Honestly, to do anything like justice to this topic would require a publishable academic paper. That is something I simply do not have time for.
There are (at the very least) 2 reasonable places I can think of off the top of my head in which to look around for answers -- both are organizations that run annual meetings on the topic of geothermal energy.
One is the Geothermal Rising professional organization [1]. There is a claim on the website that the papers from the annual meeting (roughly a month back) are available for free download by anybody. I can't find the actual head-link for those papers. A search engine is your friend. (I would not trust an LLM for this particular job.)
A second one is the Stanford Geothermal Workshop [2]. That is also an annual meeting. Again, use a search engine.
Sorry to not be more helpful, but this is a pretty large topic.
The general shape of geothermal, where you're up here where it's cool, and you push a fluid down there where it's hot, and you bring the heat back up here to do work... Would a good enough insulator make it thermodynamically feasible to do it from an airship in the Venusian atmosphere?
Like, clearly Earth's crust supports temperature gradients which are steep enough to make the juice worth the squeeze. Presumably you're not going to find gradients so steep in the case of a runaway greenhouse effect, but whatever gradients you do find, are there fundamental limits preventing them from being steep enough?
I’m not going to bother to check the math but Gemini estimated $20billion/y to generate 1gw with hamsters on wheels so honestly that could be competitive.
Disclaimer: I work in this field.
This is a very brief, high-level overview. It weirdly dives deep into some less-relevant topics and glosses over a LOT of things.
It is not irrelevant, but not terribly reliable either. The "Mathematics" in the title is self-evidently clickbait.
YMMV.
Would you be open to do one yourself and share it? (Not sarcastic, just asking)
Honestly, to do anything like justice to this topic would require a publishable academic paper. That is something I simply do not have time for.
There are (at the very least) 2 reasonable places I can think of off the top of my head in which to look around for answers -- both are organizations that run annual meetings on the topic of geothermal energy.
One is the Geothermal Rising professional organization [1]. There is a claim on the website that the papers from the annual meeting (roughly a month back) are available for free download by anybody. I can't find the actual head-link for those papers. A search engine is your friend. (I would not trust an LLM for this particular job.)
A second one is the Stanford Geothermal Workshop [2]. That is also an annual meeting. Again, use a search engine.
Sorry to not be more helpful, but this is a pretty large topic.
[1] https://www.geothermal.org/2026-geothermal-rising-conference... [2] https://geothermal.stanford.edu/events/workshop/past-proceed...
The general shape of geothermal, where you're up here where it's cool, and you push a fluid down there where it's hot, and you bring the heat back up here to do work... Would a good enough insulator make it thermodynamically feasible to do it from an airship in the Venusian atmosphere?
Like, clearly Earth's crust supports temperature gradients which are steep enough to make the juice worth the squeeze. Presumably you're not going to find gradients so steep in the case of a runaway greenhouse effect, but whatever gradients you do find, are there fundamental limits preventing them from being steep enough?
Wish geothermal energy was being discussed more for a power source for data centers.
Iceland has unlimited geothermal energy and a cold climate. Seems a lot easier than going to space for solar energy
It’s hard to come up with any idea that is not easier than going to space for solar energy.
Lots of hamsters in wheels driving tiny generators?
I’m not going to bother to check the math but Gemini estimated $20billion/y to generate 1gw with hamsters on wheels so honestly that could be competitive.
It's easier to dump all the excess heat in Iceland than in space.
I think i just saw Fervo delivered their 100MW facility a day ahead of schedule in 23 months.