Rectennas

Thread Starter

MrAl

Joined Jun 17, 2014
11,396
Hi,

Yeah that is no spelling error. These things have been around for a long time but were too inefficient to be used for anything. Now experiments at the University of Colorado Boulder have shown that these things can be made resonant in the quantum sense so that electrons can tunnel through the insulators and thus pass without resistance. This means energy can really be harnessed from leftover heat from primary processes like manufacturing.
So far the efficiency is only around 1 percent, but improvements will bring that up.
So we may be looking at a new renewable energy source that can be widely used around the world to capture energy that would otherwise be wasted as heat.
These things are very small but a lot of them can be used together to generate usable electrical energy. The basic operation is quantum resonance with quantum tunneling to rectify into DC. Quantum tunneling is that property where something can pass though a 'wall' without affecting either itself or the 'wall'. The wall in this case is an insulator.
 

shortbus

Joined Sep 30, 2009
10,045
Wow, I misinterpreted the thread. I thought it might be another of those electronic implant threads, but they were implanted in a rectum. My bad. :)
 

Thread Starter

MrAl

Joined Jun 17, 2014
11,396
Wow, I misinterpreted the thread. I thought it might be another of those electronic implant threads, but they were implanted in a rectum. My bad. :)
Oh ok ha ha, And because it is an antenna maybe it allows wireless communications between rectums :) Sends out a warning SOS about an impending gas passing :)

But yeah the 'rect' stands for 'rectify' or ;'rectification' where an AC quantity is converted into a DC quantity.

I welcome anything that is going to improve or add to our renewable energy sources. Ocean wave energy technology has improved too with companies putting 100's of millions of dollars into huge devices that can capture tidal water movement energy. They get it twice a day, twice in and twice out.

One thing comes to mind though and that is what if we found solar energy to be really good and so built millions of panels and covered most of the earth surface with them, would there be any room left for farming. I think everything is a system with everything affecting everything else.

Oh yeah and now there is word that the mushrooms found on Mars could be a result of human contamination from previous expeditions. Now who didnt see that coming. Now they have to be tested to find out if they could have originated from our own accidental transportation. They say they do everything in clean rooms, but they also say it is impossible to eliminate every single tiny micro organism, from any spacecraft. In the past we didnt believe anything could survive the takeoff and space environment, but that's been shown to be wrong now. In fact, because disinfectants that do not kill everything it was intended to kill cause those that survive to become more resistant against that kind of disinfectant, Mars can actually end up being a breeding ground for those that survive the trip and we end up breeding super bugs even more dangerous for humans.
Everything is a giant complex system we have to be careful about everything we do, every little thing matters ... the butterfly effect except the butterfly turns into a monster of some kind dangerous to mankind. Taken to the extreme, one day in the distant future the super bugs evolve to create their own spacecraft and come to Earth and destroy all humans. Gee aint we smart :)
 

Thread Starter

MrAl

Joined Jun 17, 2014
11,396
Shrooms on Mars? Spaced out!
Yeah that's amazing They are pretty sure they are mushrooms because they have that shape and they grew larger over time like mushrooms do. Thing is though, mushrooms feed on dead organic stuff so what the heck are they eating. I doubt they could grow if they dont have anything to eat so there must be some dead plants or something in the soil. Cant be sure maybe not dead plants but something eatable has to be there somewhere besides the mushrooms.
There is a change the previous missions brought them there by accident, but whatever they eat must have been already there i would think. We wont know for sure until they can test them.

They have also found some 'salts' that they say various organisms feed off of so there is more of a chance microbial life once existed there even if not now, but they could still be there too.

I wouldnt doubt it one bit if there was life found there but probably nothing too intelligent unless it lives under ground.
 
Top