Starting with the premise that we’ll eventually stop using fossil fuels, Robert Laughlin imagines the energy sources of tomorrow
ROBERT LAUGHLIN, a Nobel laureate for his work in quantum physics, starts his study of our energy futures with an absurd proposition – that it doesn’t matter much whether we burn all our coal and oil or leave it underground.
It’s a cop-out, of course. If we burn all the coal, we would probably burn too. But for the purposes of Powering the Future, it means “we don’t have to analyze contemporary energy struggles”. Instead, he moves swiftly on to imagine what a world that does not…
