Process to obtain energy and produce food from inorganic compounds ?

Question

Process to obtain energy and produce food from inorganic compounds ?

Answer 1

You are not likely going to find a method to produce food from inorganic compounds.  At least, not any time soon.  Obtaining energy is a different story, and that energy could be used to grow edible substances.  There are countless inorganic energy sources ranging from solar, to wind, geothermal, nuclear, and some theories for gravitational harvesting.

But, I am guessing you are looking for a process to make something like a steel rod a human energy source.  While the technology is still very far away, teams of scientists are working on devices similar to the food replicators seen on star trek.  The progression is actually quite impressive and based off of advances in teleportation.  To make this brief, the only thing successfully teleported has been a photon of light.  Even then it's not what you would expect.  All of the properties of the object (photon, organic molecule, whatever) are scanned and the information is sent to a separate location where another device assembles a replicate from the data.  Thus, current teleportive theories can not exceed light speed and are more of a fax than a teleport.  

Anyway, quarks are the smallest known component of matter and current quantum theory suggests that various combinations of quarks create protons, neutrons, electron, and everything in existence.  So, in theory, once something like a steak has been scanned that information could be stored rather than immediately used to 'teleport' the object.  With that data, and a supply of quarks, it might be possible to press a button (or ask the computer) for a good steak and it could assemble one for you.