Submitted by AutoModerator t3_yk610g in askscience
Thatcorgilady t1_ius06pb wrote
If science found a way to make rocks (or other inorganic matter) edible, how might that impact the fallout from global warming?
sirblastalot t1_iuu58qd wrote
The way you get usable energy out of a material is by taking it from a higher-energy, unstable state to a lower-energy, more stable one, and capturing the energy released in doing so. For example, burning a piece of nice, reactive wood, to produce stable, non-reactive C02 and ash. Generally speaking, rocks are already pretty close to being as low-energy as you can get, so there's not really any way to get more energy out of them, no matter how you modify your digestion.
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