The energy expansions of evolution (2017)
nature.com
nature.com
Sunlight hits photosynthesizing bacteria which create biological fuel molecules called sugars. Plants store these sugars and convert the energy in them into leaves and roots and organic material. Animals eat the plants and convert the stored energy into useful work. Plants and animals die, and the stored energy in their bodies is consumed by other life which turns them into work. Sometimes it gets captured by the earth before it can decompose and over very long timespans, it gets compressed and turned into super energy dense organic material called coal or petroleum.
All the gasoline we're expending, all the coal and natural gas we're burning is just stored sunlight in very efficient organic batteries. Even the wind energy we're capturing is created by the external energy of the sun injecting heat into our earth system and creating work.
There's also geothermal energy.
EDIT: I erased what I said about tidal forces. I thought it referred to all currents in the ocean, but it specifically refers to the periodic pull the moon has on the Earth, to greater effect, on its water.
The rest is likely residual from gravitational and tidal friction/compression and possibly other unknown sources.
Tidal is another exception, and geothermal is both radioactive heat and latent heat of gravitational formation (about half each).
But fossil fuels? That's burning buried sunshine. At a rate of about 5 million times faster than it formed. 23 tonnes of ancient biomass per litre of petrol -- nearly 100 tonnes per gallon.
See Jeffrey S. Dukes (2003):
https://dge.carnegiescience.edu/DGE/Dukes/Dukes_ClimChange1....
I think a good rule of thumb, given the extreme diversity of the biological world, is that if a specific biological mechanism hasn't evolved in 4 billion years of evolution there's probably a good reason for it.
I'd say evolution is really good at chemical engineering, decent at aerospace engineering, okay-isn at electrical/computer engineering, and incompetent at mechanical engineering.
Hey, we’ve got nuclear reactions now too!
I just tested one of my GA's and it's solving a logic problem with 3k pop, 30 children per gen, in 1-2k generations. If I make it 300 children per gen it solves in 150-300 generations. 1500 children is solving in 30-50 generatikons. Now imagine 5 x 10^30 pop with 10^30 children per generation, over millions of generations.