New solar cell material achieves almost 100% efficiency, could solve world-wide energy problems

This discovery will be buried and you'll never hear about it again.

reply to post by In nothing we trust


Ya I think we can all agree with this...

Its interesting tho.

reply to post by die_another_day

It would be nice to think of a solar cell with an efficiency approaching 100%, but note that the quoted article said "...the entire visible spectrum of light energy, translating into a theoretical potential of almost 100% efficiency."
All this means is that the materials selected absorb most of the light in the visible spectrum and have some chance of producing an electric current but do not, as yet do so. The other thing one must consider is cost and the ability to mass produce solar cells of the new materials.
While this press release may sound promising, it will be a while before we find out if this is anything but a lab one-off.

Originally posted by In nothing we trust
This discovery will be buried and you'll never hear about it again.

but does it need to?

The materials these researchers have created is not ready for prime time. Only a few molecules were created through a joint effort of the Ohio State University team and a team of chemists from the National Taiwan University. They synthesized enough of the material to carry out preliminary tests. And while these early findings are truly remarkable, there are still more on the horizon.

Keep in mind that these are preliminary findings. A supercomputer was used to model different molecular combinations. As the article stated supercomputing will make these types of "accidental" discoveries more common.

There's not much to bury at this point. Hopefully, this data will be shared amongst other research institutions who can capitalize on the molecular structure.

Or, perhaps a new distributed PC program (like seti@home) could be created to refine the molecular structure for maximum efficiency. Now that would be more worthwhile that looking for alien signals.

Originally posted by dooper
reply to post by die_another_day

 

You'll probably never hear another thing about it. Look at what happened to Dr. Chung's negative resistor. Suddenly it's not available for study or licensing by others. And how about the DOE confiscating the patent on a recently developed assymetrical magnet? Imagine what you could do with that!

Those were all hoaxes. That's why you don't hear anymore about them. Same as the Jasker machine. Same as the Steorn Orbo. Same as any other snake oil schemes.

Those so called discpoveries were all made to dupe people in investing in their fake inventions and when the inventor 'dissapeared', the inventor would have an fictional alibi :

"Ooooh Big Oil killed him"

"Oooh it was the NWO made them dissapear!"

"Oooh it was the big power corporations!" And all other B.S.

I would say the headline of this finding has been over inflated and overexaggerated, like all the other new energy, the latest being a bunch of Japanese guys claiming something as ridiculous as water as being fuel *snickers*

All the woo-woo believers can believe what they want. But NOTHING can alter the reality PROVEN by the laws of physics.

[edit on 20-10-2008 by spacebagel]

Originally posted by In nothing we trust
This discovery will be buried and you'll never hear about it again.

The past discoveries that was buried were ALL hoaxes. The headline is an overexaggeration.

See my above post. Thank you.

[edit on 20-10-2008 by spacebagel]

reply to post by ALLis0NE



It does not absorb the light that has not collided with it yet.

I've built solar panels for automotive experimental techniques with my University.

...... Anonymous

hate to burst anyones bubble, but their has already been solar cells invented that absorb the entire light spectrum and don't even achieve anything close to 100%...

And if anything were to achieve close to that anytime soon the world powers would not allow it. It's sad, but true and nothing, but an entire overall of every single government in the world(not just the US), could ever fix this. We will use solar power when we absolutely have to.

Just kind of like when we had technology for cars to be achieving much much better gas mileage for cars 30 years ago. The general population has to demand something before a government does the right thing instead of only helping themselves.

reply to post by LastOutfiniteVoiceEternal


That's the spirit!!! This is a great article, and step for "OUR" future, and yet somehow you see it as a competitor for the war machine, and pushed aside by the corporate owners of the world...Relax man, it's gonna be fine! You and I won't let this die...Right on?

To the OP...Awesome news. I tell you what. Things like this make my sticker peck out. I for one am going to make sure this article, and anything else I can find about it, goes to folks like T. Boone Pickens. He is really a sharp individual looking for the future energy source...plus he's friggin loaded.

I look forward to the information derived from this thread, and it's members...

Originally posted by daddymax
and yet somehow you see it as a competitor for the war machine, and pushed aside by the corporate owners of the world...Relax man

No, I was saying back in the day when there was a world crisis on our hands and something was important we'd all drop what we were doing to solve it and get it done. "The American Spirit", like in WW1 and WW2.

I'm saying why can't we do that now with all the new tech.? Start mass producing, it would create more jobs, too, and boost the economy.

HAHHAhAHAAHHAHAH, like the american government would ever auctually do something to 'help' the economy.

Originally posted by spacebagel
The headline is an overexaggeration.

How so? Please explain. From what I've heard, current solar cells don't reach anywhere even close to 100% efficiency. So why wouldn't this be an amazing breakthrough? Where is the exaggeration?

Originally posted by GrayFox

Originally posted by spacebagel
The headline is an overexaggeration.

How so? Please explain. From what I've heard, current solar cells don't reach anywhere even close to 100% efficiency. So why wouldn't this be an amazing breakthrough? Where is the exaggeration?

You are asking me how so? How so?

Duh. It was 'discovered' in a supercomputer. The actual solar cell does not even exist physically. They only have managed to create a few molecules for further testing.

