up here to do work... Would a good enough insulator make it thermodynamically feasible to do it from an airship in the Venusian atmosphere?
Like, clearly Earth's crust supports temperature gradients which are steep enough to make the juice worth the squeeze. Presumably you're not going to find gradients so steep in the case of a runaway greenhouse effect, but whatever gradients you do find, are there fundamental limits preventing them from being steep enough?
To be at 1 atm you need to be way up near 50km, but you'd probably want to be up closer to 55km to get temperatures down, filling it with higher concentration O2 to make it breathable. Making the envelope durable would be pretty crazy in H2SO4, but maybe Ti would self passivate?
Arguably, more dangerous and harder to navigate than vacuum.
In Michael Lewis book Boomerang [0], there is a chapter about Iceland and he mentions geothermal.
My understanding:
- b/c of geothermal, huge amounts of electricity are available for low cost
- Iceland being an island makes it VERY expensive to build/transport goods back and forth
- The above combo means that aluminum smelting is the only industry where the electricity availability outweighed the costs of transport and being on an island.
I’m not going to bother to check the math but Gemini estimated $20billion/y to generate 1gw with hamsters on wheels so honestly that could be competitive.
I was interested until I saw the picture for labor month was a clearly generated picture with protest signs saying “Workers Unit” instead of “Workers Unite”.
Does that mean everything in the site is bogus or low-effort? No, but it means I don’t want to potentially waste my time or be misled.
Disclaimer: I work in this field.
This is a very brief, high-level overview. It weirdly dives deep into some less-relevant topics and glosses over a LOT of things.
It is not irrelevant, but not terribly reliable either. The "Mathematics" in the title is self-evidently clickbait.
YMMV.
Would you be open to do one yourself and share it? (Not sarcastic, just asking)
Honestly, to do anything like justice to this topic would require a publishable academic paper. That is something I simply do not have time for.
There are (at the very least) 2 reasonable places I can think of off the top of my head in which to look around for answers -- both are organizations that run annual meetings on the topic of geothermal energy.
One is the Geothermal Rising professional organization [1]. There is a claim on the website that the papers from the annual meeting (roughly a month back) are available for free download by anybody. I can't find the actual head-link for those papers. A search engine is your friend. (I would not trust an LLM for this particular job.)
A second one is the Stanford Geothermal Workshop [2]. That is also an annual meeting. Again, use a search engine.
Sorry to not be more helpful, but this is a pretty large topic.
[1] https://www.geothermal.org/2026-geothermal-rising-conference... [2] https://geothermal.stanford.edu/events/workshop/past-proceed...
The general shape of geothermal, where you're up here where it's cool, and you push a fluid down there where it's hot, and you bring the heat back up here to do work... Would a good enough insulator make it thermodynamically feasible to do it from an airship in the Venusian atmosphere?
Like, clearly Earth's crust supports temperature gradients which are steep enough to make the juice worth the squeeze. Presumably you're not going to find gradients so steep in the case of a runaway greenhouse effect, but whatever gradients you do find, are there fundamental limits preventing them from being steep enough?
The "airships riding on clouds of Venus" is a scifi genre that we need way more of.
To be at 1 atm you need to be way up near 50km, but you'd probably want to be up closer to 55km to get temperatures down, filling it with higher concentration O2 to make it breathable. Making the envelope durable would be pretty crazy in H2SO4, but maybe Ti would self passivate?
Arguably, more dangerous and harder to navigate than vacuum.
Wish geothermal energy was being discussed more for a power source for data centers.
Iceland has unlimited geothermal energy and a cold climate. Seems a lot easier than going to space for solar energy
In Michael Lewis book Boomerang [0], there is a chapter about Iceland and he mentions geothermal.
My understanding:
- b/c of geothermal, huge amounts of electricity are available for low cost
- Iceland being an island makes it VERY expensive to build/transport goods back and forth
- The above combo means that aluminum smelting is the only industry where the electricity availability outweighed the costs of transport and being on an island.
0 - https://amzn.to/4j8r3bO
Crypto mining was often mentioned too, but I seldom hear of icelandic Bitcoin miners these days.
It’s hard to come up with any idea that is not easier than going to space for solar energy.
It's easier to dump all the excess heat in Iceland than in space.
I read it as 'it's easier to dump the execs in Iceland than in space` :-D
Which might be true, though the second thing sounds promising as well...
Lots of hamsters in wheels driving tiny generators?
I’m not going to bother to check the math but Gemini estimated $20billion/y to generate 1gw with hamsters on wheels so honestly that could be competitive.
I was interested until I saw the picture for labor month was a clearly generated picture with protest signs saying “Workers Unit” instead of “Workers Unite”.
Does that mean everything in the site is bogus or low-effort? No, but it means I don’t want to potentially waste my time or be misled.
I think i just saw Fervo delivered their 100MW facility a day ahead of schedule in 23 months.