NASA Creates Super-Black Carbon Nanotube Coating 132
An anonymous reader writes "NASA has just revealed a new, super-black material, claiming it is the most light absorbent material ever developed, and capable of absorbing 99% of ultraviolet, infrared, far-infrared, and visible light. The super-black material is about 10,000 times thinner than a human hair and created using carbon nanotubes. Those nanotubes are positioned and grown on multiple other materials including silicon, stainless steel, and titanium. The process of applying the coating requires heating the surface up to 1,382 degrees in an oven filled with a 'carbon-coating feedstock gas.' As well as being up to 100x more absorbent than anything that has come before, the coating is significantly lighter than the black paint and epoxy commonly used today to absorb light. Because the light absorption level is so high, the super-black material will also keep temperatures down for the instruments it is used on. And that very high absorption rate brings one final big advantage: it allows measurements to be taken at much greater distances in space because it removes the light emitted from around planets and stars as well as any generally high-contrast area of space."
Nanotubes Thet Don't Crack (Score:1)
Black don't crack. And neither will these nanotubes.
This just in (Score:1)
Guy who modded this -1 is just jealous hes not black
Picture (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Picture (Score:4, Funny)
Here's a photo of it. In the middle, kinda hard to make out http://f.cl.ly/items/1S2W2w3X0z13450i440Z/black.jpg [f.cl.ly]
That's obviously been photoshopped.
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You can tell by the nanopixels.
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Looks like Hotblack Desiato's stunt ship.
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I feel sick.
"Paging Mr Desiato, your limo is ready..." (Score:5, Informative)
Zaphod's attention however was elsewhere. His attention was riveted on the ship standing next to Hotblack Desiato's limo. His mouths hung open.
"That," he said, "that ... is really bad for the eyes ..."
Ford looked. He too stood astonished.
It was a ship of classic, simple design, like a flattened salmon, twenty yards long, very clean, very sleek. There was just one remarkable thing about it.
"It's so ... black!" said Ford Prefect, "you can hardly make out its shape ... light just seems to fall into it!"
Zaphod said nothing. He had simply fallen in love.
The blackness of it was so extreme that it was almost impossible to tell how close you were standing to it.
"Your eyes just slide off it ..." said Ford in wonder. It was an emotional moment. He bit his lip.
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That's not super black. This [aforkliftc...cation.com] is super black.
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What the hell is that site about?
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Hell if I know, but it was the first one that came up when I googled "black superman".
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Its a good find
1,382 degrees F (Score:2, Interesting)
Since the scale wasn't mentioned, unless you read TFA.
Hmm. This would be awesomes for people who put solar heat collectors on their roofs in the Great White North. I wonder how soon it can be done affordably.
Better market prospect for that than Solyndra.
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Yeah, if this absorbs from ultraviolet to infrared that well then how much heat would it transfer? If you have an air gap of inner and outer walls in a research station in the north or south poles with this material lining the inner wall would it re-absorb much of the lost heat? Would layering this stuff between air gaps suck in more heat than you lose in temperatures that cold?
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Yeah, if this absorbs from ultraviolet to infrared that well then how much heat would it transfer? If you have an air gap of inner and outer walls in a research station in the north or south poles with this material lining the inner wall would it re-absorb much of the lost heat? Would layering this stuff between air gaps suck in more heat than you lose in temperatures that cold?
Well, my father, a CE, had a friend who build a large collector for his roof, back in the 1970's. He collected aluminum cans, cut the tops and bottoms off, halved them and anodized the inside of the halves in some fashion. He arranged these as an air path in a frame on the roof of his house, southern exposed and used a small fan to run a current of air through it. Free heating during the day and it worked quite well for far less than running the furnace.
Forward to today and an enterprising company could
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Unfortunately not; such a hypothetical material would allow you to create a temperature difference out of nothing. The best way to limit radiative heat transfer is by having two reflective surfaces, such as aluminum foil. In addition to that, you need to prevent heat transfer due to air convection. That's why thermostat flasks are vacuum and shiny on the inside.
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I wonder how soon it can be done affordably.
