Editor’s Note: The following contains spoilers for the series “The End is Ny” on Peacock TV.
What will Bill Nye the Science Guy get our home planet for Earth Day?
The ultimate gift: fusion energy.
“We need electricity,” Nye told Live Science in an exclusive interview on Thursday (April 20). “Not only do we need what we can get now with existing technology — wind and solar and geothermal — but we need what’s called baseload. We need electricity when the sun isn’t shining and the wind isn’t blowing.” And while powerful, nuclear power carries the risk of meltdowns and creates nuclear waste, he added.
Fusion is an achievement that can make any scientist starry-eyed. with Nuclear fusion – a process that breaks two light atoms together to form a heavier, new element, like the Sun does when it fuses hydrogen atoms together to form helium – humans would have clean, almost unlimited energy.
Related: What is the minimum number of people needed to survive the apocalypse?
Scientists have spent decades searching for this elusive source of nearly unlimited energy and Closer than ever to achieving fusionBut despite great progress, Useful, cost-effective nuclear fusion is still many years away. Achieving such a feat would be a priceless gift for Earth Day on Saturday (April 22). It would also make a nice gesture to the planet from the Science Guy because in Nye’s latest TV series, “The End Is Nye,” Mother Nature basically kills her every single episode.
The series, released in December 2022, details how multiple planet-shattering disasters such as record-breaking hurricanes simultaneously; A multitude of earthquakes and tsunamis; Terrible dust storms and a string of space rocks slam into Earth, potentially ejecting them if they pass.
“I’ve been killed seven times in six shows,” Nye said. “But then I come back.”
In each episode, along with a cameo from executive producer Seth MacFarlane, Nye examines how humans can exacerbate these disasters through so-called “cow acts,” referring to a cow that allegedly kicked a lamppost and started the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. did (Despite popular usage of the phrase, this story may not be true and may have a racist slant, as the woman who owned the cow was allegedly poor, Irish, and an easy scapegoat for tragedy, Nye noted.) She would be one. A cow act, for instance, if government agencies fail to act A potentially hazardous asteroid zooming toward Earth, or threatening to fry their electrical components to smithereens if officials don’t shut down the electrical grid before a solar storm hits.
As he walks us through the science of each disaster on the show, Nye offers “evidence-based optimism” about how we can make scientifically informed plans to avoid such acts of cow and protect against these worst-case scenarios.
“Look, you’ve got to be optimistic, or you’re not going to get anything done — and I’m talking about anything,” Nye said. “If you think you’re going to lose a soccer game, you’re going to lose.” Except in this case, the outcome of a soccer game concerns the fate of all humanity.
But beyond optimism, we also need a plan, and that’s where science comes in, he said. “You have to have a plan, not just hope and optimism,” he said. “And that plan comes from the science. From the evaluation of the evidence.”
It is no wonder that Nye wants to gift the Earth with nuclear fusion, as this will help solve many of humanity’s problems, including Human-caused climate changeWhich is linked to a host of disasters, incl Increasingly severe stormsHeat waves and droughts that become more frequent through the year.
In an example of an evidence-based plan that could one day come to fruition, Fusion could help raise living standards for people around the world by providing energy that could power the Internet, which in turn could deliver education, especially to families and women, he added. “Then, I believe we will be able to invest in clean water for everyone on the planet,” he said. “It is: change the world.”
Only humans are capable of devising such forward-thinking plans that can protect and enhance our species. He said the dinosaurs weren’t so lucky when an asteroid hit Earth 66 million years ago. Not that they had the tools to design and Test the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission like NASA Recently used spacecraft crashes to alter the trajectory of asteroids.
“There is no evidence that ancient dinosaurs had a space program,” Nye said. “If they did, it wasn’t good enough, let’s face it.”
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