Google Getting Into the Solar Mirror Business 139
adeelarshad82 writes with this excerpt from a Reuters report:
"Google is disappointed with the lack of breakthrough investment ideas in the green technology sector, but the company is working to develop its own new mirror technology that could reduce the cost of building solar thermal plants by [25%] or more. The company's engineers have been focused on solar thermal technology, in which the sun's energy is used to heat up a substance that produces steam to turn a turbine. Mirrors focus the sun's rays on the heated substance. ... Google hopes to have a viable technology to show internally in a couple of months, Bill Weihl said. It will need to do accelerated testing to show the impact of decades of wear on the new mirrors in desert conditions."
Re:Power? (Score:2, Informative)
I actually remember seeing test setups of this tech 18 years ago, not a new technology, but still very cool.
Try 18 hundred years... While stories of Archimedes' Mirror [wikipedia.org] may have been greatly exaggerated (Mythbusters and a couple of independent projects have recreated the effect but with an infeasible time-frame for warfare), the concept and 'technology' of parabolic mirrors or arrays to concentrate solar heat are pretty ancient. Also, Death Ray FTW. :D
Re:Power? (Score:5, Informative)
Glorified ? How about "highly sophisticated" ? Even a nuclear submarine is powered by a "glorified steam engine".
Re:Refining Aluminum? (Score:5, Informative)
Aluminum is refined from bauxite and takes a huge amount of energy to produce initially.
It is extremely rare to find it in free form.