How we can turn the cold of outer space into a renewable resource | Aaswath Raman 

Francis Lai nah. Wage gap!!

Ain't that great that Ted came to fruition before the 21st century?

I mean, well yeah. You’re not wrong.

Half the viewers of TED are still pretty jazzed about coal: The energy of the future.

This is just a bunch of mansplaining. Where is the female representation? Misogyny all around here.

I find TED talks good. Not so much the TEDx talks.

So what's been wrong with modern Ted talks?

_occasionally_ you'll find a tedx or ted talk that a. is talking about an 'obvious' and well known concept b. complete bullshit or only marks importance in a small group of rich people rather than having actual implications for everyone c. full of fallacies (cough cough psychology/certain forms of feminism) d. utterly boring if you want examples i can hook you up, but ted is good overall

This video falls under b: completely useless and bullshit like solar roadways. The thing is only useful in space like they got on the ISS to stop the interior from getting toasty.

i guess the cooling concept would work for solar panels if it leaked & reflected infrared but it didn't reflect visible range light, keeping the panels cooler, i haven't looked into it though very much but its a rough guess

how does that mean he's going to succeed?

@TheBestLettuce To put into context, here's a comparison between the two temperature scale: 100°C = Boiling Point = 212°F 36°C = Normal Human Temp = 97°F 0°C = Freezing Point = 32°F -273°C = Absolute Zero = -459°F As of how people would use "percentage" or "0 to 100" for evaluating any progression, Would you rather use the Temperature Scale that work the same with "percentage" to make things easier or would you go with the One that has no relevancy to any other type of scale or measurment that give you zero-to-none advantage in normal calculation?

OF COURSE, he would use celsius! everyone in a scientific setting does!

Well, shouldn't we all use Kelvin?

Gold Vogel why is that?

this will never work

20 years ago, it was said that solar wouldn't work 😜

@Dean Simmons that never happened. in the 60's (60 y ago!!!!!!) solar panel were used in remote areas and satellites. however this will never work... commercially.

Why not?

Refrigeration was invented (and commercially used) over 100 years ago. And a lot of people still don't get the basic principles of that, today.. Maybe you just don't understand..?

We live in a sci-fi world. We have for the last hundred or so years.

kokofan50 I agree as well but if you look at some of the old sci-fi Sy unparallel it to the current tech But I recall the old Star Trek show and see some of the crazy things that they dreamed up that we can see en use now 🤔 back in the seventies they were using white noise experiment and WaLA today in many courthouses they use that very technology and that movie Get Smart with agent 69 Barbara Feldon*YES* en Maxwell Smart and the chief would go into the Dome of Silence kind of like today's Republican elec or appointees? Anyhow Max had a shoe phone that seemed very funny in it's time. Meanwhile other movies of old had projected people both alive or dead appear in space using the current Tech and today we can do that with CO2 gas at night on a building very clearly. But seriously the moon has so much cheese to end world hunger IMAGINE🙄

I've been waiting for this for years now. heard that someone invented a highly efficient cooling system like this 14 years ago and then disappeared.

Tiavor Kuroma TRUE TRUE. AND IT REMINDS ME To Rudolph Von diesel that invented a very efficient internal combustion using hemp that was popular in it's day, that and the guy that works for GM inventing a carb that would be running on 50 plus MPG that disappeared like Rudolph Von diesel while taking a cruise ship and was lost. That was during the Rockefeller years of hoarding all the refineries and the exclusive rights to trains💥

It's not to far off, from some of Isaac Asimov characters in the Foundation series

no we are stupid for believing this

+Yeezy Yeezy Actually if we could transfer heat away like this space could also be used for energy. Like he said at 12:00 we could use that energy to generate power without fuel. Actually thinking a little bit more about it now you wouldn't need to transfer that energy to space. We could make a box put a wall in the middle were heat can only be transferred through at a certain frequency, put a hole somewhere to allow that heat to escape and you could generate electricity from it simply by making one section of the box hotter than it is outside and the other section colder. I actually like that idea better because then we wouldn't need to transfer energy into space. (Unless absolutely necessary) Aw man. It almost feels like a perpetual motion machine when I put it that way. I'm just thinking of it like a neurons action potential only with continuous production of electricity.

