Very interesting Jones. 8-)
As far as the 2nd Law is concerned it's always struck
me that to show it's wrong is a no-brainer. All one
needs is a chess board and a concept of scale. In the
classic case of the steam engine where disorder on the
micro-scale is increased, people totally forget that
order on the macro-scale is increased. They ignore the
fact that the engine has taken Sir Joseph Porter, together
with his Sisters, his Cousins, his Aunts down to
H.M.S.Pinafore at Portsmouth.
In short they have a thoroughly blinkered view of order.
The concentrate on the fact that the glass is half empty
and fail to see that it is also half full.
Cheers,
Grimer
At 02:43 pm 08-02-05 -0800, Jones wrote wrote:
>Hindsight is 20/20 as they say. I hope the lab execs
>at Sandia do not have to find that out the hard way...
>if it turns out that they dropped funding on a
>particularly promising project... or if some ploy was
>involved to keep Sam out of the IP picture.
>
>The "Sunflower" solar-mirror story mentined in FSB (in
>another post today) brings an enabling technology to
>mind (not mentioned in that story) which even
>dispenses with the need for solar cells, per se.
>
>It involves both conversion of heat to electricity and
>the violation of Plank's Law of blackbody radiation.
>That's right, the violation of Plank's Law of
>blackbody radiation. Yet, does anyone on vortex
>remember the photolattice? Why it raised so little
>curiosity at the time is a huge mystery. Did it slip
>though the lattice <G> If Plank got a Nobel for
>discovering an over-reaching law, shouldn't the
>iconoclasts get at least some tiny bit of recognition?
>
>Looking back over files and scientific announcements
>relevant to LENR, solar energy and/or greatly
>increased efficiency in energy-conversion over the
>last few years - this one keeps recurring in
>importance: For one thing - because it could fit into
>so many other schemes - particularly thermal solar
>conversion or LENR heat conversion. Solar thermal is
>the easiest of all forms of "free" energy to harvest
>(with mirrors) and a factor of 10-50 times less costly
>than using solar cells - but all you normally get for
>the low cost is day-time heat - not electricity, and
>not particularly high-grade heat at that.
>
>What the photolattice does is to convert low grade
>heat into coherent IR light, and very efficiently.
>"Coherency" is the key to efficiency.
>
>When trying to rate a wide range of "enabling
>technologies" in terms of unrealized "potential," the
>newsbyte that seems now to have had the greatest
>easily-realizable "potential," to a wide swath of
>alternative energy research could be this technology
>of the "photolattice" but has the technology now gone
>stagnant? I wish someone at Sandia or Stanford could
>answer that one. Here is the reference:
>
>"A Novel Photolattice with Extraordinary Properties"
>By Neil Savage
>
>http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/WEBONLY/wonews/oct03/1003phot.html
>
>"A device from Sandia emits infrared radiation at a
>fixed wavelength and with a conversion efficiency that
>appears to defy Planck�s law"
>
>Notice how the editors downplay the part about
>Planck�s law - don't want to offend anyone, right?
>Eventually, the high-priests of the physics
>establisment will also find a way to save-face on this
>Law, of course, just as with the soon-to-be-demolished
>2nd Law.
>
>N. Savage is not so diplomatic in the story:
>
>"15 October 2003�A microscopic device built by
>researchers at Sandia National Laboratory
>(Albuquerque, N.M.) could lead to better photovoltaic
>cells, more efficient light bulbs, and the rewriting
>of basic physics texts."
>
>Researchers Shawn Lin and James Fleming built a
>photonic lattice that emits infrared radiation only
>at a specific wavelength. The lattice is a type of
>photonic band gap crystal, in which a regular
>structure at the scale of microns or nanometers
>allows light to exist only at specific wavelengths....
>
>With the same photolithographic methods used to
>manufacture computer chips, the scientists inscribed
>the structure they wanted in silicon. They then
>filled the gaps with tungsten, the same material that
>makes light bulb filaments, and etched away the
>silicon, leaving a three-dimensional waffle of
>tungsten rods, piled in a crisscrossing log cabin
>style. The size and spacing of the rods, half a micron
> thick and spaced 1.5 � m apart, force the photons
>passing between them to fit into particular
>wavelengths.
>
>[OK they used the expensive technique of
>photolithography to discover and document the process,
>but that does not mean that bulk process cannot be
>adapted to manufacture it]
>
>When Lin and Fleming heated the device in a vacuum to
>1250 �C, the typical operating temperature of a
>thermal photovoltaic (PV) cell, they saw a sharp
>emission peak at 1.5 � m. They calculated that the
>peak would translate into an optical-to-electrical
>conversion efficiency in a PV cell of approximately 34
> percent and an electrical power output of about 14
>W/cm2. That�s far greater than the 11 percent
>efficiency and 3 W/cm2 output predicted by Max
>Planck�s Law of Blackbody Cavity Radiation.
>
>END
>
>Yes and at least one expert who commented on this back
>then says that 34% - which is much better than an
>auto engine, for instance, is an understatement. There
>is no reason why coherent radiation should not convert
>at double that... yet...
>
>Did this great unrelaized potential fall under the
>Sandia budget axe, or what about the photonics group
>at Stanford ( i.e. the "Fan club)? Maybe they are just
>slyly waiting to try to get it into the hands of free
>enterprise and out of government IP control. Who
>knows?
>
>Enquiring minds do want to know...BTW I have written
>Dr. Fan for an update, but I am not really expecting
>to get past his Spam filter...
>
>Jones
>
>
