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Professors Claim Passive Cooling Breakthrough Via Plastic Film (sciencemag.org)
What if you could cool buildings without using electricity? charlesj68 brings word of "the development of a plastic film by two professors at the University of Colorado in Boulder that provides a passive cooling effect."
The film contains embedded glass beads that absorb and emit infrared in a wavelength that is not blocked by the atmosphere. Combining this with half-silvering to keep the sun from being the source of infrared absorption on the part of the beads, and you have a way of pumping heat at a claimed rate of 93 watts per square meter.
The film is cheap to produce -- about 50 cents per square meter -- and could create indoor temperatures of 68 degrees when it's 98.6 outside. "All the work is done by the huge temperature difference, about 290C, between the surface of the Earth and that of outer space," reports The Economist.
The film is cheap to produce -- about 50 cents per square meter -- and could create indoor temperatures of 68 degrees when it's 98.6 outside. "All the work is done by the huge temperature difference, about 290C, between the surface of the Earth and that of outer space," reports The Economist.
Yeah, but how many is that in Kelvin?
Some people encrypt by using rot-13 twice. I prefer the more secure method of using rot-1 a total of twenty six times.
Yeah, but WHEN? When will we see this available for consumer use?
I see news stories every damn day about some amazing breakthrough in this field or that field, but fuck all if it ever seems to make it to market.
I must have seen 100 stories in the last few years about more efficient and less expensive solar cells, but where the fuck are they?
The same with medications and advances in medical technology....lots of news and hype and excitement but rarely does anything ever appear.
FFS, all I want is to be buried in a casket made of an advanced polymer plastic film that eliminates diabetes and has a 98% solar conversion efficiency rate, and that can autonomously pilot itself down I-5 during rush hour. Is that too fucking much to ask?? Oh, and the battery has to last for a full week without a charge.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
But, can it cool a Beowulf Cluster?
-Unresolved symbol? Byte me!