Ramez Naam

speaker

373 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Jul 2026 last heard 16 Jul

Ramez Naam’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.

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The Pomp Podcast · Why Elon Wants to Put Data Centers in Space | Ramez Naam · 16 Jul 2026 podcast

And the biggest waves on the planet are around Antarctica.

So these are floating data centers that go up and down in giant ocean swells.

And they generate electricity from the water being sort of forced up a tube.

And we think they're super cheap.

And the cold ocean waters give you basically cooling for free.

So it's another bet.

In many ways, it's a bet like space-based solar.

Let's get past the limitations of the grid.

Let's get past local permitting and zoning.

Let's get past local pushback and go to our frontier where there's a lot of energy and where there's not a lot of obstacles from a regulatory standpoint.

Right.

Yes, it's amazing.

So what you see in the picture is a sphere at the top, but then you have a tube that's gently tapering.

It's like a football field long, 85 meters long, that goes down.

The waves send it up, and when it comes down, water is forced up that tube, and that water turns a turbine.

And the way they've got it, some very just clever –

systems of tubes and pipes, if you will, you can have 90, 92, 95% continuous power output from that system with almost no moving parts.

And you don't even need a cooling loop.

The GPU is just plugged into, you know, a heat sink that conducts electricity straight to the metal walls of this stuff that goes to this super cold ocean water and cools it.

In the Southern Ocean, a calm day is like the worst day on the waviest beach where people live.

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