I don't want to play grumpy old guy, but I'm getting a bit tired of breathless articles that omit key facts.
What's the efficiency? It's such an obvious question I can't imagine writing an article without that data. How about current costs of other green power? Difficultly of the subject area? Others who have tried?
I love these new tech stories, but one or two paragraphs of context can go a long way for the reader. We're left having the same old discussion: one person says "awesome!" and then another points out one of these obvious (and common) holes. It's the same discussion, over and over again.
It's not just the energy stories. I've seen dozens of startup stories that are long on hype and emotion and really short on explaining the market and how the company is executing -- the key things that any other startup person would want to know. Heck, I know everybody's excited about it, what I want is somebody giving me a bit of perspective.
Same goes for "new cancer treatment found!" articles, which are also long on emotion and short on context. I know emotion gets clicks, just wish we could do better here.
People like to shit on reddit a lot here, but both the submission and the discussion over at /r/science [1] contains much more substance than discussion here. They link to the actual paper as well, which contains more details, such as efficiency.
Maybe part of the problem is that specific subreddits like that have specific rules that enforce this:
"Editorialized or biased headlines will be politely requested to resubmit.
Submitters of summarized primary research that do not contain citations in the article are highly encouraged to include links to the original, peer reviewed sources in the comments. This is to allow interested redditors with expertise to fact check the summary author.
Please don't submit breaking stories that have already been submitted from different sources.
Submissions that are not directly about scientific research (e.g., science education, science policy, educational videos, etc.) need to be non-editorialized and substantive."
I agree, there is a lot more that tech blogs could do to help the reader. The problem is, that kind of extra detail isn't really possible without specializing -- and if you specialize, you limit the size of your audience.
The other problem is writing the stories: it would be awesome to have a writer for every kind of topic, so that every story can be tackled with complete background knowledge... but that's just not feasible. Instead, most tech blogs have writers with 'beats' that they cover -- but even then, if the 'green technologies' writer is out for the day, someone else has to tackle it.
So for the most part, we tech bloggers just try to get a good grasp of the technology, and then boil it down into a form that's easy to read and understand. The resultant story quality is variable and depends a lot on how much time and effort you put into it, and your background knowledge -- but I like to think I do a fairly good job :)
The objections DanielBMarkham are raising are literally high-school physics issues. I'm not expecting a QM explanation of what's going on, at this stage the researchers may not even be totally clear, but we know the efficiency is going to be bounded by thermodynamics, and in particular "generating electricity from waste heat!" rates dangerously high on the Science Bullshit-O-Meter. It can be done, but the bounds on efficiency are pretty dismal.
I'm not asking for a physics PhD level of coverage, but if you're going to cover this sort of thing giving us at least a high-school level of coverage would be nice. Just segment it off so those who are somehow interested in this but lack even that low bar of knowledge don't get too confused.
... or... not. I honestly can't say with a straight face this would increase your reader count, or any other interesting metric like that.
While it may not increase your reader count in the short run, it will probably make your readers come back, and let the article stay relevant for longer.
"High school" WOW! What distant planet did you just arrive from?
You didn't get the memo: "All content is to be at the level of a not very good student in the fourth grade. There are two exceptions: Math is to be at the second grade level or below. Sex is to be at the tenth grade level or above."
Now you have the memo and know not to expect anything as far out, absurdly advanced, totally unrealistic, super genius level as high school physics!!!!!!!
Yes, you may want to rush back to your home planet. Have any extra space on your ship?
The article did a pretty good job of explaining what a multiferroic material is. However, the first sentence states that this is a potential source of energy. So I expect the article to explain how this is a potential source of energy. In which case the relevant information is not how does it work, but how much electricity does it produce. You could write an article entitled "Material Transmits Engergy for Free!" and talk about cuprate-perovskite ceramic and superconductivity and how it works with electron pairs, etc. And it sounds great, especially if you don't mention that it only works if it is cooled by liquid nitrogen.
Frankly, this material sounds a bit like a thermocouple. Those produce electricity from heat, too, about several microvolts, which isn't even going to power my wristwatch. It isn't even going to power my nano-machine! The magnitude of the effect in question is kind of a key thing to know if you state "free, green energy", since I'm wanting 110V at 10A out of my green energy. Thermocouples are about 9 orders of magnitude away from what "free, green energy" requires, and 9 orders of magnitude is a huge thing to leave out of an article. It's like leaving off the fact that superconductivity requires temperatures slightly warmer than Pluto (and that omission is only 2 orders of magnitude).
