this post was submitted on 13 Aug 2023
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Showerthoughts

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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The most popular seem to be lighthearted, clever little truths, hidden in daily life.

Here are some examples to inspire your own showerthoughts: 1

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Seems to my ignorant eyes that we could always somehow split the power received into more manageable units, even if it has to be splitted a million times, ๐Ÿคทโ€โ™‚๏ธ.

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[โ€“] skeld 41 points 2 years ago (14 children)

Lightning has a peak power of 1TW for 30 microseconds according to Wikipedia, corresponding to an energy content of about 8000 Watt-hours. That is enough to run a 100 watt conventional light bulb for 80 hours, so not actually much energy. You would need to capture about half a million lightning strikes a second if you wanted to power the world that way, for example.

[โ€“] Lopoloma 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

1,400,000,000 strikes earth every year

According to https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/learn-about/weather/types-of-weather/thunder-and-lightning/facts-about-lightning

That would be barely 45 strikes each second.
That's four magnitudes away from your cited goal of powering earth.

The reason noone talks about harnessing lightning as a power source is the diminishing returns on top of its unreliability and it being demanding on the tech it would need - which we know for decades now.

My conclusion is OP didn't ~~research~~ google his question first.

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