Sorry to bother you with this again. I have posted about this 2 times in the last 6 months already, because it is a fascinating topic and i want to talk about it. The issue is, whether there is renewable energy in the universe (truly renewable). Solar energy is called “renewable” but ultimately the sun will burn out. What then?

I have last time gotten the answers that “it’s a stupid question because we have more urgent problems, such as corrupt politics etc.”. Frankly, i disagree. This question is of existential importance, because it gives us an outlook into the far future. These perspectives are more valuable than playing 15 minutes of a computer game, which you could do instead of reading this article.

I uploaded a neat PDF here: https://files.catbox.moe/p8tg6i.pdf

Additionally i will copy-paste the article text here.

Spider Web Cosmology

From: https://feddit.org/u/gandalf_der_12te
Date: 2026-07-26
Subject: Renewable energy in a cosmological context

Abstract

In this paper i present a simple and clear approach to extract useful energy out of the cosmic expansion using mithril material wires, i.e. wires with very high Young’s modulus and ultimate tensile strength. This energy is renewable, such that it represents a continuous and probably eternal power source.

Introduction and Motivation

The industrial revolution has allowed for a significant growth of humanity. While global population numbers were around 300 million around 1000 CE, it scaled to almost 8 billion by 2000 CE. That is an almost 30-fold increase. This was made possible largely by two inventions: the combustion-engine driven tractor and the natural-gas-based ammonia synthesis. Both consume massive amounts of energy, which mostly came from fossil fuels, which are not renewable. This naturally raises the question of whether humanity will ever run out of energy, which would induce a reversal of this massive growth, i.e. a significant population shrinkage. Related to this is the problem of climate change, i.e. whether there exists a long-lasting energy source that does not poison our own living conditions that we rely on.

Ever since solar energy started around 2020 to become economically competitive, many people have felt deep relief from the anxiety around climate change and the threat that humanity would eventually run out of fuel. However, the sun is predicted to burn out in approximately 10 billion years, and then humanity will have to find a new source of energy. While other stars do exist, those too will eventually run out of energy, with the slowest- burning stars (red dwarf stars) predicted to last for approximately 1000 billion years. Slower-burning stars do not practically exist as they would not be massive enough to ignite nuclear fusion in the first place.

What other sources of energy are there in cosmology? Especially, do sources exist that do not run out after a while, i.e. that are truly renewable?

Scope and Context

This paper uses the insights from general relativity, especially cosmic expansion, and simple mechanics to present a mechanism for renewable power in cosmology. While quantum aspects, such as vacuum energy, are highly interesting and might slightly change the reality, they’re left out of this analysis and regarded as an extra feature of nature that will have to be stacked on top of this one.

Mechanism

The term „spider web cosmology“ is justified if one visualizes the core concepts of this proposal:

An array of wires made from a very thin (lightweight) material called „Mithril“ are laid out throughout the universe, which have extremely high elasticity (Young’s modulus), which means they exert force when stretched without significantly changing length.

Living organisms reside at the intersection points. As the intersection points are pulled away from each other over time, the wires between them will be stretched. The force that each wire exerts can then be calculated from Hooke’s law: F=σ⋅A=E⋅ε⋅A , with F being force, σ being stress, E being Young’s modulus, ε being axial strain, A being cross-section area.

The mithril wires are chains of small link elements. As the living organisms at the intersection point let the wires contract from time to time, while generating power from that contraction, new link elements are produced and attached to the wire.

The mithril wires have to be produced from new matter that gets produced from a matter-anti-matter pair, that gets produced from the energy harvested from the chain relaxation. In other words, the chain has to release more energy when it relaxes than the rest mass of the mithril chain links.

This is why this mithril material has to be extremely lightweight while still having high Young’s modulus and high ultimate tensile strength. Practically speaking, I’m not entirely sure whether such a material could exist. Using simplifications and a linear model of elasticity, common steel does not have good enough properties for this application.

I will proof this in the following calculation. For this, we have to look at the rest mass of a steel chain link and the energy that can be released when the chain is relaxed by the length of one link element. Let x be the length of one link element.