Got a kiln capable of a controlled 1382 degrees (Farenheit), and a source of "carbon coating feedstock gas"? Sounds like an extremely affordable process already.
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And 1382F implies a precision that isn't there. I highly doubt the process needs to be heated to the exact degree. This is simply a conversion from 750 degrees Celsius. Most likely 750 is rounded and would be +/-5, which is +/-41 F. If they were going to convert then 1380F would have been more informative or even 1400F.
The act of conversion from on unit to another does not add precision.
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Hmm. This would be awesomes for people who put solar heat collectors on their roofs in the Great White North. I wonder how soon it can be done affordably.
There are already vacuum-evacuated solar-thermal panels for this. With such a system you can use a solar water heater in the arctic (although you might use it to heat the cold water). Of course these may help improve their efficiency.
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More people realize that than you think. I deal with a couple of people who are big conservative types. You know the business leader/chamber of commerce guys who think everyone should work for minimum wage except "their type" of person and another is a corporate lawyer who "smells the glove" if you get my drift. Even they can't gripe about the Solyndra stuff with a straight face.
I don't think the GP was necessarily a teabagger, just someone
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I'm curious. Where exactly do you draw the line for 'life begins', and why?
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Wherever the mother says it does.
Because it's hers.
And don't bother, I won't answer any reductio ad absurdum followup question.
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Why bother replying at all?
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Because feeding the Trolls is entertaining... if you can keep them outside until sunrise....
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Where exactly do you draw the line for 'life begins', and why?
Well, I don't know what the OP would say, but in scientific circles, the question was quite clearly answered back in the mid-1800s, by Louis Pasteur et al. And the clear answer was: It doesn't. We may not know what happened 4.5 billion years ago when our planet was young, but today it's rather well determined that life only continues as a branch of earlier life.
This applies to us humans as it does to everything else living on the planet. The instance of fertilization of an ovum by a sperm doesn't cre
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Yes, this guy has it right. "When does life begin" is a dumb question. If it wasn't, people wouldn't be able to argue about it endlessly. As for whether it's "ok" for a host to kill a half-formed human... probably not. But I'll never be a host, so what do I know.
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I prefer to use "able to procreate" as part of the definition, so that anything that hasn't reached sexual maturity isn't considered alive.
It could be fun to argue for such a definition of "when life begins". It immediately follows from this definition that it's OK to kill a child that hasn't reached puberty. Somehow, I sorta suspect that a lot of people wouldn't be comfortable with this.
OTOH, there's an old Jewish joke, to the effect that kids aren't considered living human beings until they get their medical or law degree.
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Yes, as I attempted to clarify in the thread, I was really interested in personhood, as that's both what the parent posted about, and what I was actually interested in the answer to. 'life begins' is an unfortunate common proxy for 'personhood begins', and conflating the two makes the science side of the argument useless, so I'm sorry for the habit-typo.
Personhood is really what's of interest ... when does the thing that could become a person ... do so (and thus obviously gain the rights to protection from
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Personhood is really what's of interest ... when does the thing that could become a person ... do so (and thus obviously gain the rights to protection from murder from our society).
We might want to be careful with what term we use. Consider that in the US, the legal system has conferred "personhood" on corporations. So in US law, you can be a "person" without even being alive.
Also, US law clearly doesn't protect a "person" from being murdered. It's perfectly legal for the officers of a corporate person to dissolve the corporation, ending its existence. No court would charge them with murder for such an act. It's also legal for one corporation to buy another and merge with it.
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When it is no longer attached to the mother. Until then, it is literally a parasite on the mother until then.
Pretty simple question to answer rationally.
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Sadly, even the mother's rights camp are generally against day before birth abortions. At least if they were in favor of that, they'd have some ideological consistency.
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When it is no longer attached to the mother. Until then, it is literally a parasite on the mother until then. Pretty simple question to answer rationally.
