Seeker196

I'll try to explain:

Walk over a known (and still hot, not a pluton) magma chamber, say one under a volcano.

Drill down.
A simple sensor in the drill will let you know you've reached the chamber, because it will cease to respond as it has melted (try not to make a big hole, or you may find a lot of extremely hot gases have burned off your face).

Feed copper wire down the hole, until the end of it is melting.

The copper conducts heat much better than the surrounding rock. The magma the wire is near is producing a lot of heat, almost enough to melt the wire.

The heat travels through the wire to the surface. Your wire is insulated with insulating cable, to prevent heat loss into the surrounding rock.

The wire emerges on the surface in an insulated chamber you have constructed. The wire has been twisted into a coil-shape, and is still warm enough to boil a certain quantity of water, which is circulated through the small chamber via pipes. Once we have steam I probably don't need to explain how a turbine works.

Our problems: Our wire doesn't conduct enough heat to boil an awful lot of water. We don't want a very expensive kettle.

Solutions:
-Alternative materials for our wire, replacing the pure copper 'conductor' with lower melting point materials, greater conductivity, etc. Alloys of nickel, titanium,etc.
-A wider wire allows more heat, and more steam, and thus more power
-More wires. Possibly hundreds.

Differences from conventional geothermal power:
-Does not rely on subsurface water, which can fluctuate, and run out.
-Uses geothermal heat to run a steam turbine, as opposed the Iceland/New Zealand systems in use today.
-Relies on a (possbily extremely expensive) conductor with the following characteristics:
-High conductivity (not electrical; thermal)
-High melting point
-High tensile strength (brittle alloys will crack and break in thermal cycling, possible frost, earth movements, etc)

I believe this system might work in areas with identified, stable, and relatively close to the surface magma chambers. It obviously doesn't generate a lot of power for the cost invested, but it is enviro friendly.

There might be some way of making in work in a deep sea subduction zone, but I can't see how.

AtomSmasher

This is nothing new, in Total Recall, didn't Piers Anthony assert that the entire core of Mars is ice? Fortunately the alien inhabitants of Mars had the foresight to build a giant reactor we could use to melt it, producing an oxygenated atmosphere and surface water for our convenience (or else they would blow up the sun but that part is in the book). Anyway, these are both works of FICTION, if some respectable institution claimed this then I would care. Since LOTR is a movie about goblins and elves and rings that make you invisible, the strange dynamics of the core of middle Earth don't particularly shock me. If you were objecting to the idea of the core spinning, then there is a fairly reasonable theory that the core of the Earth is spinning. Since the Earth generates an electromagnetic field, it follows that a solid nickel/iron core generates it through differential rotation with liquid/semi-molten mantle. I'm no geologist either but this seems like a convincing argument for a spinning core.

beausoleil

No, there is a solid inner core and a molten outer core. The silicate mantle is above this.

Ruy Lopez

I believe this system might work in areas with identified, stable, and relatively close to the surface magma chambers. It obviously doesn't generate a lot of power for the cost invested, but it is enviro friendly.

You have answered my usual weightiest consideration, economic feasibility. Power rates needed to be charged by the project would be prohibitive due to cost of special conductors and lower yield as compared to high pressure/temp. steam which flashes out free.

However, one should not stop thinking. I've read Mageth's link on page 1 earlier but the link does not work now??? If the link returns, it would be good to compare that technology to presently viable ones.

You actually remind me of myself 30 years ago. In Manila our problem is cooling due to high humidity and temperatures. I used to sketch cooling contraptions and civil works and wondered why engineers do not adopt my ideas. I went further by calculating cooling capacities, costs and revenues and when I could not arrive at my targets, stretched and finagled thermodynamic conversion efficiences, utilization factors , solar constant and the like, to cut down my investments and costs. A hobby turned fantasy.

Flesh out your idea and you might come out with something workable.

DamagedGoods

I suppose movies sporting a lot of pseudoscience irk me because they are "believable" enough for a lot of people to think that the pseudoscience portrayed in the movie is reality.

happyboy

i swear! haven't you people read the holy scriptures??? the earth is flat, and therefore has NO core!

happyboy, savior of the creationists

lpetrich

I saw the trailer for that movie when I went to see Star Trek: Nemesis at a local theater, and its premise is nothing more than a BIG load of male-bovine excrement.