The work W1 released by the chain is W 1=F⋅x=E⋅ε⋅A⋅x , while the rest mass (rest energy W2) of one chain link is W 2= ρ⋅A⋅x with density ρ, therefore for W1 to be larger than W2 one gets the relation E⋅ε > ρ. Comparing this to the actual values for steel:

  • E is around 200 GPa (2·10¹¹ J/m³)
  • ρ is around 8 000 kg/m³, equivalent to a rest energy of around 8·10²⁰ J/m³

Therefore, ε would have to be larger than 4·10⁹, i.e. the steel wire would have to stretch to 4 billion times its usual length. However, commercially available steel used in construction typically breaks apart for ε > 3·10⁻³ (Source: Wikipedia). These steel wires would have to have a factor 10¹² higher ultimate tensile strength!!

The judgement is still out on whether a good enough mithril material could hypothetically exist.

  • gandalf_der_12te@feddit.orgOPEnglish
    12·
    3 days ago

    so your whole comment is very belittling and i would not give that advice to a five-year old child because while you do say “thank you for your contribution”, you did not actually interact with the content. i assume you glanced over it and said “well that won’t work because … idk. if it worked, i’d have already heard about it”. that does not stimulate discussion but hinder it.

    As an example of the distinction, though there are a lot of different elements out there in our universe, we have to make materials using the properties that those elements have available to us, we can’t make up the properties that we want the material to have first then try and force the elements to do precisely what we want them to.

    so first of all, actually this is precisely what has happened in science multiple times over. the chemical element germanium was theoretically predicted first (by mendelejev) and only after that was it experimentally discovered. the planet neptune was first posited to exist based on mathematical calculations, only after that has it been found in the night sky. so yes, we do routinely make predictions about absurd and exotic stuff and only after that actually start looking for it.

    If the second law of thermodynamics states that entropy is always tending to a maximum, and that increasing disorder defines the arrow of time, how is it possible that life even exists? Humans are insanely complex, and exist by taking simple atoms and molecules and combining them in an intricate ordered structure. The different layers of external and internal complex structure is incalculable; we are extremely highly ordered in a universe forcing disorder.

    Also this has nothing to do with thermodynamics. Thermodynamics historically developed to describe hot gases and combustion engines, things on everyday-life scales. It’s never made to describe processes on cosmological scale. I hope that you do not seriously apply that theory outside of its intended context, because those results would be meaningless. There is no indication that cosmological processes would have to adhere to the second law of thermodynamics (or if you do have such indication, please send it to me, i’d like to see it). Please make as little unnecessary assumptions as possible.

    • ranzispa@mander.xyzEnglish
      2·
      2 days ago

      I have never heard that for cosmological processes the second law of thermodynamics does not apply. Never heard it does, but I don’t see why it shouldn’t. I guess except inside black holes, where we have absolutely no idea what’s going on.

      • gandalf_der_12te@feddit.orgOPEnglish
        2·
        1 day ago

        actually, there’s quite a few places all over the internet where this is being discussed, if you just google for “cosmology energy conservation”. spontaneously i found these sites:

        Now while i acknowledge that reddit is not the peak insight level, and i can’t tell about that blog post, it does quite clearly state things such as:

        But many people have just this reaction. It’s clear that cosmologists have not done a very good job of spreading the word about something that’s been well-understood since at least the 1920’s: energy is not conserved in general relativity. (With caveats to be explained below.)

        I can go look for more discussion about this topic if you want to. Or you can just google it yourself. The issue is a bit complicated because it involves complicated mathematics though. So, the quote from the blog post is accurate: “cosmologists have not done a very good job of spreading the word about [this]: energy is not conserved in general relativity.”

        also to be more picky about it: the second law of thermodynamics precisely states that energy cannot be converted with a 100% efficiency from heat into mechanical work / electrical energy. This (topic of energy non-conservation in cosmology) is yet a step further, because it argues not so much that 1 J of heat can be converted into 1 J of mechanical work, but instead it asks whether 1 J of heat can be converted into 2 J of heat. So it’s not about different types of energy being able to be converted into each other, but about the non-conservation of the sum of all of these energies.

        edit:

        General relativity introduces new phenomena. In an expanding universe, photons spontaneously redshift and tethers spontaneously gain tension; if vacuum energy is positive, the total vacuum energy of the universe appears to spontaneously increase as the volume of space increases. Some scholars claim that energy is no longer meaningfully conserved in any identifiable form.

