Like fossil fuels come from organic matter that grew because of the sun. Is there any form of energy on that cannot be traced back to the sun in some way?
Like fossil fuels come from organic matter that grew because of the sun. Is there any form of energy on that cannot be traced back to the sun in some way?
Everyone is giving you some great answers, but there are since more subtle ones worth mentioning too.
When you take a picture of space, the light from those other stars hits the camera sensor and induces a tiny electrical charge, which is captured, amplified, and analyzed to create the image. Your eyes actually work that way too.
It’s not an energy source as you typically think of it; it never powers anything, but technically it is* energy that exists on Earth that didn’t come from our sun.
That’s awesome. Now that you mention it I remember reading that supermassive black holes are a source of cosmic radiation too.
If it doesn’t have to be energy that’s used as such, there’s more answers.
Neutrinos stream through us each moment at a flux pretty similar to sunlight. Day and night; they sail right through the Earth for the most part. Most of it is from the sun’s core (directly), but some of it is from distant cosmic monsters like supernovae and jets whipping around black holes, and some of it escapes from nuclear reactions on Earth, in particle accelerators and reactors or from decays in nature.
Gravitational waves from black hole mergers have been detected on Earth, and they do carry energy.
Meteors hit the Earth, and sometimes they carry enough energy with them to cause damage, like in Chelyabinsk.
You mentioned cosmic rays. The most energetic ones far exceed the energy of anything our accelerators produce, and it’s still a mystery where those unusually powerful ones come from.
Stars give out a lot of electromagnetic energy in the form of radio, microwave, infrared, ultraviolet and x-rays as well, and probably gamma rays too, although I haven’t heard anything about that one. Many frequencies of light are heavily or even fully absorbed by the upper atmosphere of Earth, which is part of what makes space telescopes necessary.
Lighting strikes on Jupiter are very noticeable as noise on some radio bands. I’m not actually sure how much of the wind that powers that is the Jupiter equivalent of geothermal, and how much is ultimately from sunlight. I’m guessing it skews to the latter, though.