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Right. Cuz the photons are the same temperature as the sun. That's why sun photons feel warm.
see: http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=349697
Steam engines—powered predominantly by coal, but also by natural gas, nuclear materials, and other fuels—generate 90 percent of all U.S. electricity. But though they have been refined over the centuries, most are still clanking, hissing, exhaust-spewing machines that rely on moving parts, and so are relatively inefficient and prone to mechanical breakdown. Do steam turbines really clank? (I can believe in the hissing…
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I don't understand the downvoting, so I'll make my position clear. If you read the article, the guy is now in financial trouble because the super soaker profits have largely dried up, and he has had to put other plans on hold. What I'm saying is, if you find yourself in the situation where you have a big win, you need to lock away some of that to keep you in retirement. Then, you can go onto your next venture knowing…
There is nothing in the article that states he has not put away enough money for retirement, nor that he could not retire right this moment if he wanted to. For all you know, he could have $100MM in bank, ensuring that his family is well-off for generations to come. The article doesn't delve into his personal finances at all - it merely states that the Super Soaker profits are not able to fund his research as much as…
"There was a time in my life, he says, when I was independently wealthy. But that time has passed"
Sounds to me like he has sunk a lot of his capital into his ongoing research projects.
Steam engines—powered predominantly by coal, but also by natural gas, nuclear materials, and other fuels—generate 90 percent of all U.S. electricity. But though they have been refined over the centuries, most are still clanking, hissing, exhaust-spewing machines that rely on moving parts, and so are relatively inefficient and prone to mechanical breakdown. Do steam turbines really clank? (I can believe in the hissing…
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> Thus, as long as total energy is conserved, there's no problem. Where did the other laws go? > The second issue is that solar heating is due to radiation, not conduction/convection, so there's no heat exchange as such. I don't understand how there could be "solar heating" but no "heat exchange". Unless I misunderstood the papers I cited, the efficiency equations show that there is a limit (efficiency drops to 0% wi…
> I don't understand how there could be "solar heating" but no "heat exchange". Hmm, I thought that "heat exchange" referred to direct transfer of heat energy, perhaps I'm misremembering. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_transfer#Radiation doesn't seem to differentiate, but bear in mind that there's no way to focus molecular vibration with a mirror. And if more photons hit the cube with your lens than without it, th…
That's a perpetual motion machine.
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> How would this work? Surely sunlight can't create enough heat to ionize a gas (creating plasma?). He isn't ionizing the gas, he is increasing the gas pressure by heating it. "Only instead of using those pressure gradients to move an axle or a wheel, he’s forcing ions through a membrane." See next for why that is important. > Why don't the whole hydrogen atoms go through the membrane to the lower pressure area? He u…
Electrons are a lot smaller than protons. Why wouldn't they go through the membrane?
I don't get it. Why isn't Google investing in this along with robot self-driving cars? Why isn't Khosla investing in this? Or is this the article that gets them interested? I don't pretend to have the engineering knowledge to know whether this will work or not, whether it's snake oil or not, but surely, if an electric sports car for the rich can get funded, so can this guy. I'm assuming the guy isn't peddling snake-o…
Until Edison found the proper filament material, he had an empty glass jar with leads in it and a theory. As soon as he found the proper filament material, he had an invention that changes the world.
The concept here is great. Heat hydrogen to create differential pressure, extract ions by forcing it through a membrane, repeat. Note that the key part of it is the membrane. The primary problem in fuel cells is the same thing - the membrane.
It becomes basically a materials problem at that point.
That is not to say that it is easy, but that it is different. Once I have a few square inches of the proper material I no longer have just a proof of concept or a prototype, I have a full fledged device. The whole issue is figuring it out once and that might take a long time.
(Sure there are more issues, like extracting water from the fuel cell or increasing efficiency or lowering cost, but the bulk of it is that first initial problem.)
It might turn out that whatever it takes to make this membrane is crazy expensive, and that it doesn't make economic sense. Or maybe it will start out expensive and it will become cheap like the filament in the lightbult. I don't know but I do know that he will probably need a heck of a lot more funding before he can show a proof of concept, and anyone waiting for it to work will be far to late to get in on the action.