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A Super-Efficient Light Bulb
Chroniton writes with news of a Silicon Valley company, Luxim, that has developed a tiny, full-spectrum light bulb, based on a plasma of argon gas, that gives off as much light as a streetlight while using less power. The Tic Tac-sized bulb operates at temperatures up to 6000K and produces 140 lumens/watt, almost ten times as efficient as standard incandescent lamps, and twice the efficiency of high-end LEDs. The new bulbs also have a lifetime of 20,000 hours. There's no mention of mercury or other heavy metals, which pose a problem for compact fluorescents.
Well they say in the video that it is almost 10 times as efficient in terms of Lumen's per watt (140 vs 15 for a normal bulb). I assume what you mean though is that the new argon bulb might not be able to run at lower powers. So if you just wanted a 60 Watt bulb equivalent, it might not be possible. Is that what you mean?
Switch streetlights to a 33% duty cycle with pseudo-random (or really random) timing and instantly reduce power use for street lighting by 66% AND allow people to actually see those mysterious lights in the sky the old Greek dudes were talking about. As a side benefit, studies have shown that crime actually goes DOWN when lights come on at random rather than staying on all the time.
http://www.ecogeek.org/content/view/1466/74/ However, their talk of efficiency is a bit sensationalist. ZDNet makes it sound like this is the most efficient bulb out there. Actually, the Luxim bulbs are roughly the same efficiency as high pressure sodium lamps (the yellow-tinged ones that are often used for streetlights.)
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Why would we need street lights with a very strong light source using the same spectrum as the sun? What about putting one of these into a beamer instead? Or stadium lights? Every time somebody comes up with a great invention, they seem to want to use it for the weirdest things. Bright sun-light lite disturbs the wildlife anyway, bad idea...
In the video, the inventors mention that the Argon gas at the centre of the bulb (size of a christmas tree bulb) reaches the temperature of the surface of the sun (6000C). Given the small size of the bulb, there is probably a very steep temperature gradient (otherwise the glass tube would melt). But the energy is dissipated by emitting light of all wavelengths, not just in the infra-red region of the spectrum. I'd be worried about getting sunburn or cataracts from something like this.
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The /. moderation system clearly does not work well. In response to the "troll", however, you don't need to put the telescope somewhere dark on the moon. Having no atmosphere, the moon does not present any difficulties for daytime telescopy since there's no scatter into the objective.
Only his tendency toward a dazed stupor prevented him from screaming aloud.
Time to add nimp.org to your hosts file. The link is an auto redirect from rds.yahoo.com to members.on.nimp.org. This is how Yahoo redirects search results to find out who clicked what. Yawho? search results are thus no longer safe to click. For best results, add rds.yahoo.com to your hosts file or equivalent blocker as well.
members.on.nimp.org resolves to poulet0.zoy.org. The IP address is [80.65.228.130]. Best to block that as well. The DNS administrator for this server is Slashdot User "Sam H", UID 3979.
Somebody at slashdot should have a look at our anonymous coward's IP address. It would be nice if we could quit this nonsense. I hope this isn't some troll that bought a low UID in the auction.
And maybe some slashdotter in Paris could call Sam and ask him to fix his compromised server. It does look like someone truly nasty took it over in August of 2005. Big Debian fan this one. Likes the GNAA routine and the whole bit.
I'm not certain about pinning this on Sam. sam.zoy.org resolves to a different IP. One of you intertubes wizards want to weigh in here?
Help stamp out iliturcy.
NO SHIT.
:) )
I live on the 30th floor of an apartment building. One full block away, someone is using a 150 or 300 watt incandescent to light up their backyard. Unshielded of course. 50% of it's light is spilled directly into the sky. It's the brightest visible thing in the entire city, RUINS the entire view of the nighttime cityscape because it's so out of place, and at night casts such brightness on my ceiling that if I don't want to be kept awake by the light, I have to pull my curtains (which pisses me off, it's nice to wake up to sunlight in the morning, and it helps one to wake up). I can't imagine how peeved and angry at him all his neighbours are, the ones who live right next to him.
Furthermore, it's blinding. I can't see a fucking thing in his back yard. Someone could spend a half hour butchering him with an axe right in the middle of his back lawn, and I betcha NOBODY would see a fucking thing. I couldn't.
I really should print out this post and put it in his mailbox. (Hmmm, perhaps I should hit the "anon" button
Doesn't beat White LEDs at 300 lumens per watt.