I'm sorry, but this isn't exactly stuff that's going to go over most readers' heads. The efficiency of a new device like this is pretty much the most important information about it. At 0.4% efficiency, this is currently just going to make your devices heavier and marginally more efficient. If it were more efficient it might make things heavier and significantly more efficient.
Not to disagree with you (you make a good point, after all), but couldn't this be a case of reporting on a minimal viable product? As you say, it happens in tech, too. The idea here is to generate interest. Sure, it's not complete yet, and they probably still have a long way to go, but the idea isn't to present a finished solution that is now going to market.
And it's not like reporters want to wait until something is being sold before writing a story, either.
I guess for me, as much as I want more information, I'm willing to accept what they are trying to do.
If they know it's viable they know of its efficiency, potential drawbacks and advantages related to other technologies, so there's no reason why the reporter couldn't have asked for that information.
Emotion? Of COURSE it's emotion! It's ALL about emotion; the rest is just window dressing. It's to grab you by the heart, the gut, or below the belt, always below the shoulders, never between the ears.
It's from a 'culture' that is ingrained and self-perpetuating: In college, they majored not in math, physical science, or engineering but in the 'humanities', especially English literature. There 'truth' is 'compelling' and from emotions or beauty, is in the eye of the beholder, personal, relative, etc.
In particular the most desired form of the emotions is 'drama' especially as in formula fiction with good and evil, etc.
The foundation is 'art' as in communication, intrepretation of human experience, emotions. Or 'it feels good'.
This 'culture' is solidly in control of 'old media'. There are two big reasons:
First, old media goes way back, is sitll close to the old morality plays, and goes way back before the revolution in information safety and efficacy starting with, say, J. Maxwell and with grand examples in math, physics, chemistry, biology, engineering, technology, medical science, and medicine of the 20th century. Old media is still locked up well before 1900, mostly 1800. The college humanities majors naturally gravitated to that culture and still do. There are more details in C. P. Snow's 'The Two Cultures'.
Second, "The medium is the message" has long held true. In particular, before the Internet, the 'medium' was print, radio, or TV, and there the number of 'channels' and the 'bandwidth' of each channel were so small that the audience had to be very broad and the room for details was very small. So, the 'message' was to low grade emotions and very short. And that's what the article of this thread is. Useful? Rational? No. Emotional? Trivial? Yes.
So, obviously 'new media' can exploit more 'channels', would you believe over 100 million blogs, and more bandwidth, how ahout over 5 Mbps download bandwidth? Then we can have 'streams of focused content for focused interests', over 100 million 'streams'.
Sure, anyone with anything like an education in math, science, or engineering good enough actually to make things work pays close attention to details, say, efficiency, cost, durability, power levels, etc. Else, computers would snap, crackle, and pop, airplanes would never get off the ground, bridges and buildings would fall, etc. But the English majors in the culture of old media don't care.
Old media is dying, and not just because Craig's List is taking their classified ads.
HN and your remarks are right on target for how old media is being killed and where new media will be better.
My view is that the biggest problem in civilization and our country now is the brain-dead, all-emotions all the time, dysfunctional, self-destructive nonsense of old media instead of the solid information we need to be responsible citizens and direct our government to a better future. E.g., only now, slowly, are we learning the real anatomy of The Great Recession. So, old media never got the word out. Cry about the pains after the disaster? Sure. Have the solid, crucial information to avoid the disaster before hand? NOT a chance. Old media is helpless, full of tears, devoid of rationality or responsibility.
With old media, it's surprising we haven't blown up the planet by now. Old media, I have a question: "Now, how does that make you feel?".
I don't see any reason to worry that the masses are being 'dumbed down' because even if there is such a plot it doesn't seem to be working. The masses have kept being the masses, and the intelligent intellectual types seem to have stayed as intelligent and productive as ever.
I would love to see data showing that there has been an increase or decrease in the ratio of intelligent to unintelligent people, but right now all we have are anecdotes.
I didn't claim that the issue is a "plot" or 'intelligence'.
My main explaination was "the medium is the message", and old media found that pushing emotional content, drama, formula fiction, etc. got them the best ad revenue. I suspect it did. So, in particular, the 'medium' led to emotional, superficial articles such as in this thread, That was my explanation for the article.