@AnteConfig it have fuel, thermal energy,

Quentin Bean, you don't understand physics real well, do ya?

AnteConfig it doesn’t generate it from nothing. I think it is essentially saying the heat the sun puts on earth during the day. We convert the infrared energy at night using temperature difference at night. Energy can’t come from nothing. It seams like a more complicated version of solar to me. I prefer his idea of coating the solar panels with a layer that prevents the suns energy heating the solar panel and instead helps cool them. They are much more efficient when cool.

Not that useful!? The ability to create a temperature differential of 150-200 K everywhere on the planet where there is sky is like the most useful thing in the world! Even on the north pole with an average temperature of -30 °C you can create such a differential.

pokenei yes thats precisely what would be great and worth it. If saving energy sounds dumb to you then you may be the dumb one

Just use good old metal mirror, it will deflect more than 90% of solar energy back to space, more efficiently and at microscopic fraction of cost of this material.

This technology needs some electricity input to work, so you can just turn it off.

I live in temperate zone and I would install them for summer to boost efficiency of my AC and/or solar panels and disconnect it during winter why not. The fact that they would cool the surroundings is OK even in winter I think - there is still too much heat anyway.

Did NDT really say that?? That's religious talk if ever I've heard it...

What are you talking about Adam? sounds like poetry

you must have low standards for poetry.

Rickster, I'd say your statement just disproved itself by being propaganda. You are trying to use the nature of this comment section to prove a point about other comment sections. Good going.

Rickster search halfnium then shut up

Hold up on that, without any figures the efficiency might be so bad that the pollution due to production might overcome any benefits. Not even considering money and payback on investment for an installation...

me too

but you need to put your PC outdoor for the surface to send heat away from your apartment

I swear! This is the first thing that came to my mind.

Oliver Cant what type of semi do you have? 🤓

Maybe cooling pastes may not be required again.

According to their website, these panels save the amount of energy 2-3x times the amount of electricity generated by an equal solar panel

By the way he says it, it works both day and night, so it is more effective

This technology is in its infancy, Solar panels are 4x efficient than this technology

Solar panels take energy from the sun and turns some of it into electricity, then into some other forms of energy but eventually into heat. This system expels heat through the atmosphere. The purpose is completely different.

Solar on the west south and east sides of a roof. Cooling device on the north side.

Hashim Warren Which means TED can never be trusted again.

Hashim Warren TEDx was a dear mistake

Mufti Hossain agreed. You have people borrowing credibility from the brand rather than serving the larger audience

Thanks for your input, Russiabot!

Please provide examples of pseudo social science. Or are we just supposed to believe claims without evidence?

lloydgush 8 minutes boring exposition and feels, 2 minutes of interesting information and content and 3 minutes of theorising, and to top it off a slow & boring "for the idiot masses" TED talking style.

Better than 8min of political propaganda, 2 min of exposition, and 3 minutes of inconsistent conjectures exposed as if they were facts.

lloydgush An improvement on awful is still

omgcow Yeah, but it's still an improvement.

Eren I think it's better to make a company which make buildings so they can built them with this. Di mi kardeşim

Lol

it's a scam...

Sharkiuli lol, everything new to someone or something is scam

Eren yes

Like a hat

Genius

God yes! Hope it's not carcinogenic though..

I don't think it would be that effective as clothing or hat. The space station is losing heat the same way but need a lot of surface area to lose even a small amount of heat.

A hat might work, everything else is not pointing enough surface up the air. also it only works outside.

Only infra-red light (heat) of a certain wavelength will pass through the air with such a relatively low resistance. As for alien worlds producing artificial heat, that frequency might be the only one to escape from their atmosphere, even through cloud cover.

3:46

Vishal Goel that happens a lot of places in the world. Your view is still skewed.

Now you are Woke. Congratulations

use brain buddy. don't waste it in too much Bollywood & cricket.

