Steven Novella
speaker
1,536 appearances
3 recordings
2 series
first heard Jun 2026
last heard 4 Jul
Steven Novella’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 3 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 2.
Appearances
So we need better alloys that could tolerate the hotter temperatures.
You also wear out the drill bits.
What happens when you wear out a drill bit?
You're two kilometers down.
Your drill bit goes out.
You have to pull it up and replace it and put it back down.
So it massively slows down the whole process.
It costs a ton of money.
So harder drill bits that could survive longer would also make drilling deeper more economical.
But there's a company working on a new technology.
Particle beams?
Close.
It's using energy rather than physically drilling.
When you say energy, energy beam, what are you talking about?
So they use a gyrotron, which is similar to what you have in your microwave oven, to generate powerful millimeter wavelength electromagnetic waves, right?
And these could be directed down metal pipes and then focused on the rock in order to vaporize them.
They could vaporize rock with this powerful millimeter wavelength EMF.
And then not only that, there's nothing physical touching the rock, so nothing wears out.
And debris removal, you still have to remove the vapor.
It's not like on Star Trek where you vanish into nothingness.
Showing 461–480 of 1,536 · page 24 of 77
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