Actually, that wording doesn't make it simple, either. One reason is that most people who support a mother's right to an abortion (within whatever time limits) will agree that for an outsider to cause the fetus's death without her permission would be a criminal act. There's been lots of case law in lots of countries that deal with this, and courts have pretty much all agreed that, even if an abortion would have been legal, fetal death without the mother's permission isn't abortion, and is a crime if done
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Spring break as a teenager kinda sticks out in my mind...
Why??? (lost in happy thoughts)
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Sorry, my other reply should have said 'personhood'.
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Same answer.
It's entirely in the mother's hands. As it has always been.
I can tell you this much: nothing that is inside a woman's body can ever be considered a separate person. Until it is born, it is the mother.
Childbirth is an important event, no matter what the pro-life movement would have you believe. That's when we start counting a human being's age. That's when the child is given a birth certificate. That's when it's a person.
A fetus becomes a
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"He probably doesn't take the time to look underneath any of the claims he hears on the corporate media and just repeats what he hears as truth."
and yet, they still get to vote.
The attempt to do things right started under Bush (Score:2)
The program under which Solyndra got funding had its merits. Solyndra's initial application was even handled under Bush, according to the law.
The way the Obama administration handled it after that was the scandal.
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Ah, yes the under the table deal with bush was fine, but when it came to roost under Obama, it's his fault? typical
Also Obama's fault, Jobless, the economy and 9/11.
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I thought Obama was supposed to be better: transparent, honest. At least that's how the package was sold.
Under Bush, the process for approval began according to the law. However, by the end of his riegn Energy and OMB had serious questions about Solyndra's application. Then Obama took over, backed by Solyndra investors, and approval was rushed through despite the lack of required due diligence. And then it got worse.
And three years into Obama's rule, when exactly does anything become his fault? At what poin
None more black (Score:1)
One of the first uses will be the cover of the "Smell The Glove" re-issue
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Just in time for Nigel Tufnel Day [yahoo.com].
"It's like, how much more black could this be? And the answer is: 'None. None more black.' "
Best rock movie ever.
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What a thread! Douglas Adams and SpınÌal Tap all in one!
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Why'd you make him black?
Because I wanted him to be perfect.
this is very old news. (Score:3, Informative)
Seriously, this was released to the media about 3 years or so ago, and touted as "scientists create blackest material ever".
Here is a link to a wired magazine article from march 2009:
http://m.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/03/ultrablack/ [wired.com]
Must be a slow news week.
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wow you're right... someone even made my very dumb joke about 2 years or so ago
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Just your normal slashdot news cycle. 3 years is a fairly short cycle, because of all the editorial work and verification that they do.
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seriously, try actually reading the article. It clearly states that they have improved the absorption by 10 to 100 times over previous nanotube coatings, and improved the wavelength range by 50 times.
Even older than that (Score:2)
It was first developed, to the best of my knowledge, jointly by researchers at RPI and Rice in Jan 2008. Here's their presentation [cormusa.org] and here's a link [rpi.edu] showing the date.
In fact, their material is ten times darker than the one apparently developed by NASA, with a reflectivity of 0.05% compared to NASA's 0.5%.
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Great article, thanks for sharing. .05% you were 10% off!
BTW, correction: the article states 0.045% no
Depends on what you care about, if it's a reflection stopper in a telescope tube, then, yes, 10%. If it's something normal humans use like a solar energy collector, then it's 0.005%, or about the same effect as a single bird dropping on a 1000 sq ft collector surface.
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Now when his group or some other researchers discover a thin material black enough to block gamma wavelengths, then we'll be t
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Still it's nice to have some proper "news for nerds" once in a while.
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No it's not. This absorbs more light. read both articles. There are dupes, and there are people who think the story is a dupe because the don't understand some thing can be improved.
solar panels, CCDs or camouflage? (Score:2)
i wonder if this stuff will find applications in night-vision cloaking (far infrared), or in making more efficient solar cells by absorbing nearly all useful incident light?
could it be used on CCD arrays to make them more light-sensitive?
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i wonder if this stuff will find applications in night-vision cloaking (far infrared)
Unless this material has some new property, wouldn't it also radiate better than any other material?
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Unless this material has some new property, wouldn't it also radiate better than any other material?
