Work by scientists at the University of Minnesota could result
in a new way to capture heat from underground geothermal
sources, which lets us generate clean electrical energy for our
own uses while simultaneously disposing of some of the CO2
that's responsible for global warming. Though it sounds
implausibly positive, it actually all lines up in terms of
science, and best of all, this piece of lateral thinking was
achieved in a flash of inspiration during a road trip--the best
type of idea. The way geothermal energy is usually tapped for
power generation is by drilling a couple of shafts deep into the
earth, and pumping high-pressure water down one shaft. This
makes its way through a hot rock layer (which gets its heat from
the essentially inexhaustible energy of nearby plumes of hot
lava) to the second shaft, picking up heat en route. The
resulting steam is used to push a turbine, and generate power.
Except that two scientists pondered: What if the water in this
equation was replaced with high-pressure carb