This Is Big: Unlimited Energy Within Ten Years

jason_els

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"This is the nirvana of what we've been talking about for years," said MIT's Daniel Nocera, the Henry Dreyfus Professor of Energy at MIT and senior author of a paper describing the work in the July 31 issue of Science. "Solar power has always been a limited, far-off solution. Now we can seriously think about solar power as unlimited and soon."

"This is a major discovery with enormous implications for the future prosperity of humankind," said James Barber, the Ernst Chain Professor of Biochemistry at Imperial College London.​

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TurkeyWithaSunburn

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This is exciting :smile: he has graduated to seperating water into H and O. He was working with something similar. hydrochloric acid and rhodium.

now it's water, cobalt, phosphate it will be amazing if he can get it off the ground! from the lab to the home takes some times. Or it gets buried by big energy companies and never gets out.
 

B_Nick4444

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brilliant!

one of my pet projects has been to find a way directly transform the spectrum of sunlight received into usable energy (photovoltaic cells are grossly inefficient)

this solves the energy storage problem

absolutely brilliant!
:beerchug::beerchug:
 

javyn

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Awesome! Now to just sit back and wait for the Saudis to buy the patent, sit on it forever, and murder the inventor like they have done with every other fossil fuel alternative the come out in the last 20 years!
 

dongalong

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Wanna pool bets on how long it takes us to fuck that up?
I don't think that it will happen. So long as scientists don't discover "free" energy, discoveries like this one will continue to be well funded. In the end, people will still have to pay for the solar/fuel-cell power created.

Inventions which free people from centralised power supplies are the ones which are always fucked up. :mad:
 

lucky8

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I don't think that it will happen. So long as scientists don't discover "free" energy, discoveries like this one will continue to be well funded. In the end, people will still have to pay for the solar/fuel-cell power created.

True. Now if governments really wnat to become energy independent, they need to mandate keeping this cheap to the public, so everyone can have solar panels on their house, extra energy then goes back to the grid, so you make money while providing yourself with energy...now that would be ingenious. (Same goes for hydrogen too, prices of hydrogen aren't ever going to be much below the price of gasoline unless the government steps up)

I think governments really needs to realize that people aren't going to make a switch on a mass scale unless it is half the price of what we're paying now...I'm certainly not going to switch to anything that costs me the same amount and potentially more once demand rises...and due to the way our market works, all of these new technologies are probably going to be offered at high prices that are very similar to the energy prices we have today. So yes, we may have found a very viable energy solution, but it isn't a solution that will help the economy unless the government intervenes on pricing for awhile, and if it isn't helping people's wallets, there's going to be a huge resistance to change. Government, where you at?
 

lucky8

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Aren't LOTS of people, entire companies in fact, going to be put out of work? And how long will it be before we're warring over THIS discovery?

Potentially, but there will also be lots of new jobs created, and the big energy companies that we have now will probably add this to their arsenal of energy production. There won't be a solar war, solar energy is endless
 

Flashy

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Don't underestimate society's ability to turn even things like this into a war. Remeber, it's not just about progression, it's about prestige and recognition, glory.

I think we underestimated your ability for paranoia.

dude...seriously. solar energy has nothing to do with "progression and glory"

it has to do with free safe energy.

Unless of course you believe we are going to get into a race with the Chinese to see who can live on the sun first :rolleyes:
 

Flashy

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Aren't LOTS of people, entire companies in fact, going to be put out of work? And how long will it be before we're warring over THIS discovery?

how are we going to "war over this discovery". It will be patented, and the technology will be used to collect solar energy. it is not a natural resource that is in the ground or that is under a contested border.
 

Deno

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this is funny(not), because we are already fucking this up. I watched a special last night about global dimming. It seems we have already dimmed the effects of the sun up to 20 percent in places on the earth. It seems global dimming which is caused by particles in the atmosphere generated by jet vapors and industrial pollution is counterbalancing the effects of global warming if we eliminate the dimming it will cause global warming to get more serious faster then we expect. It was very interesting and scary. Anyone thats interested should try to catch this show. I think it was called Dimming the Sun.

One of the biggest effects of global dimming is the effect it has on evaporation, with less evaporation there will be less rain and more famine. They believe the heavy industry once causing pollution in the US was the reason Africa had such a long drought in the late 70s and 80s. Causing the deaths of 10 million.
 
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marleyisalegend

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how are we going to "war over this discovery". It will be patented, and the technology will be used to collect solar energy. it is not a natural resource that is in the ground or that is under a contested border.

Just wait and see, it might sound illogical, but throughout history, individual and group wars have been waged over less. I hope it does work, but history is full of good ideas that sounded great on paper, but were poorly executed and mismanaged. I welcome the change, but I'm skeptical and cynical whenever I hear about something that's supposed to make things easier, especially when there's room for it to be controlled by organizations.
 

Flashy

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Just wait and see, it might sound illogical, but throughout history, individual and group wars have been waged over less. I hope it does work, but history is full of good ideas that sounded great on paper, but were poorly executed and mismanaged. I welcome the change, but I'm skeptical and cynical whenever I hear about something that's supposed to make things easier, especially when there's room for it to be controlled by organizations.

just wait and see what? It doesn't sound illogical...it is totally illogical.

Explain how we are going to war over it?

What is the scenario? Who is going to fight us, over us using a patented invention supplied by a company here or several companies here (that can be sold to other companies and countries for use) for the free collection of solar energy?

What is the scenario? Are the OPEC countries going to fight us over it? Good luck with that.

China? Hell no, they will be using it themselves...try supplying a billion people with fossil fuels over the next 50 years as it dwindles.

Is Europe going to fight us over it? Of course not...

so who is going to fight us over it?

This goes behind you usual amusing paranoia into lunacy.
 

javyn

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They are still fighting wars in Africa over guano. If you think an alternative energy source will just roll out and the most powerful cartel in the world next to banking will just sit by and let it happen, you are severely mistaken.

Like I said before, patents can be easily bought and sat on by oil companies, and they are, often.

Just look at the case of Stan Meyer, who invented the water powered car in the 90s that got 100 miles per gallon off regular tap water. Saudi Arabia offered him 1 billion dollars cash for his patent. He refused, saying the technology belonged to the people. He died 2 days later of pneumonia, and a week later the government raided his home taking his prototype and research materials. That's not a conspiracy theory, but documented fact. If you don't believe me, look it up.

People who truly want to make a change for the better always get killed. Look at JFK, MLK, Bob Marley, John Lennon, the list goes on.

To say they wouldn't start a war over a new energy source is idiotic IMO. OPEC does not care about your, your family, or this or any country for that matter. Do you really not think they will hesitate to do whatever it takes to protect their profits?
 
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lucky8

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And don't say countries are going to wage war on us because we have a patent, patents don't mean shit internationally. In China, copyright means right to copy...