Another one. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-Y_9vd4HWlVA.html

Yikes

DeDraconis YAY Stirling!!! ;)

That was my thought too, generate heat from the sun and use "reflectors" to cool the other side. You just need a thermos to store the heat to keep it going through the night.

nahiag The possible

nahiag or use waste heat sources from other processes

It doesn't produce power or mechanical energy. It is more like a reflective heatsink that works even under sunlight.

You can use shallow geothermal tech to cool to about 50° F.

Mike Harrington you said it they will lock it up 100% sure about that

The catch is that their panel uses some very expensive materials like that Hafnium oxide layer. There is absolutely no way to scale this up with that material being needed. Presumably he is here asking for investments for research into how to replace those materials. There is no guarantee that they will find a replacement. That's the catch.

sexyloser That figures.

It's a sales pitch, where's the substance ??

unfortunately this will never work

Thanks for this insight! What makes you think it can not be substituted? Note that this is an array of different materials interacting and only one possibility of this concept. Nonetheless your point is very important!

We need to start exploiting space. Many fantastic scientific breakthrough inventions are currently stymied commercially due to lack of "rare earth" materials.

Nine_inch_Snails we re not there yet, technologically. We have to step up our space game by a lot, but all that is grounded on how good we can work together here back on earth! Every step in this will get us closer to a better future!

Nine_inch_Snails you might not like this response, but I think it is what Donald Trump is actually planning to do.

So let`s mine an Asteroid! I`ll be your Spaceminer.

you meant lets invest trillions on the idea because it can make our products more desirable, thus making more money.

i would have to rewatch but he said they did it with little to no effort

Senikz, so then why don't you do it if it takes so little effort.

You can always invest in his start up yourself

TGGeko so can you.

He will probably wrek it apart

I am not entirely sure what is there to wreck. If i read the short form correctly, it's about glass beads at a certain size resonating and pushing infrared light out, with the size tuned to prefer those wavelengths mentioned. The performance was also not in the realms of fantasy, iirc it was to the tune of 100W per square meter. If we can capture photons (and a small bit of heat) with 15% efficiency in run of the mill solar panels today, then we are capturing 150Watt per square meter in actual electrons, then surely we must be able to do something more "primitive" as well. "All" that is done here is radiate heat, but in frequencies which are not that easily absorbed by the air around us, and then adding a reflective (but not blocking) layer on top to keep the sun from throwing a wrench in the works. Simple, but brilliant.

He also loves hearing himself talk. His vids are 2/3 too long.

They are also too much bullshit. His ego is too big. He just likes to make himself look like he knows better and is smarter than everyone else. (thats probably why he likes to target Elon's ideas so much. If you're gonna try and look smarter than someone else, better look smarter than Elon rather than Trump). Doesn't recognize the fact that there are other smart(er) people in the world who have reason to believe the obvious obstacles can be overcome or at least that it is worth trying.

yeah I feel suspicious because its sounds too good to be true, cooling stuff passively without energy is like generating heat passively without using energy

Radiate more Heat than you can absorb.

Exactly.

Well, you could see cold as simply the absense of heat just like darkness is the absense of light. So no you cant bring the cold from space, just like you cant bring the darkness from space. But you can send the heat to the cold space. (although i dont really see why you need space for that, and i doubt much of the heat reaches space, if it gradually gets absorbed by the atmosphere rather than directly by the first molecules near the material should be fine i think)

Yes, they're sending the heat out in space. Space isn't cold, space is nothing, so warmth will natrually want to go there. The problem is that there's stuff inbetween.

Yes, extremely - and t generally needs to be very thin (a few microns to a few hundred nanometers thick layers of different materials). But the whole thing can sit atop a substrate, so you can bascally put it on anything.

I'm most skeptical about the scalability of using Hafnium dioxide as one of the layers. Hafnium is pretty rare :/

As with every new techs this is nowhere near optimised for performance or scalability. This is nothing more than a proof of concept, but if they keep working at it this will be aviable to the mass. Excellent use of ancient knowledge and current technology. This guy is a true scientist.

