And let's give it a density of the densest elemental metal (Osmium), at 22.6 g/cm^3
Assume the battery stores pure energy (I know, I know). So E = mc^2, which is like 8.99 x 10^16 J / kg
So that battery would hold about 22.6 g/cm^3 * 3.85 cm^3 * 8.99e16 J / kg = 7.8 * 10^ 15 joules = ~2.2 TWh, about a trillion times more than a normal AAA battery.
Doing some LLM-assisted sleuthing, a large cruise ship can use over 80,000 gallons of fuel a day [1]. A bit of searching indicates marine fuels have a density of approx 39 MJ/L (I'm using volumetric density for consistency), so 80,000 gallons * 39 MJ/L = about 1.1 x 10^7 megajoules = 3.2 GWh.
So a 2.2 TWh AAA battery could power that ship for 671 days.
Of course, the practical physics here are nonsense and there are obvious safety considerations associated with your AAA-sized nuclear weapon, but maybe that's what the author was getting at?
The last thing humanity needs is a way to store that much energy in the palm of your hand. It would take about five of these impossible batteries to match the energy released during the Tunguska event.
Exactly, I assume this is the kind of thing the author is thinking about. But going this far into the extremes of theoretical physics and calling it "hard, but possible" is somewhat misleading on their part. Commercial fusion power is "hard but possible", and even that's an understatement. Ship-mounted matter-antimatter power or whatever should not be implied to be within the same category.
Volume of a AAA battery = ~3.85 cm^3
And let's give it a density of the densest elemental metal (Osmium), at 22.6 g/cm^3
Assume the battery stores pure energy (I know, I know). So E = mc^2, which is like 8.99 x 10^16 J / kg
So that battery would hold about 22.6 g/cm^3 * 3.85 cm^3 * 8.99e16 J / kg = 7.8 * 10^ 15 joules = ~2.2 TWh, about a trillion times more than a normal AAA battery.
Doing some LLM-assisted sleuthing, a large cruise ship can use over 80,000 gallons of fuel a day [1]. A bit of searching indicates marine fuels have a density of approx 39 MJ/L (I'm using volumetric density for consistency), so 80,000 gallons * 39 MJ/L = about 1.1 x 10^7 megajoules = 3.2 GWh.
So a 2.2 TWh AAA battery could power that ship for 671 days.
Of course, the practical physics here are nonsense and there are obvious safety considerations associated with your AAA-sized nuclear weapon, but maybe that's what the author was getting at?
[1] https://blog.windstarcruises.com/how-much-fuel-cruise-ship-u...