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Anybody Who Thinks Orbital Data Centers are a Good Idea Is Suffering from AI Psychosis, Experts Argue (tech.yahoo.com)
submitted 3 months ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] 3 points 3 months ago* (4 children)

Temperature is what matters. The same amount of heat out into a river can significantly warm the whole river downstream, but have no detectable effect on the ocean temperature, just because the heat is diluted so much.

Like, dilute a bottle of tequila with two liters of cola, sure you'll get drunk - but pour that same tequila into a full swimming pool, and you'd never get drunk even if you drink the pool water all day.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago (3 children)

    You understand rivers largely empty into oceans, right? Your tequila analogy leaves that part out. Eventually, you're still dumping tequila (heat) into the pool (ocean).

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  • [–] 2 points 3 months ago (1 child)

    It's a matter of size. You'll be dumping the tequila into the pool, but the alcohol percentage of the pool is in all practical sense, still 0.

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  • [–] 3 points 3 months ago

    The size of the pool is of no importance globally. You're still creating the same amount of heat

    The only real difference is that the river heat can get higher because it's more localised and, therefore, can cause more trouble along the way.

    But from the pov of the ocean ? Rounding error

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

    The effects of heat are all due to temperature, which is reduced by dilution.

    The alcohol molecules represent heat energy (Joules), and the ABV% represents temperature (Kelvin).

    Rivers are small enough to be negatively affected by data center waste heat, but oceans really aren't. They are being affected by the greenhouse effect though, because that is on a scale of petawatts, a million times the gigawatt scale of all global data centers together.

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