lotusbiosm

OK, so I actually agree with the President that the US is way too dependent on oil and we should spend the money and time to develop alternative fuels and energy sources. Wind, water, solar, biodiesel, all of it. And I was watching CNN earlier, and this guy from Car and Driver was talking about how it's all well and good to talk about ethanol, but it's expensive. Hydrogen, same deal. And that got me thinking about how the reason we're not all gung-ho over hydrogen (which, in theory is awesome because it's abundant and produces water vapor as a waste product) is because it likes to go boom. And that got me thinking about how gasoline is pretty flammable/explosive too, especially the vapors. And that got me thinking about internal combustion engines, and how that's basically just a bunch of little controlled explosions that provide the energy to make your car go (it's more complicated than that, I know, but I'm a humanities student), and that seems to me to necessitate an explosive/flammable fuel source. And that got me thinking: why all this talk about alternative fuels, but no talk about new engines? Why do we assume that we need to develop a new way to power our internal combustion engines instead of thinking that maybe we need a different kind of engine? (Incindentally, I vote biodiesel, because I think it's supercool) Isn't there some way to use magnets or something to make an engine that doesn't need fuels that go boom?
I can't possibly be the first person to think of this, can I? And if I am, I wish I was smart enough to know how to put that idea to use (well, I wish that anyway). So my charge to you, dear readers, is to go forth and spread this word to your friends and neighbors who might actually know a thing or two about engines and that kind of thing, and hopefully we'll only have to worry about how to fuel the rest of our energy needs with alternative energy, and not our transit too (because we still need alternative energy for our computers and our heaters and traffic lights and our hospital equipment and everything else that turns on).