@ponderable saidIsn't dark just the absence of light? So it has no intrinsic substance of its own? Don't you need an interaction between particles for a photo-voltaic effect?
https://techxplore.com/news/2020-01-anti-solar-cells-photovoltaic-cell-night.html
lets see what Comes out of the idea to generate electricity using "anti-slar-cells" by night
@suzianne saidThe OP link explains;
Isn't dark just the absence of light? So it has no intrinsic substance of its own? Don't you need an interaction between particles for a photo-voltaic effect?
"the process is similar to the way a normal solar cell works, but in reverse. An object that is hot compared to its surroundings will radiate heat as infrared light. A conventional solar cell is cool compared to the sun, so it absorbs light.
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Space is really, really cold, so if you have a warm object and point it at the sky, it will radiate heat toward it.
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There's another kind of device called a thermoradiative cell that generates power by radiating heat to its surroundings.
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This thermoradiative cell pointed at the night sky would emit infrared light because it is warmer than outer space.
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A regular solar cell generates power by absorbing sunlight, which causes a voltage to appear across the device and for current to flow. In these new devices, light is instead emitted and the current and voltage go in the opposite direction, but you still generate power,
..."
So the physics of this concept is perfectly sound and its now just a mere matter of making it economical which is a different issue.
Because science and technology is improving all the time and there are no insurmountable barriers to making this idea work economically, I am absolutely certain it will eventually be made economical; Its just a matter of when, not if; 10 yeas from now? 40 years from now? We will just have to wait and see how long it takes.
I am very impressed by the OP link and am cautiously hopeful that this research will lead to a huge breakthrough in renewable energy generation.
I had independently many years ago came up with this idea to generate electricity and tried to explain it in several threads in this science forum only for it to be rejected by other posters because they misunderstood how the physics of this idea works.
@suzianne saidLight is merely a small part of the electromagnetic spectrum. Just because you can only see that small part doesn't mean other electromagnetic energy is not there. You cannot see radio waves, but you know they are there when you listen to the radio.
Isn't dark just the absence of light? So it has no intrinsic substance of its own? Don't you need an interaction between particles for a photo-voltaic effect?
@Metal-Brain
So tell us something we didn't know. I have had a ham license since age 13. Kind of grew up on wavelengths. Something you may not know is the energy of a given wave is tied directly to the wavelength. So a photon with a wavelength of 1 meter compared to a wavelength of 1 MILLImeter, the 1 mm wave would have more energy packets per cubic meter or in this case, per square millimeter, You could see that if you have a bunch of 1 mm waves side by side on an antenna collecting one square meter of waves, the amount of waves total would be 1 million so the total energy would be a lot higher than say a 1 meter wave which would allow only one wave to be collected by the one square meter antenna.
So if instead it was a one MICRON wave, then it would be there would be 1 million side by side times 1 million so now that one square meter dish would collect one TRILLION waves one micron size. A one micron wavelength (that is in the infrared band) would impart X amount of energy collected by that antenna. Now if we go to 1/10th micron, now there would be 10 million such waves side by ten million and now that dish would collect 100 Trillion such waves so you can see from this rough analogy the smaller the wave the more punch it has. Anyway, wife needs help, just broke ankle, helpless. Be back later.