        If the metric under consideration is static (that is, does not change with time) or asymptotically flat (that is, at an infinite distance away spacetime looks empty), then energy conservation holds without major pitfalls. In practice, some metrics, notably the Friedmann–Lemaître–Robertson–Walker metric that appears to govern the universe, do not satisfy these constraints and energy conservation is not well defined.

      • CeffTheCeph@kbin.earth
        3·
        2 days ago

        “if someone points out to you that your pet theory of the universe is in disagreement with Maxwell’s equations – then so much the worse for Maxwell’s equations. If it is found to be contradicted by observation – well, those experimentalists do bungle things sometimes. But if your theory is found to be against the second law if thermodynamics I can give you no hope; there is nothing for it but to collapse in deepest humiliation.” -Arthur Eddington, 1927 (the physicist who coined the term ‘arrow of time’)

    • CeffTheCeph@kbin.earth
      6·
      3 days ago

      I didn’t mean to belittle anyone.

      I was simply trying to suggest some interesting further reading on the topic you are studying and engaged with. This is an area of interest of mine as well.

      • gandalf_der_12te@feddit.orgOPEnglish
        22·
        2 days ago

        ok, thanks :) is there something that you would like to know more about specifically? i might be able to give you some hints as well

        • CeffTheCeph@kbin.earth
          3·
          2 days ago

          Sure, I have a few questions, but I will start with one:

          When you state:

          This paper uses the insights from general relativity, especially cosmic expansion

          Can you be more specific? What insights are you referring to? Are you assuming flat geometry of the universe under a Lambda-CDM cosmological model?

          To me it seems that the geometry of the universe, whether open, flat, or closed would have a large impact on the mechanical action of the wires at the length scales you are proposing.

          • gandalf_der_12te@feddit.orgOPEnglish
            1·
            2 days ago

            yeah, i was implicitely assuming the lambda-CDM model with a positive lambda, such that expansion continues forever at an exponential rate. while not 100% sure that this is the right model to describe how the universe behaves, it is the current standard model that most people use. it’s valid to criticize that choice of model as an (not justified enough) assumption.

            frankly, we don’t have enough data to say with certainty how the universe is gonna develop long-term. and maybe it won’t actually continue to expand forever. i’m just assuming this here because most people do. and you have to start somewhere.

            edit: in fact i’m glad that you asked :) it means that you’re an attentive reader. always check the assumptions that are implicitely made.

            • CeffTheCeph@kbin.earth
              1·
              2 days ago

              There is one more assumption you are making that I would like to ask you about. From my perspective, when you suggest that:

              This energy is renewable, such that it represents a continuous and probably eternal power source

              you are implying the assumption that some ‘eternal power source’ in the universe exists. This assumption is the opposite of what “most people do”, and so nobody ever starts there. This assumption violates the 2nd law of thermodynamics (this assumption would allow for Perpetual Motion.

              Are you able to address this inconsistency of your research with the models most people are using for their understanding of energy physics?

              • gandalf_der_12te@feddit.orgOPEnglish
                1·
                1 day ago

                yeah, actually, i am. or at least i suspect so.

                the thing with energy conservation is that it mostly comes from noether’s theorem (or variants thereof) that state that as long as the laws of physics don’t change over time, no new energy can be created. you’ve probably heard about it. Noether’s theorem.

                Now, what i’m suspecting is (but i have yet to do the calculation) is that while there is a conserved quantity in cosmology (as long as the rate of expansion stays constant), it is not what most people would identify as “usable energy” in their everyday life. So, you might have a quantity E that describes the total amount of energy in the universe, or in a region of spacetime that is defined by some comoving boundaries, but it does not translate to the intuitive picture of energy (light energy, mechanical work, heat energy) that most people use for practical computation. This could be possible e.g. because there’s an additional, negative energy stored in the “gravitational field”, which just means, we add an additional quantity (called the gravitational field) sothat the total sum of all energies stays constant. Yet, paradoxically, that additional gravitational field energy does not actually affect a local observer in any practical way. Just like you wouldn’t notice it at all, if the electrical potential dropped by the same amount everywhere in space at the same time, because the measurable electrical field strength is only the gradient (change over distance) of the electric potential, so if the potential drops by a constant everywhere, the gradient does not change. Still, if you have filled your universe with more positive charges than negative charges, the total electrostatic energy of the universe still drops (according to mathematics). The same happens with the gravitational field.

