Scientists discover tiny solar panels that create themselves
This could be a big step in the right direction as pollution free energy is concerned. I wonder if some oil company will buy the patent and "loose" the idea for now.
Taken from link below.
scientists at MIT have discovered molecules that spontaneously assemble themselves into a pattern that can turn light into electricity — essentially a self-creating solar panel. In a petri dish
Re: Scientists discover tiny solar panels that create themselves
Unsuable until we can create functionally conductive carbon nano-tubes. Right now, it works on the micro or even nano scale (I don't know how small they were working, here).
But, if we could create long strands/strings of carbon nano-tubes, binding photosynthetic soups to carbon nano-tubes would be closer to the bottom of the list of breakthrough uses.
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You'd have to have much longer nanotubes in order to conduct electricity in any usable way. Good luck fabbing those. Until they can fab really long nanotubes and rope them into "wire", the "discovery" is useless.
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Actually, they are doing it backwards. First, we have to be able to fabricate carbon nano-tubes, on a mass scale, macroscopically, for relatively cheap.
Then, we can explore technologies like this.
However, like I said earlier, if we could do that with carbon nanotubes, this would be one of the discoveries down at the bottom of the barrel as there are far better uses for carbon nano tubes.
Basically, they are using imperfect technologies to make even less imperfect technologies. It is definitely useless, at this point.
And before anyone says it, I am not being closed minded. I'm actually being open minded.
Nah. But dozens and dozens of photovoltaic 'breakthroughs' have lead me to be more open minded about things.
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Your post contains no real rebuttal: just oblivious technology-loving rhetoric.
How long did it take before we had a car, after the "wheel" was invented?
And, no, the whole history of technology is not like that. If one technology depends on another to work, then the latter has to be developed enough to be usable by the former. This is much easier if you don't play word games, but, instead, actually get the point: you can change "imperfect' to what ever word you want until it jives well with your mind. Simply: this "discovery" is useless for the forseable future.
If we were to be as hopeful as you guys want to be, we should be jumping up and down at all the little microscopic fusions expierments which have no way, at all, of transferring to any usable form.
Actually, I am. Any useless discovery is useless. We need to work on nano-tubes before this can be useful.
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Wait, it's not okay to do that stuff anymore?
__________________
"The Daemon lied with every breath. It could not help itself but to deceive and dismay, to riddle and ruin. The more we conversed, the closer I drew to one singularly ineluctable fact: I would gain no wisdom here."
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Nope, since the sun & fire is now thought to be non intelligent (you never now), people choose to worship invisible none existant dieties, normally borrowed from some ancient fantasy stories.
Yep the need to cling onto something fantasic, to think our future is in some superbeing´s hands, and the need to not contemplate death for what it is seems to be a trait humans have passed on