Monthly Archives: September 2008

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Record photovoltaic efficiency

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Encouraging advances is solar power technology from the US DoE’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory:

Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) have set a world record in solar cell efficiency with a photovoltaic device that converts 40.8 percent of the light that hits it into electricity. This is the highest confirmed efficiency of any photovoltaic device to date.

But:

The 40.8 percent efficiency was measured under concentrated light of 326 suns. One sun is about the amount of light that typically hits Earth on a sunny day.

Mmm. I wonder what the efficiency will be under normal conditions (once it’s mass produced)? Still, it’s pretty impressive as a proof of concept:

…the new design uses compositions of gallium indium phosphide and gallium indium arsenide to split the solar spectrum into three equal parts that are absorbed by each of the cell’s three junctions for higher potential efficiencies.

Beautiful. Kudos to humanity’s glorious electrical engineers!

[story here via ElectricalEngineer.com and KurzweilAI.net][image from Alex // Berlin on flickr]

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Starpirates – browser-based sf MMORPG

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We got some email from the owners of StarPirates, a free space-based MMO-type game that you can run in your browser (meaning you can probably play from work or school and not get in trouble, though on your head be it if you do – we don’t need any lawsuits, thanks).

StarPirates logo

Anyway, they’ve offered our readers some additional freebie action. It’s pretty straightforward: if you click on this link here you’ll be entered into the draw automatically after setting up your character. Three people who sign up through that link will get 1000 StarPirates points to build up their Pirate.

They apparently have a pretty strong community with lots of chatter, and you can set up fleets – so if someone wants to setup a Futurismic fleet, drop us a line and we’ll post the details up so other Futurismic readers can join up if they want to.

Did I mention it’s free to play? Enjoy!

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Snow over Mars

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lidar

The Phoenix lander aimed a laser at the clouds and found ice crystals about two miles above the surface. Mission scientists hope to see snow actually fall to the ground.  NASA says the snow is water-based. Mars is too warm to support frozen carbon dioxide. “Scientists are able to determine that the snow is water-based and not carbon-dioxide snow, since temperatures on Mars are currently too warm to support the latter,” NASA adds.–Setting-the-record-straight-Tom

There’s also geological evidence of past liquid water on the planet.

Bonus cool thing:

Peter Smith, the lead scientist for the mission from the University of Arizona, said the team is going to try something new in the last weeks of Phoenix’s life.

The lander carried a microphone, which was designed to listen to the roar of the descent engines as the craft settled onto the Martian surface. The microphone was not used then. Now, Smith said, the scientific team intends to turn on the microphone “and listen to Mars for the first time.”

[Lidar chart: NASA, JPL-Caltech, U of Arizona, Canadian Space Agency]

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It’s easier to knock the optimists if you ignore what they’re actually saying

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If nothing else, Damien Walter’s post about positivity in sf has poked up the embers and got some debate crackling. But when I say “debate”, I may actually mean “knee-jerk reactions to someone suggesting that change wouldn’t be a bad thing”…

Jason Stoddard decided to codify his ideas in a Positive Science Fiction Manifesto, and Jetse de Vries chipped in again as well. Jason’s manifesto made the error of mentioning capitalism in a positive light, however, causing David Moles to mis-paraphrase him as saying “the problem with contemporary science fiction is that it doesn’t love capitalism enough“, and for io9 to do an unusually sloppy job of yeah-what-he-said bandwagoneering. Both posts address half a point out of the five that Jason lists… is it overly capitalistic of me to be keeping score?

Just for the record, I’m very fond of dystopic fiction but I’d quite like to see some more optimistic pieces as well; I don’t see why both can’t coexist, given the number of specialist niche venues in the market. What I find grimly amusing is to see the same knee-jerk reactions that the Mundane SF manifesto caused happening all over again… so much for sf readers being open to change, huh?