Sound To Power Space Probes

An anonymous reader writes "The old adage that 'no one can hear you scream in space' seems to have its own variant when Los Alamos scientists announced today their latest designs for the 'traveling wave engine', a derivative of the classic, pistonless Stirling device. Because it uses helium as an oscillating gas in a long tube, the design works kind of like a high-pitched loudspeaker at maximum efficiency. Another description combines a refrigerator and whistle to make an engine."

Comments

Not a *Power* Source

[CheshireCatCO]

I find the headline a bit misleading; this isn't a power source, it's a way to convert the source's output (heat) into electrical power. You will still need a power supply. (Probably an RTG.) You'll just get more electrical power by using this system.

Old adage?

[grunthos]

The old adage that 'no one can hear you scream in space'

You mean "In space, no one can hear you scream"? That's not an old adage, that was the advertising line for the movie "Alien"!

Mumble, grumble... Dang whippersnappers with their video-game attention spans can't even remember movie posters...

Not news (much), either - been around for a while

[Engineer-Poet]

The only newsy thing about this is the interest from makers of space probes; the thermoacoustic engine has been around for a while (combine with a thermoacoustic chiller and you've got a gas-liquefaction system with no moving parts; here's another one from 1999) and the page from LANL on thermoacoustic systems is almost two years old already. These guys were plugging their sound-to-electricity converter some time ago.