My view is that the biggest problem in civilization and our country now is the brain-dead, all-emotions all the time, dysfunctional, self-destructive nonsense of old media
I don't think the state of the media is a problem. In my opinion the media reflects the nature of its consumers, not the other way round, therefore if there is a problem it is with the consumers.
No, "the medium is the message", and not really "the consumers". Again, back to Ben Franklin, the "medium" was the printed word, and the media still has that. Last century we got radio and then TV. On radio, the number of stations is tiny: Drive across the US and see that mostly the content is pop music, sports, and religion. That's all folks. Long TV had just 3-4 networks. Yes, cable TV has hundreds of channels, but for information my TV gets just ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC, CNN, FOX, PBS, C-SPAN, CNBC, BBC business news, and Bloomberg business news. That's still not very many channels.
If I were an executive at the head of one of those, then I'd likely go ahead and upchuck and put out the same total BS they do now. Why? Because it's about 99 44/100% light enterainment instead of information. They have an absolute phobia at getting at any very serious information. In particular, they have to stay way below the average level of HN. As I wrote above in this thread, apparently hated by several people, the contents has to be at the 4th grade except math at the 2nd grade and sex at the 10th grade.
You want to blame this low grade nonsense on "the consumes". Well, with more channels, e.g., via the Internet, we can get, e.g., HN, and that's MUCH better, more technical, more advanced, more thoughtful, and MUCH less just formula fiction entertainment.
With still more development of the Internet, we will be able to get some really solid information. Some such information leaks out in places now via university material, some quite specialized Web sites, some industry sites, and more. E.g., there's a Web site that wanted to talk about electric cars. So, I got into a big debate with someone. We had to get into capacitor math. So, I got out my college E&M text, read up on capacitor math, and typed in the math to support my position. The other guy didn't like my math. Finally the site moderator found a good expert on capacitor math, etc., had my post 'reviewed' and
pronounced correct. Got'a tell you, won't see any capacitor math on ABC, CBS, ..., not even PBS.
The media WILL "reflect the nature of the consumers" when we can have enough channels and bandwidth to partition the consumers into many thousands of categories. Then in some of the categories we will be able to get some really good stuff. Actually we have the channels and bandwidth now, but the exploitation of the Internet is not nearly complete yet.
In materials science labs around the world, researchers are performing 'miracles'.
Aerogels could eliminate most of the waste heat from buildings. Piezoelectric nanogenerators could power mobile electronic devices. Graphene transistors could attain speeds of 1THz. And multiferroics like the beastly Ni45Co5Mn40Sn10 mentioned above could replace bulky laptop batteries.
But what is achieved with multi-million dollar government sponsored research grants in controlled labs is difficult to transfer to ones doorstep.
One barrier is economic: an aerogel house would cost $50M! A pricetag that may be acceptable to the Department of Defense, but won't do Peoria Joe much good.
Basically the same as a seebeck generator; but it can be used in places where current seebeck generators would not do well.
I wish they would phrase these things as "turns heat differences into electricity;" because every time they say "waste heat," people get excited about harvesting heat from their CPU and having their computer power itself.
Well in theory a proportion of the heat generated by a hot running CPU or GPU (or anything else that operates at a temperature significantly higher than the local ambient temperature) could be converted to useful energy, and you could feed the generated power back into the unit to reduce what it needs to sink from other sources.
Though of course you would have to work out if the energy savings are enough to outweigh the extra energy used in manufacturing such a device (remembering to account for the fact that the extra complexity of each unit may reduce the effective yield of the manufacturing process). It might cost far more energy to make than it'll ever save in its active life. Thermodynamics can be a bugger like that...
I'm going to play a bit of "devil's advocate" here. :-) The general problem of place-shifting and time-shifting energy (wind power / solar power) is a very real issue and you could make tons of money solving it.
If I remember correctly, there was recent talk about the magnetic component of light being much strong than thought. Well, why not focus light on this material and let the heat make a stronger magnetic field and use it as a solar panel?
Because you need a cold sink to make this work. Solar panels need a dark sink, but that's easy to get.
