No. Nuclear isn’t (unless you’re going to stretch “solar” to include past supernovae. Geothermal comes from nuclear fission (or possibly residual gravitational energy? Either way, not solar). Given the discovery of hydrocarbons off-Earth, it’s possible that some proportion of oil is non-solar in origin, too, though that would mean it’s ultimately geothermal, and thus a nuclear by-product. Not sure of the status of that speculation currently, though.
And fossil fuels are solar very indirectly—they’re solar from many million years ago; biomass/wind/hydro are solar quite directly—it’s just this or last few year’s solar.
Well, unless I’m totally confused, the uranium/plutonium were generated by solar fusion.
Also, most geothermal heat is generated by radioactive decay (some is residual gravitational binding energy from earth’s formation) , making it indirect nuclear fission power, (and thus ultimately solar power, if you want to be unpleasantly technical.)
Really? Thanks. I thought it mostly was derived from gravitational energy as the earth formed and only a bit of extra nuclear heating. Though I guess it might not make sense that it would still be hot then...
Well, generally, elements heavier than iron only show up when a star goes kablewey, right? so it’s “solar”, but it’s not OUR solar, which was kinda the point, I guess.
Since we’ve already gone down the rabbit hole of extreme pedantry, I should point out that “solar” properly only applies to our own star, sol. The adjective for stars in general is “stellar”. If we ever bring solar panels to the neighborhood of other stars, this is going to be a nasty bit of terminology conflict.
Wouldn’t any energy stored on earth be “indirectly solar power?”
No. Nuclear isn’t (unless you’re going to stretch “solar” to include past supernovae. Geothermal comes from nuclear fission (or possibly residual gravitational energy? Either way, not solar). Given the discovery of hydrocarbons off-Earth, it’s possible that some proportion of oil is non-solar in origin, too, though that would mean it’s ultimately geothermal, and thus a nuclear by-product. Not sure of the status of that speculation currently, though.
Nuclear/geothermal aren’t.
And fossil fuels are solar very indirectly—they’re solar from many million years ago; biomass/wind/hydro are solar quite directly—it’s just this or last few year’s solar.
Well, unless I’m totally confused, the uranium/plutonium were generated by solar fusion.
Also, most geothermal heat is generated by radioactive decay (some is residual gravitational binding energy from earth’s formation) , making it indirect nuclear fission power, (and thus ultimately solar power, if you want to be unpleasantly technical.)
Really? Thanks. I thought it mostly was derived from gravitational energy as the earth formed and only a bit of extra nuclear heating. Though I guess it might not make sense that it would still be hot then...
Well, generally, elements heavier than iron only show up when a star goes kablewey, right? so it’s “solar”, but it’s not OUR solar, which was kinda the point, I guess.
Since we’ve already gone down the rabbit hole of extreme pedantry, I should point out that “solar” properly only applies to our own star, sol. The adjective for stars in general is “stellar”. If we ever bring solar panels to the neighborhood of other stars, this is going to be a nasty bit of terminology conflict.
Oh, good point about supernovae. I didn’t know that.