                So, we have two types of energy: a useful one and one that we can probably not even measure, and while the sum of the two is conserved, either of them is not. And that’s what’s at play here.

                edit: you might want to read https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservation_of_energy#General_relativity

                General relativity introduces new phenomena. In an expanding universe, photons spontaneously redshift and tethers spontaneously gain tension; if vacuum energy is positive, the total vacuum energy of the universe appears to spontaneously increase as the volume of space increases. Some scholars claim that energy is no longer meaningfully conserved in any identifiable form.

                If the metric under consideration is static (that is, does not change with time) or asymptotically flat (that is, at an infinite distance away spacetime looks empty), then energy conservation holds without major pitfalls. In practice, some metrics, notably the Friedmann–Lemaître–Robertson–Walker metric that appears to govern the universe, do not satisfy these constraints and energy conservation is not well defined.

                For asymptotically flat universes, Einstein and others salvage conservation of energy by introducing a specific global gravitational potential energy that cancels out mass-energy changes triggered by spacetime expansion or contraction. This global energy has no well-defined density and cannot technically be applied to a non-asymptotically flat universe; however, for practical purposes this can be finessed, and so by this view, energy is conserved in our universe. Alan Guth stated that the universe might be “the ultimate free lunch”, and theorized that, when accounting for gravitational potential energy, the net energy of the Universe is zero.

                which is basically what i tried to argue in the earlier half of my comment, i think.

                • CeffTheCeph@kbin.earth
                  1·
                  21 hours ago

                  I think you need to slow down a little bit and be more specific on a lot of the things you are saying. You are mixing a ton of very different theories here in a way that doesn’t really use the specifics of the theories to supports your arguments.

                  What I mean by this is that, in your theory you are using only the stated conclusions of hundreds of scientists who have spent thousands of hours meticulously outlining different physical theories (outlined within the barriers of formal physical laws), but not the actual components of those theories that were used to reach those conclusions.

                  However, in your new theory, which is an expansion of the work already conducted by others in the past, you are coming to your own conclusions for your theory based on the conclusions of those past scientists, not based on the actual theory those scientists used to reach their conclusions.

                  This is precisely how science fiction works, this is not how new scientific discoveries are made. One of the main problems that this approach leads to is unavoidable bias in your conclusions. For example, in this last comment here you did a great job of outlining a lot of recent theories that deal with conservation of energy within general relativity. However, general relativity is just a theory, it is not a physical law. So in order to form your own new theory based on GR you need to use the principles, postulates, axioms and assumptions that were used in developing GR.

                  What you have done here is used GR’s conclusions as justification for your assumptions and just stated your own conclusions without providing any reasonable instructions as to how you arrived at those conclusions (you’ve said that the maths show this, or that you can prove that, but you never actually did the math or proved anything, you just said ‘look at what they did’).

                  More critical to our current line of discussion, you still haven’t provided any justification whatsoever on why your assumption that ‘eternal power sources’ exist in the universe is valid. While, as you’ve pointed out, there is a line of theoretical development that allows that energy not be conserved within particular observational scales in the universe while still conforming to the 1st law, nothing you’ve highlighted here addresses the fact that hot moves to cold spontaneously in our universe (the 2nd law of thermodynamics).

                  The second law of thermodynamics applies everywhere across the universe at all times, is the reason time is irreversible, and most importantly for this discussion, eliminates the possibility of ‘free energy’, of ‘perpetual motion’ or of an ‘eternal power source’. If your theory claims that eternal power is possible, you need to provide irrefutable evidence supporting the assumption that the 2nd law is invalid. No one in history has ever been able to provide any such evidence and so without providing that irrefutable evidence your theory can only be considered as science fiction.

                  As I was trying to suggest before in my original comment, KEEP GOING! Your passion for discovery and your obvious abundance of creativity is so desperately needed in the scientific world. Creativity is what pushes boundaries. The only hard part is navigating that fine line between what is possible in our observable universe, and what we want to be possible in our creatively idealized ‘fantasy’ universe. Theory in fact does show us what could be possible, but only if it agrees with what has already been shown to be possible.