Low Cost Solar Cells Very Real Possibility in Near Future

As anyone who has dabbled with solar power knows, cells and arrays are frightfully expensive, even if you are generating modest voltages and currents.   Part of the expense is the labor intensive manufacturing process and another is the exotic materials used in the construction, such as Indium.

Now, according to Stanford News Service, scientists at Stanford have succeeded in assembling a functioning solar cell out of one atom thick carbon nano-tubes and buckey-balls. 

As difficult as that sounds to create, the cells can be deposited using thin film production techniques.  There are many aspects of this technology that are exciting, first the cells would be all carbon, which as you know is very common.  Second, because it would be a thin film, the possibility of flexibility is a very real possibility allowing them to be laid over very complex structures, something the present rigid solar cells can not do.  Plus, since the manufacturing process envisioned is thin film depositing requiring far fewer steps, the manufacture cost would be a fraction of present day cell costs.  The next cost saving is accomplished using strictly carbon as the material of choice, which again would drive down the cost.

Carbon is a good all round choice.  First it's very very common and second the cells would be very durable, third, carbon nano-tubes have the potential towards far better conductivity and much more efficient light-absorption  characteristics.

Of course that is in the future.  At present, the carbon solar cells are less than 1% efficient and only adsorb in the near infra-red but the Stanford team is already studying materials that would generate power over a broader spectrum including visible light.

Beam Me Up episode 294 now online

This week’s episode, 294, is the last for 2011, not that I do anything special, but I do try to fill the hour with entertainment and information.

First is a song from John Anealio from his new Season’s Greetings, called Winter’s Day, which seemed appropriate! 

Next is an short article from Earthsky with more information on the discovery of massive black holes. 

Afterwards we travel to the Beam Me Up Blog @ wrfrbeamEup.blogspot.com. First an article concerning a newly discovered galaxy that is only slightly younger than the universe itself and has some very interesting characteristics! Next the LHC has been successful in finding a new quantum state/particle called Bottomonium…..honest….. I found this funny short film for a flash mob gathering in Times square promoting the new Star Wars game The old Republic. A group of costumed players froze in the middle of an epic lightsaber battle with an interesting twist! And after being ultra top secret classified for 45 years the Hexagon project has finally been declassified. Hexagon proved to be an ultra secret spy satellite project that virtually no on had ever heard about!

Stories this week are KJ Kabza’s Get Happy. How do you define happiness or the meaning of anything when anything is possible and everyone is omnipotent.

And Raven by Susanna Willis a dark fantasy tale of guardian ravens, who protect the sleeper from all form of nocturnal evil – from the pages of the Australian flash fiction magazine Antipodean.

BMU #287 Now On Line

Well rounded episode of Beam Me Up this week on episode 287. I lead of first with a new offering from Symphony of Science called Onward to the Edge, featuring excerpts from speeches made by Neil deGrasse Tyson, Brian Cox, and Carolyn Porco and set to some great music.

Our first fiction offering is a brand new story arc from Jason Kahn and Cyberstudios online. Jason once again takes us to New Arden and our favorite physic detective Jack Garrett. This arc is In Plain Sight and episode 1 is “On The Mend” As you might recall with the last story, A New Beginning, Jack managed to solve the case, but took an amazing amount of damage in doing so. On the Mend literally picks up where a new beginning ended. But far from being lauded for his crime solving, it would seem that New Arden has a short memory.

The last story of the afternoon is part 2 of Elliot Bangs excellent story “This Must Be the Place.
Last week we found the main character Loren Wells seems to have secrets to keep. Foremost of all is every time Andria sees him, he appears to be a different age and sometimes he knows her, but often he has no clue! In part 2 and the conclusion Andria uncovers what has got to be one of the strangest retirement plans ever!

From the Beam Me Up Blog:

Orion crew capsule is scheduled for a mission in 2014! NASA reports that the plan is to send the capsule through two orbits, ending up farther from Earth than any craft intended for human transport has been since 1973. Then, Orion will return for a splash-down in the Pacific.

According to BBC news online the Russian space agency reports that shortly after launch, the Phobos Grunt probe failed to fire its' mains to launch it towards Mars and is now stuck in an Earth orbit and that engineers have two weeks to correct the fault before the probe's batteries run out.

And something I thought I would never hear - In a paper which will be published this week in Nature, Professors Christian Knigge & Malcolm Coe from the University of Southampton worked with Philipp Podsiadlowski of Oxford University to reveal how they have discovered two distinct populations of neutron stars... Two?!!!! I can just handle how weird the universe is just having one type of these monsters!