You can only convert energy (i.e. do work) when sending energy from high to low, for example hot to cold, light to dark, etc. (If you heated a solar panel to the point that it glowed with the same intensity as the incoming light it would not work. Ignoring the fact that it would melt :)
Electric power plants use bodies of water as the cold sink. If you ever see clouds of what looks like smoke, but is really steam while driving, what you are seeing is the cold water evaporating after being used as a cold sink.
BTW if you did want a solar-thermal power plant they exist, and don't need this material. It's a lot simpler than that - just concentrate the light to heat water and run a steam turbine.
BTW#2 "the magnetic component of light being much strong than thought" doesn't make sense. The magnetic component of light is VERY well understood. You are probably misremembering, or misunderstanding.
See the other comment for the article/premise I referred to. I'm not a scientist, just a programmer trying to figure out if this'd work.
The article stated that the magnetism of light is 100 million times more powerful than previously thought. But, that it must be focused to 10 million watts per cm^2. The premise is that the light induces magnetism that can be drawn as power. Supposedly it requires special materials.
But, if you drew the sun's rays to focus on this material to provide heat couldn't it produce a similar use?
I'm guessing its applications would be more in the line of powering remote devices then anything more substantial. I could see the point of replacing a photovoltaic panel with a hunk of metal in a seismic sensor or something like that.
I don't get it. So you can use heat to make a magnet. We already have permanent magnets. Magnetism, in and of itself, doesn't create energy. You'd have to either pulse the magnet, or move a coil past the magnet. The former seems impossible since you'd have to cycle its temperature, and the latter just gives you an alternator, which we already have.
If I'm missing something, I'd like to know. It just looks like, "hey, magnetism!" and some hand-waving.
This looks like it has the possibility to dramatically increase the efficiency of motors and engines.
Also, if they could capture the heat coming out of a nuclear reactor, they could both avoid meltdowns and not require proximity to a large body of water.
Edit: Disregard this. I don't know thermodynamics as well as I thought I did.
I may have been too optimistic. But 30% is still quite a bit.
Modern gasoline engines have an average efficiency of 20%. Say you put 100J into one. 20J of useful work will be produced, and 80J of heat. Now if 30% of that heat were captured, that's another 24J of useful work. In effect, we've doubled the engine's efficiency from 20% to 44%. That's pretty dramatic.
This doesn't lower the temperature of a nuclear reactor or any heat source. The new material will still experience an increase in temperature, and the same amount of heat will still be released into the environment.
If the same amount of heat would be released in the environment, you would create energy (electricity) from nothing. And I think that there might be some scientists here, who do not think that this is possible.
Not really. (Also: “Epic fail” and a pretty cryptic and lazy link? Doesn’t seem HN worthy.) This obviously doesn’t make perpetual motion machines a possibility and the article reeks of hyperbole but this technology is potentially useful.
It would be better to just make stuff that doesn’t produce any waste heat, I guess you could say that this is sort of a step in that direction. It’s for making stuff more efficient, no more, no less.
> You can always extract some useful work when transferring heat from a hot bath to a cold bath.
True. But this is Jesuitry. Are you by any chance an investor in the scheme?
Yes, you can get more work out of your car engine by surrounding it with Peltiers or other heat engines -- if you drive in the Arctic.
Seriously, if you, a physicist, actually know how to build an engine having no waste heat, why settle for the chump change of HN publicity? Go for the Nobel that you deserve.
I think the problem is that you interpreted the headline as meaning it could convert all waste heat to work. This is, of course, impossible. Converting some of the waste heat to work is entirely possible.
When there's two possible interpretations of a headline, and one of them is physically possible and the other one violates the second law of thermodynamics... it's probably best to assume the former. At least until you read the article.
What's the efficiency? It's such an obvious question I can't imagine writing an article without that data. How about current costs of other green power? Difficultly of the subject area? Others who have tried?
I love these new tech stories, but one or two paragraphs of context can go a long way for the reader. We're left having the same old discussion: one person says "awesome!" and then another points out one of these obvious (and common) holes. It's the same discussion, over and over again.
It's not just the energy stories. I've seen dozens of startup stories that are long on hype and emotion and really short on explaining the market and how the company is executing -- the key things that any other startup person would want to know. Heck, I know everybody's excited about it, what I want is somebody giving me a bit of perspective.
Same goes for "new cancer treatment found!" articles, which are also long on emotion and short on context. I know emotion gets clicks, just wish we could do better here.