I mean if egyptians could make it, i bet we can find a way ;)

these were Persians mentioned in the video and they didn't use this specific material but unknowingly they benifited from the atmosphere heat window too.

Well as to the expense overall as near or far as I can tell it may be cheaper ie* hafnium dioxide or the possibility to a Win-Win is cheaper then Nothin

If it has to use the materials he made the prototype with, it will tend to be expensive.

+froger27; i doubt the heat can be so focused. It is passive after all. Nice idea tho

i believe thats called a solar panel

A solar panel does not work on heat

J3M1LL P___{} a solar panel uses visible light to induce the flow of electrons aka the photoelectric effect. Heat is in the form of infrared light and is too low energy to induce this flow. What I mean is why not find a way to sink the heat so that it can be used in the generation of electricity via turbine.

+David Scheindlin; the commenter-J3M1LL P___{} could be thinking of solar mirror arrays. Hot water panels and solar refrigeration also work off heat collection.

The sterling engine doesn't produce much power, but you can make a fan of it :)

Much cheaper to just paint buildings ultra white. Then use an adsorption cooler for cooling--you can easily make such systems at home using things like metal container, 2 glass containers, copper tubing, vacuum rated plastic tubing, activated carbon, 3A zeolite, methanol and/or water, a hand pumped brake bleeder (to pull a partial vacuum), a ball valve, and a Solar cooker. I like the concept of the inventor's invention, but it would likely be expensive, and be very hard to make for oneself. There are various ways to skin the same CAT.

Amigps01 That is correct, but to suplement: There will be a linear graph made. Greenhouse gas emitted = Power used * Cleanness to the power. reducing the power required by even 10% is a huge benefit

It's the lack of good engineering that makes the air coolers not efficient. Everyone will have AC but what will it cost to retrofit this upgrade?

Necessity is one of the mother's of invention.

Only works naturally in arid regions w clear sky and no trees or buildings. Most arid regions dont have standing water to freeze. But look at the nightly lows in a daily hot desert and you see the massive contrast overnight.

that's not how it works. in dry environment air generates less IR than the objects can dissipate. in time it gets very cold. in no wind conditions (hence the constructions) convection can also be beaten by IR dissipation. so no significant "heat" input, constant "heat" dissipation = freezing

Thanks for the explanation. he didn't make that clear in the talk.

I agree, Good explanation! I'd love to know more about it though!

An interesting experiment: point an IR(aka laser) thermometer to the sky. you can get anything between -30 to -10deg C (when the sky is clear). That would be 30 deg below freezing. Commercially the solution discussed here does not make sense. Besides being very expensive, it takes more space than standard solar panels. Also their efficiency is way lower, even if they would work in a mathematically ideal way. But the worst is: they "work" mostly at night, AND ONLY WHEN THE SKY IS CLEAR, and the efficiency drops immediately at exponential rate. The "quantity" of heat dissipation is an inverse proportion of heat. To put it simple: from +40 to +10 , 2 to 3 hours; from +10 to -10, 8 to 10 hours. As temperature drops, so does the rate of dissipation. The energy requirement is during the day. Solar panels: better. Also solar panels convert up to 40% of energy to electricity, replacing fossil fuels, so basically less energy/heat and CO2 emissions In conclusion: if you think global warming, the dirt cheap solution would be an ordinary mirror: reflecting the sun rays back to space. If you think energy production: solar panels. This is only an interesting academic experiment.

Now it is 2024 still waiting

Perhaps. But why not more solutions, just as skyscrapers have used river water or the like to aid in cooling at lower costs.

Well we are far from that so until then everything using energy is contributing to global warming

your are correct but the instruments use to generate power from solar wind or geothermal they have tobe manufacture... hence indirectly contribute to greenhouse gasses... but in lesser amount than conventional ones

They wouldn't contribute to greenhouse gasses, but they'd still generate waste heat and radiate it as infrared light, so this technology could still help.

Well, that's a big if.