Obviously this thread gets starred and flagged blindly without people even reading the original article, which has the commonly exaggerated media-man deceitful headlines that implies something but in actuality it is something different. This shows the underlying ignorance of the majority of people.

New solar cell material achieves almost 100% efficiency, could solve world-wide energy problems

The article headline implies the solar cell has been physically made and tested.

If anyone in here reads scientific articles often, the media always use misleading headlines to lure in gullible people. This again proves the majority of people are not aware of such tactics. Words of 'could', 'should' and 'would' are used indirecly to imply things that aren't.

YOur question also proves this as a fact.

There's another member in here that stated the same thing. I guess you didin't read it too. Figures.

I'm not denying the possibility of this technology. I'm denying ignorance.

I was also pointing out peoples unfounded paranoid assumptions that Big Oil, NWO and the Illuminati and all their cronies are going to get them. I was not saying the discovery in the article a hoax.

Lately I'm seeing more and more of this in ATS. People not reading the entire thread, people not reading the actual article and people flat-out making up stuff and the mindless cheerleading.

It's sickening.

[edit on 21-10-2008 by spacebagel]

It still represents a breakthrough in solar power technology. It doesn't matter how it was discovered. It was discovered and that's what matters. Whether they can quickly test this and find a way to make it cheap is another story though. It could take a while, there's no denying that.

Don't take this the wrong way, but denying ignorance doesn't mean attacking people for asking a question. I suppose the article is a little exaggerated, but it doesn't say "COULD SOLVE PROBLEMS STARTING TOMORROW!" When something new is discovered.... it usually does take a while until it becomes widely used/available.


[edit on 21-10-2008 by GrayFox]

I did read every post on the thread so far, I did google this discovery and related things, and I do not do mindless cheerleading.

That being said, I will say this:

The entrenched interests that control the current energy paradigm are still fully in control, and the only way I see that changing anytime soon is if about 100 million more English-speaking people suddenly take a keen, ongoing interest in forums like this...and then demand that their government actually do the bidding of the people. I do, however, see a gradual shift of these people into solar, because solar (as the decades go by) will only get more and more efficient. - Google Nanosolar in California for a good example. It reminds me of how Phillip Morris got out of being primarily a cigarette company right before cigarettes became unpopular. - They could lose all income from smokes right now and still make $billions per year. But, if new, literally empowering inventions come too quickly to the general public then these power-interests do not have enough time to get a stranglehold on them as well. That is why real change happens gradually, or not at all.

On a positive note, we see things happening in labs that read like scifi almost daily now. - Good examples of this can be found on kurzweilAI.net . Your grandkids, should you happen to have any someday, could possibly live very, very long and very, very cool lives.

This would be great, the oil barrens have nothing to do with this! If they make cars or engines out of it we would have to completely remake them, and look at the economy now! Its messed up and i seriously doubt people would be able to fork out on thousands of pounds worth of gear, when they can use the oil and not have to worry about buying expensive equipment.

It would be very useful in the future however, if the economy sorts itself out and the oil eventually runs out!

new solar cell material capable of absorbing all of the sun's visible light energy

the only thing that does that in nature is a blackhole.
and scientist have never seen a blackhole

from wikipedia

A black hole is a theoretical region of space in which the gravitational field is so powerful that nothing, not even electromagnetic radiation (e.g. visible light), can escape its pull after having fallen past its event horizon. The term derives from the fact that the absorption of visible light renders the hole's interior invisible, and indistinguishable from the black space around it.

That would mean looking at one of these panels all you would see is black with no perception of depth.

Now you have me curous as to what that would look like.
Something that would be pure black because it would not reflect light would mean you could not see the surface of it and the only way you could tell Where it was would be to touch it.

That folks would be the strangest thing you will ever see. or not see.

Mind Bending.

just use your mind to think what it would look like.

Maybe one of the rocket scientist members here can explain it better

As someone said they will have either released or will be releasing a paper on this. If you're really interested in this sort of thing you need to be willing to read papers published by the scientific community. If you're not versed in this area you'll need to read around it..... I think this is the step that eliminates 99% of people that will read this thread.

Having read a lot of papers myself, but in a different field I can say that although it might look hardcore (as it's aimed at academics in that field) if you are willing to spend some time reading round it you can get a good idea.

You can read the abstract of the paper here but you need to pay for the full things:

www.pnas.org...

Incidently that's always bugged me, charging to view papers... but that's another thing. Interesting question though - do people have the right to whinge about stuff being buried by oil corporations if they

1. Haven't read about it enough to determine whether it's all hot air.
2. Haven't dug deep enough to find out if it can be advanced themselves.. I mean surely if you were that bothered about it you'd learn everything you needed to and do it yourself.

Anyway, just rambling, not saying this is my opinion - I'm thinking out loud.

P.S. If anyone can get their hands on the paper I'll take a gander. It's not on Google Scholar at the moment, and if you didn't know what that is - it's a search tool aimed at academics to search through scientific papers. Sorry for being patronizing to some people I imagine but sometimes I'd like to see ATS use its vast numbers to really investigate and get stuff done... and maybe some people just don't know where to start.

I've read about this yesterday on google news, or was it two days ago? Well anyways, I remember the article, at the very bottom, stating that the entire research was funded solely by the US military.

So it might be a good deal of time until we see a commercial release of this technology.

Kind regards.