The company has built upon 15-year-old MIT technology to drill deep holes with millimeter waves.
"If you take all fossil, all nuclear, and all other forms of renewable energy combined, they are not even a millionth of a millionth of the thermal stores of energy below the Earth's surface," Araque said. "It's mind-boggling, and to get it, we only have to go down two to 12 miles."
Yet geothermal energy could be a highly efficient energy source if pumped to above-ground turbines and converted into electricity. This is where Quaise stepped in to use millimeter wave energy instead of standard drill bits to break up rock. Millimeter waves are electromagnetic frequencies with wavelengths between 10 and 1 millimeters, so between microwave and infrared waves.
If we can reliably get 12 miles deep into the earth, this will go far beyond geothermal application. It makes me wonder if they've tried millimeter waves at The Boring Company. This kind of laser drilling sounds an awful lot like the future to me given what (limited things) I've seen of traditional drilling.