21st century baby

That's not really an accurate summary of the material. Literally every material "transform[s] ambient temperature into radiation and send[s] it away." The reason that's not useful most of the time is that everything else is also emitting this radiation, so your material will be absorbing this radiation from the things around it, which heats it up by roughly the same amount. The unique part of this particular material is that it's designed to radiate at a temperature that does not get absorbed or reflected by the atmosphere and, instead of absorbing the radiation from everything else, it reflects that radiation. What this means is that it radiates away heat just like any other material, but it doesn't absorb heat like most other materials do.

Stericify, so the material reflects some radiation of surroundings (including air/atmosphere) in a spectrum that the surroundings doesn't absorb (i.e. it still gets heated by the not reflected amount, only slower). In addition the material is heated by convection which equalizes temperature of everything (temperature of air, ground and the material). So the material will have a temperature of surroundings unless you cool the surroundings.

+Oleksandr L; convection is not instantaneous. If it is slow enough an ice cube can still cool you hours later.

AnantaSesaDas, do you mean the material has to be cold beforehand?

Not that much. Although they're very good at reflecting sunlight, they let most IR light through.

Luc Buydens: Maybe it would heat up the clouds from below and cause them to precipitate sooner?

Luc Buydens i think the absorption window model of the atmosphere already accounts for humidity and clouds. So i would assume that clouds dont block the radiation

Googled it. Water vapour does absorb IR. But think about this: The sky is so much colder than the ground, so we passively radiate heat into the sky and make ourselves colder. With AC however, we do not radiate our heat out, but generate more heat (electricity) to actively "pull" the heat out. More net heat. Even if the cloud absorb heat, don't forget the outer space is much colder, so the cloud will radiate some IR out there too. Also, even in tropical region, on a normal day cloud coverage is only 60-70%.

Here in AZ, I'd give anything to cool down from the sweltering 120°+ summer days

While that is true you are basically making a "heat gun", so pointing it out in space is the best way to get rid of the heat, it would probably work just as well if you pointed it towards a building but then you would just warm up the building as a side effect. The air flowing around the building would then heat up and eventually that same air would come back to you, or at least the heat energy, so you would basically gain nothing, basically you want to shoot that heat energy as far away as possible and space is a really good candidate for that :)

I think this thing has flaws when it comes to conservation of energy. It may work but I have doubts as to the scale-ability and efficiency. If the device is cooler then the heat is going somewhere and unless it has a direct connection to space it's the air. It's kind of like those evaporators that supposedly don't use energy to make water. The laws of thermodynamics seem to be broken here.

@Robert I have to say, that is my worry as well. Seems to good to be true. But the implications if it is true are pretty cool! Well if they can scale.

I don't see any flow, its the same reason why in winter the front window of your car left outside has more frost than the side windows: radiative heat transfer. Radiative heat transfer rate is proportional to the difference temperatures (at the fourth power) of two facing surfaces. The side windows face house walls (which are not that cold) and the front windows is facing the night sky or outer space (which is really cold). So this new material is highly reflective to the sun frequency (received on earth) and is radiative heat at a frequency which does not interact a lot with our atmosphere. Bye bye photons, farewell.

@@RPSchonherr Dude, make an funnel/inverted Solar cooker. Put a container of water in it at night under an open sky. On a clear, cloudness night, that water will over a few hours become quite a bit more chilled than temps of the air, ground i.e. surroundings. If you optimize it for efficiency, such as insulating it from conduction and convection heat/energy transfer to the surroundings, then you can get what the ancient desert peoples got--ice at non freezing temps. Just because you don't understand something completely, doesn't mean it doesn't exist or doesn't work.

I wonder that too!

Well, space is like, really, really big. So we have a few hundred billion year before we'd face such a problem. In fact, space is cooling on its own, so I wouldn't worry about it. :D

+Syzygy; space only cools due to "dark energy". If not for expansion we'd still be plasma soup in the big bang singularity.

OP; unchecked entropy will cause the "heat death of the universe". Dont despair, there mist be other processes such as whatever caused our original big bang. So it cant be the end of existence.

No, the universe is expanding.