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129 Comments
- dvicklund, on 07/20/2008, -2/+37Sounds fantastic until you accidentally wave your hand through the focal point.
- jimmoses, on 07/20/2008, -7/+41It's
A
Focusing
Mirror.
Next up: MIT boffins invent revolutionary circular transport device! - wonderchemist, on 07/20/2008, -0/+27If you have an old TV, you can make one yourself: http://www.xenotechresearch.com/solfurn1.htm
- inactive, on 07/20/2008, -3/+29I wish MIT would stop stealing my ideas. I swear if they invent my rocket skates I'm gonna bust a nut.
- unknownohm, on 07/20/2008, -2/+27finally a green way to cook crack
- dgendreau, on 07/20/2008, -0/+15If only we had the technology to store energy up during the day and use it later at night. Damn. You're right. It would never work...
- timmylil, on 07/20/2008, -1/+16and then it's hilarious.
- inactive, on 07/20/2008, -4/+17Unfortunately it will probably not revolutionize the power industry and providing solar power to even remote regions but instead be used by the American Gov't to devise new weapons and sell them to unstable countries.
Too bad students - SarahC, on 07/20/2008, -1/+14"However, parabolic collectors are still a relatively new field of research. Their true potential remains relatively unknown."
Bull!
Archimedes did these, and people have been experimenting with them for years.
There's solar furnaces all over America heating water already.
How come MIT's getting all the attention? - mugicha, on 07/20/2008, -1/+13Was that a haiku?
- drape, on 07/20/2008, -1/+12Rhetoric.... that idea existed since Archimedes!
- brad3378, on 07/20/2008, -0/+11If this could be used to melt steel, then it could also be used to melt aluminum.
The point I'm trying to make is that maybe this could support the hydrogen economy?
There's some really cool stuff going on right now with an alloy of 95% Aluminum 5% Gallium that safely releases Hydrogen gas in the presence of water. The result of the reaction converts the aluminum to Alumina which must be refined back into the Aluminum/Gallium alloy to be reused - and this requires massive amounts of heat. - dgendreau, on 07/20/2008, -3/+13It didnt work because the mythbusters are dumbasses. They didnt focus it properly.
- samcrut, on 07/20/2008, -1/+10Obviously you aren't getting it. It's not that they invented a focusing mirror. It's that they invented a **cheap** focusing mirror that can be sold in IKEA-like kits you assemble yourself at home.
Solar electricity is available today to anybody who can afford it, which boils down to very few people. This innovation makes solar power far more *affordable*. - hiPpymIck, on 07/19/2008, -1/+9theres solar thermal in Phase IV (1974)
tho in that case it was superintelligent mutant ants
building a series of towers with mirror surfaces
that they used to fry a bunch of scientists
in the Arizona desert
who were trying to fight them
its actually a good movie - very visual and thoughtfully understated IMO
http://www.answers.com/Phase+iv?cat=entertainment& ... - je12u, on 07/20/2008, -0/+7I don't think "bust a nut" means what you think it does
- Regulator980, on 07/20/2008, -1/+8This is a highly refined version of this:
http://www.solardeathray.com/ - gavinhudson, on 07/20/2008, -0/+7Hm... my hand or $200...
- DoogieHowitzer, on 07/20/2008, -3/+9Seriously... Some profoundly revolutionary things have come out of MIT research. This... isn't one of them.
- CriX, on 07/20/2008, -1/+7"bust a nut" means ejaculate .... just an fyi
- inactive, on 07/20/2008, -0/+6Why is it every one of these ideals is going to"revolutionize" the power/auto/porn industry but we never hear about them again?
- lump1, on 07/20/2008, -0/+6Making the parabolic mirror was the easy part. Now they need to figure out what should sit at the focal point that will generate electricity. I imagine it will be some sort of a turbine for superheated steam, but it better not be too wide, because then it will block the mirror, and it better not be too heavy, because the whole big assembly needs to move to track the sun.
I'll digg this again when they've figured out the hard part. - mark101, on 07/20/2008, -1/+7instead of burning wood and dung, could a small village use one of these to cook food and sterilize their water?
- samcrut, on 07/20/2008, -0/+6So you're a masochist who gets off on people stealing your ideas?
- FutureGuy, on 07/20/2008, -1/+6MIT 1:Archimedes 1:Mythbusters 0 they couldn't get wood to catch fire, forget melting steel.
- bpoteat, on 07/20/2008, -0/+5Too bad for students? Who do you think funded the research?
