Harry Veeder wrote:
Does it shorten the life span of the LED? "A candle that burns twice as bright, burns half as long."
In the prototypes, yes, there does seem to be added stress which shortens the normally very long life span of the LED. That is expected, due to the changed circumstances of usage over the original design criteria - but almost irrelevant at this stage.
The important commercial question (which will require lots of man hours to find out) is: can a large LED array, under RF irradiation, achieve a lifespan long enough to make the significantly lower power consumption worthwhile? It will probably take a large lighting company to figure that one out.
Of greater theoretical interest at this stage is the looming QM question: can electron tunneling ever be gainful - and if so, does the tunneling itself degrade the "tunnel" ??
IOW there is theory (and some experiment) which suggests that the electron, when it comes through a dielectric tunnel is traveling very close to light speed... some reports of superluminosity, even.
This could be an interesting finding since at 99.9999% of lightspeed, the virtual mass of the electron will be so enhanced that it may very well destroy the surrounding structure.
On a light note - this tunneling can be described in Michel's unforgettable phrase as a "sphincter effect" ... so we must ask if the result is "electric hemorrhoids" ?
...ouch... Jones
