“Available Energy”, 1928-09-28 (; similar):
…But if the point of view developed in the foregoing is correct what sources of energy are there, then, for man to draw upon during the next billion years of his existence? The answer has already been given but it may be restated thus:
The energy available to him through the disintegration of radioactive, or any other, atoms may perhaps be sufficient to keep the corner peanut and popcorn man going, on a few street corners in our larger towns, for a long time yet to come, but that is all.
The energy available to him through the building-up of the common elements out of the enormous quantities of hydrogen existing in the waters of the earth would be practically unlimited provided such atom-building processes could be made to take place on the earth.
But the indications of the cosmic rays are that these atom-building processes can take place only under the conditions of temperature and pressure existing in interstellar space.
Hence there is not even a remote likelihood that man can ever tap this source of energy at all. The hydrogen of the oceans is not likely to ever be converted by man into helium, oxygen, silicon or iron.
The energy supplied to man in the past has been obtained wholly from the sun, and a billion years hence he will still, I think, be supplying all his needs for light, and warmth, and power entirely from the sun.
How best to use solar energy it is not the purpose of this paper to reveal. That subject is treated in masterly fashion in a paper by Edwin E. Slosson entitled “The Coming of the New Age of Coal” [sic].
When the matter of the sun has all been stoked into his furnaces and they are gone altogether out another sun will probably have been formed, so that on this earth or on some other earth—it matters not which some billion of years hence—the development of man may still be going on.
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