:) - inactive, on 07/20/2008, -0/+4They did it already, and failed to test it correctly, as usual.
- inactive, on 07/20/2008, -1/+5their
- rebotfc, on 07/20/2008, -0/+4Man that film scared the bejesus out of me when watching it as a kid. Great movie thanks for reminding me.
- samcrut, on 07/20/2008, -0/+4They're engineers. They probably just got a buddy to design the site. Once they have funding I'm sure it'll be more flashy.
- XchrisX, on 07/20/2008, -0/+4Put on a heavy duty heatsink, coupled to a few efficient Stirling engines driving a generator, and you're off the grid!
- Borgcube636, on 07/20/2008, -1/+5Too bad it's not hot enough to melt Chuck Norris.
- SniperZero, on 07/20/2008, -1/+5Now only to put this on my front lawn and stop the fkers driving passed throwing *****.
- bsonline, on 07/20/2008, -0/+3Digging yet another "Superbrain invents x will solve y", yet still seeing nothing on store shelves. Someone should design a site to track a product from Eureka! to purchase to mainstream availability.
- khail250, on 07/20/2008, -2/+5if you get a large enough telescope it will melt steel quite faster than this due to its super precise optics, that concentrate a 1m, 2m etc mirror to a point that is microns in diameter, this will melt steel, or adimentium in a heart beat ;)
- Stormwern, on 07/20/2008, -1/+4It's a deathray.
- samcrut, on 07/20/2008, -0/+3Do you have one? Have you seen an affordable commercial solar collector? No? Then it's new.
The science is ancient, but making it commercially viable is new. - frosted, on 07/20/2008, -0/+3Sure this is news.. anyone recall http://www.solardeathray.com/ besides me?
- samcrut, on 07/20/2008, -0/+3Nah, they have a fluid coil in the hot spot. Cool fluid goes in and steam or super heated fluid comes out. If you run something with an extremely high heat density through there, like some kind of oil, you could use that to heat up a large, super-insulated tank of heat storing material which is where you put your Stirling engine. If the heat bank could store enough heat to keep the Stirling running through the night, then you'd have a very efficient 24hr solar electric generator.
- hiPpymIck, on 07/20/2008, -0/+3http://www.sunoven.com/villager.asp
or make your own..
http://www.solarcooking.org/plans/default.htm - frontporsche, on 07/20/2008, -0/+3 "For example, a dish the size of the RawSolar team’s design costs only a third of what a larger dish would cost." Was this written by someone in 5th grade? This is like saying "My Toyota only costs a third of what a car with a bigger engine would cost."
- samcrut, on 07/20/2008, -0/+2You'd lose a perfectly good pipe that way.
- Fluffycheese, on 07/20/2008, -1/+3So the materials to build to array are cheap and easy available, but i'm guessing to ones required to track the sun are not.
How I long for the day green tech doesn't require some sort of new innovation to make it viable - viable in the kind of way i can buy one for myself... - ozziegt, on 07/20/2008, -0/+2What I want to know is what happens when a bird flies past. Does it turn into a flaming fireball of death?
- mswope, on 07/20/2008, -1/+3Nice idea - crummy article. "a dish the size of the RawSolar team’s design costs only a third of what a larger dish would cost." Well, duh... How much bigger - 3 times larger maybe?
Also, they really don't have a solution to anything besides melting non-descript steel and combusting 10 ft long 2x4's.
At least photovoltaics have a passable chance at being a solution for an energy problem. - frontporsche, on 07/20/2008, -0/+2The MIT research was about how to do this economically, not about reinventing a parabolic reflector.
- kd1s, on 07/20/2008, -0/+2A lot of technical innovation is comprised of taking the existing art and coupling it with something else to make a new device. Look at the telephone, that took the principles of electromagnetism and turned it on its head.
It took some time for material technology to catch up and that is precisely what the MIT student took into account.
I remember when an office I work at got a portable display system. It was essentially a lightweight aluminum tube setup that had a curvature from which I could derive focal point. I realized that if this sucker had a mesh or metal background I'd have one hell of an antenna, all the MIT guys did is figure out that mirrors would let you use something higher up in the EM scale. - inc595, on 07/20/2008, -0/+2We need to see this on Mythbusters
- om3ganet, on 07/20/2008, -1/+3You mean vaporize?
- qwertydvorak, on 07/20/2008, -0/+2here is your tracker. diy even...
http://www.redrok.com/electron.htm#led3 -
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