It probably -- but not necessarily -- has high emissivity to match its high absorbency. It almost certainly does not have low emissivity.
Which means when used in far-infrared astronomical observations, the telescope would still have to be cooled to extremely low temperatures to minimize the emissions from the surface. It would still have the advantage of not reflecting infrared from other sources into the telescope.
And yeah, it'd be useless for infrared cloaking, where the entire problem is emitted light
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It probably -- but not necessarily -- has high emissivity to match its high absorbency
* At the frequencies in question.
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I'd like to see a spin off of it that can absorb cosmic rays easily, then we could coat our spacecrafts with it. You know -- when we have them again.... :-\
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For an infrared cloack you need an astounishingly good insulator with some kind of venting, not a heat absorber. For a more efficient solar cell (photovoltaic cell implicit there?) you need a better solar cell, what is completely unrelated to this thing. The same applies to CCD arrays.
Now, about some other uses. For a good insulator that things isn't usefull at all. If you put it facing an air (or vacuum) gap, you'll make it a poorer insulator, not a better one. For thermal solar electricity generation you
Re:solar panels, CCDs or camouflage? (Score:4, Interesting)
It *is* possible to create nanotube based semiconductors by carefully introducing latice defects into the tube walls. (Creates a nanotube diode)
Sorry, paywalled:
http://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev.matsci.34.040203.112300 [annualreviews.org]
Combined, the two technologies could be used to fashion an absurdly efficient solar collector. The problem is that not all photons are created equally, and that absorbed spectra might not carry sufficient energy to hop the bandgap. This would only cause the nanotubes to get hot, and reemit the photons only to be captured again by the neighbors.
Perhaps if total energy absorption is high enough, then multiple photons could be used to hop the gap, (like in red light on chlorophyll) but that would have to be some strange juju.
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I doubt it would be useful for IR cloaking. To conceal your IR signature you want to imitate your surroundings, not stand out as the blackest thing against a relatively moderate background.
Same applies for light and radar too. Don't forget the reason the Lockheed "F-117 boat" concept didn't work is because it showed up on radar as an unnatural void in the radar-noisy ocean.
Cancer be damned! (Score:2)
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I think I've just found the material I want for the pigment of my next tattoo.
1400 degrees F, man, if you thought needles were painful....
let's get Super PC here... (Score:2)
...it ain't black, it's charcoal grey.
<g>
XKCD (Score:2)
This sounds like the perfect material to cover up those pesky stars. [xkcd.com]
do they think US readers are stupid? (Score:1)
1,382 degrees ? how exactly did they come up with that number? Here is Google at help:
1,382F = 750 C
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heat (Score:1)
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Black is both a better radiator [wikipedia.org], and a better absorber. As for the SR-71 [wikipedia.org] "Finished aircraft were painted a dark blue, almost black to increase the emission of internal heat (fuel acted as a heat sink for avionics cooling) and to act as camouflage against the night sky." So, it was a combination of things.
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ISTR reading about the composite skin on newer stealth aircraft; these skins are laminated carbon fibre with surface profiles similar to golf balls, designed to both absorb and scatter RADAR to give the aircraft the RADAR profile of a sparrow or similar. Think also really, really expensive fishing pole or reinforced carbon-carbon yacht hulls (which use the surface characteristics to create an air bubble across the entire surface of the hull during motion to reduce friction between it and the water).
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The infra red space telescopes are positioned out of the sun ('behind' the earth) in order to keep cool. However, there's still the heat from the electronics, and there's no way to get rid of that apart from by radiating the heat away. Black radiates well, hence colouring it black will keep the spacecraft cool.
In sunlight, more heat is coming in than going out, hence black cars get hot, and normal spacecraft are coloured silver (or similar) to make them highly reflective and bounce the heat off. (Even those
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I'm guessing that the Blackbird SR-71 got so hot with the engines.
At Mach 3+, you get significant heating from friction with the passing air (thus, ablative heat shields on re-entry capsules, shuttle insulation tiles, etc.)
The fun part about the Blackbird was the way it leaked fuel... it's worth doing a little reading about the Blackbird, it's one of the more radical machines ever built, and far more entertaining than refined chimney soot.