.

Oldest Fossils Discovered

From an article in Science Daily - a team from the University of Western Australia and Oxford University has discovered Earth's oldest fossils. From the article:

• The microscopic fossils show convincing evidence for cells and bacteria living in an oxygen-free world over 3.4 billion years ago.

According to the science team:

• we (now) have good solid evidence (that) life (existed) over 3.4 billion years ago. It confirms there were bacteria at this time, living without oxygen.
  

The early environment was far from idyllic. Volcanic activity dominating the early Earth. The sky was cloudy and grey, keeping the heat inolcanic activity dominating the early Earth. The sky was cloudy and grey, keeping the heat in.

read complete article here

Beam Me Up Episode 275 now online

This week on Beam Me up, I get things rolling with a rather caustic quote from Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar Mitchell on global politics. Next, music from a strange little indie Sci-Fi short in which the camera follows a day in the life of Vera a girl with speakers in her skin and no volume knob to control her constantly blaring music from the indie album Winter.

The first story is a wicked little piece of flash fiction from Duncan Shields over at 365 Tomorrows, called Serial Killer. The man was either the savior of the world, or a mass murdering psychopath. The second story this week is part two of Keith Latch’s The Stars Fell. Keenan’s life has become a morass of pain, sadness and disappointment since the death of his farther. But then, three weeks later, something much stranger takes place which is even stranger still.

From Beam Me Up’s blog, Predictive Bionics. New technology is being developed for lower-limb prosthetics that allows amputees to walk without the leg-dragging gait characteristic of conventional artificial legs. Does ranting at SyFy do any good? Who knows, but its sure is frustrating with the new crop of canceled programs... Darpa says the Falcon htv-2 last flight was a success?!!! Really? ESA's Don Quijote spacecraft is going to take a whack at the Apophis asteroid? The 1,600-foot-wide near-Earth asteroid which NASA said had a chance of around one in 250,000 of hitting Earth in 2036. Astronaut Ron Garan aboard the International Space Station, shows us what a meteor looks like from space with his photo of a meteor from the Perseid Meteor Shower. Erik Weihenmayer can see with his tongue, Erik in fact is participating in experiments with the Brainport Vision Device, a revolutionary new technology enabling a blind person to see with his tongue. Finally Hubble, using its Wide Field Camera 3
takes a photo of the strange and amazing Necklace Nebula!

As always, we wish to thank Cyber-Studios for their unique and helpful services.

Beam Me Up episode 275

BMU # 273 with stories by Harris Tobias & Steve Carter

Beam Me Up 273 saw new additions and just plain good stuff. I start with an excellent quote from Isaac Asimov that Courtney posted on the Beam Me Up Facebook site. Next, I play two stories this week. First from a story in the newest edition of Antipodean. From Steve Carter comes a different twist on an old sci-fi time travel theme “Time Enough” The second story has to be one of the strangest alien encounter stories I have ever read. I play Harris Tobias’ Elko.

I have discovered a new anime series in my travels around Youtube and found that it was playing on SyFy. Durahrara is a spin on the myth of the grim reaper and a mixture of the European headless horseman and their ilk. However the spin and the handle make the series much more entertaining and modern. I found the opening track on one of the short films and play it for the program today. Very nice and catchy. Overall its a very good series for those that don’t go into the giant robots that litter the main outlets. Give this one a shot.

From this week’s blog @ wrfrbeameup.blogspot.com: Researchers at the University of Toronto have used a combination of synthesized DNA and semiconductors to create a nano-scale antenna that harnesses light. arth at one point in its early history had more than one moon. The second moon was most likely very small and may have collided with its larger Luna companion. Have you heard the story of the two NASA logos? No? You won’t believe it! The Juno mission to Jupiter launched Friday August 5. A film of the launch can be viewed on NASA. The primary goal of the mission is to understand the origin and evolution of the massive gas planet. Oh you will just HAVE to check out The Mercury Men. A new Web series made for under $10,000 in Pittsburgh with ray guns, evil aliens and even a brain in a jar. It’s a modern homage to the black-and-white serials of the early 1900s. Space X has petitioned NASA to combine two upcoming missions of their Dragon launch vehicle, one to rendezvous with the ISS and next to dock with it. And there is much more on the blog as well as the podcast.