Paint it Black (Score:2, Funny)
I see nanotubes and I want them painted black...
Supercain (Score:2)
The Republican party is now researching ways to allow candidates to withstand temperatures of 1,382.
(You might need to be a Daily Show viewer to understand...)
Fuligin (Score:2)
Being the color of Severian's cloak in Shadow of the Torturer.
Light absorbing = cooler? (Score:1)
If the nanotubes absorb light, wouldn't instruments coated with the material tend to get warmer rather than stay cooler?
NR
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So.. it's Blacker than Black? (Score:1)
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Oblig Spinal Tap Quote (Score:3)
"It's like, how much more black could it be? And the answer is none, none more black."
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Space my ass... (Score:1)
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You seem to be under the impression that this material can only be used for one thing at a time.
Thankfully, NASA doesn't have to wait until the military is finished using it.
Full-scale pics! (Score:2)
I'm more interested in seeing what the material looks like at a standard scale, preferably in a well-lit room and in motion. It reminds me (as its predecessor did a few years back) of the fuligin cloaks worn by torturers in the Book of the New Sun. One property of those was that due to the high absorption of light, they looked less like a thing of substance and more like a void or a deep shadow. I can imagine that you'd lose all shape information save for the outline of the material and whatever it is co
"is about 10,000 times thinner than a human hair" (Score:2)
Donations (Score:2)
If the American government is not going to fund NASA (properly), can they at least put up a paypal account/donation thingy or something?
>$US600Billion for military
$US20Billion for NASA
Sorry, but as a foreigner I'm happy to throw a couple of regular bucks for a good cause.
A perfect material for... (Score:2)
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Those greenhouse turbine thingies have been proposed since the 1970's, ultra-black wouldn't really improve them enough (compared to cheap 90% black paint) to make it worth using. Aren't they building a couple of prototypes in Australia and Spain?
I'm sure this material will make it into projects like space telescopes, and probably the high mountain observatories too. There are just so few applications that really care about that last fraction of a percent of reflectivity.
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As far as improving the efficiency -- 9% of 100 MW is 90 MW. 90 MW times (say) 2000 hours in a year is 180 GW-hours. A KW-hour is worth (say) a dime. Dividing by 10^4 to obtain dollars, using 99% instead of 90%
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In my math, 9% of 100 is 9.
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(Ducks and runs away...)
Although I suck at arithmetic, the point is still the same. There is a point where the marginal return of the coating makes it a break-even proposition, and it isn't so low as to be completely unreasonable at $10-20 per m^2 -- a large-scale production facility serving a world market devoted to producing rooftop solar house/water heaters/coolers (e.g. buffered by underground water-coupled
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I'm not certain I'm correct, either. But... nifty as the greenhouse turbines are, I think non-reflectivity hits a point of diminishing returns for them, maybe at 90-95% if the cost of the paint increases by 2x, maybe somewhere else. I _almost_ put reflective paint inside my attic, but opted for the traditional additional 6" of fiberglass instead, cost about the same, and I'm pretty sure the fiberglass serves me better, inside the house at least.
To me, the greenhouse would best be served by improved insula
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Site locations seem to be one of the major challenges for the greenhouse turbines... anywhere close enough to population, or even transmission lines, to get enough land with an ideal hill, will tend to be relatively expensive compared to being out in the middle of the desert where nobody needs the electricity. I can imagine a few places in Australia, or perhaps the American Southwest, that might be feasible.
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The idea is old enough (1926 according to wikipedia, although I had it independently) -- there are several p
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" 9% of 100 MW is 90 MW"
You might want to read that out loud.
If it still seems correct, please take a math class.
stealth (Score:2)
Military applications (Score:2)
This just means that those 'black projects' the Pentagon is so fond of funding will be even blacker.
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While soot contains nanotubes, it also contains other fullerenes, and amorphous carbon microparticles.
This subsrance, on the other had, is nothing but nanotubes, and in a very densely packed, and orderly configuration.
Devil in the details and all that.
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