German scientists test world's 'largest artificial sun'

>Synlight itself consumes a large amount of energy, however, Hoffschmidt said.

>"In four hours the system uses about as much electricity as a four-person household in a year. Our goal is to eventually use actual sunlight to make hydrogen, rather than artificial light."

>He also acknowledged there was "a long way to go" before the method could be scaled up for commercial use, which he said would require billions of tonnes of hydrogen.

>"I think commercial use will only really be possible when societies and governments realize that we cannot burn any more fossil fuels," Hoffschmidt said.

>He added, however, that global events like recent U.N. climate talks in Morocco in November provided welcome momentum in the fight against climate change, and were a sign that "things are starting to change".

>>124580
Free energy for everyone?

>>124580
its nothing like a sun

fuck science

>>124613
>fuck science
Fucking is a subset of biology, which is a science. Check and mate.

>>124580
So its the largest Sun in the world?

Expect nothing less from the Germans, even in this dark era.

>>124613

It's a clickbaity headline, but all online headlines are these days, and pop-sci headlines have been like that forever.

In this case they mean "brightest macro-scale array artificial lighting" or something like that.

>>124580
So, the power to run the lights comes from what? Carbon dioxide free? I guess it's powered by hopes and pixie farts so it doesn't generate co2. Or a solar powered mini sun that doesn't actually use fusion energy like the sun does.

>>124631
Do you actually think, or are you simply programmed to be as irritating as fucking possible?

They also use it for material testing, how parts of airplanes or spacecraft react to sunlight, their durability etc.

As a kraut I think this article is shameful. What they're doing is most likely important "Grundlagenforschung"(fundamental research) but they have to shill it as ecological and practically useful because they think building the floor on which to raise the roofs of science doesn't fly with the public. Which actually might not even be true.

But all the science in the article is bullshit. It makes no sense to generate water from solar power to then split it into hydrogen to then make more power instead of directly splitting the water that this planet is made of to a significant degree.

It does make sense to analyze how atoms form from baser particles to maybe find a way to generate harder to get elements (and understanding physics in general) but this article tells us none of that.

Shameful dissupray!!

How does this compare to other electrolysis methods? Is it more economical?

>>124656
The opposite. By orders of magnitude probably. The article is misleading. Which is probably the scientist's fault. They stupidly tried to make boring fundamental research seem immediately useful to millennials, i.e. people with the attention span of less than it takes to find porn on the internet.

>>124656
>In four hours the system uses about as much electricity as a four-person household in a year.
Does that sound economical to you?

>>124661
It does as soon as we hook up nuclear fusion to it.
Fusion reactors in the average car driven by retards would be dangerous, no?

>>124662
Fusion on earth turns hydrogen into helium. A little bit of mass is lost and converted to energy via E=MC2. (Two deuterium weigh more than one helium.)

However the mass we need to create even one hydrogen atom "from scratch" requires more energy than is gained by fusion because the mass lost by fusing hydrogen into helium is much smaller than the mass gained by creating one hydrogen from photons.

>>124649
>I am a random person on the internet and I have more knowledge than actual scientists! I am right and they are not! :^)

>>124789
That's about 99% of responses to anything science-related. Why are people so arrogant?

>>124789
I studied enough chemistry to know when I'm being bullshitted and I listed the reasons why I think we're being bullshitted. But thanks for your appeal to authority. Very insightful.

>>124656
DLR (OP's scientists) are at 26%, attempting to push 38% efficiency in their laboratory setting. They believe the method can reach 55-77%. It superheats steam to roughly 700C using purely electrical methods, but they want to eventually run it off a solar collector. (Science Direct S1876610214006626)

Photocatalysts typically used are metal oxides (like TiO2 and WO3) or semiconductors (like InGaAs and graphenes) They're typically around 8-15% efficiency.

>>124800
>WO3
Isn't that what the make typical light bulb filaments out of?

>>124790
Why do people fall for click bait articles about science related topics?

>>124810
What's click bait about it?

>>124811
Its just water vapor and light bulbs

I can make water vapor with my fucking breath lol

>>124851
Not to the scale that these Germans have you can't. That's the point.

>>124637
What, are the actual problems with this ridiculous pipe dream too much reality for you to handle?

>>124789
It's called basic physics you fucking moron, you don't have to be a qualified scientist to tell this is click bait

>>124852
Why didn't they use lasers...

This is science now. They dick around and build some eco-friendly bullshit and pray for more funding.

>>124580
>hoping article is about breakthrough in fusion reactors
>get incredibly energy inefficient light bulbs and water vapor hydrogen-making machine instead

It'd be nice if we could stop leaving climate change in the hands of useful idiots who thoughtlessly write off the carbon footprint of their publicly-funded green energy pet projects because "its the thought that counts".

Sure is Heartland Institute in here today.

Artificial sucks;they fail.

>>124613
if its nothing like the sun then why is it burnin your ass up boy!?

>>124649
>have to shill it as ecological and practically useful because they think building the floor on which to raise the roofs of science doesn't fly with the public.
Maybe they wanted some of those delicious delicious Green™ grant money funbucks.

>>125453
kek

>>125625
>delicious delicious Green™ grant money funbucks
Where does this meme come from? That isn't how grants works.

>>124581
>"I think commercial use will only really be possible when societies and governments realize that we cannot burn any more fossil fuels,"
>"this energy is non-competitive and we want government shekels to fund us or you're a climate-change denier"
haha

>>124649
If they wanted to actually study the effects of the sun they could have created a "solar mirror forge"
I have one in my backyard, you direct a lot of light into one specific place, either with a huge lens or with mirrors.
You get thousands of degrees, but for free.
The fact that they used a million light bulbs to simulate the sun means they aren't doing it for the purposes that they state they are.
Their science is going to be used for something different, or the article is really clickbaity and bad at explaining it.
What does enviromentalism, ecology and it being economical have to do with harnessing fusion anyways? which is presumably what we do when talking about understanding the sun.

>>124789
you don't need a degree to be able to tell the article is bullshit. kys

>>125869
Does your dad work for an oil company or something?

>>125867
when developing things and testeng them you cannot just leave it up to chance wether the weather fits the specified parameters or not

I think that we can all agree that this article was way too shittily written to make any kind of sense out of.

My best guess is that what they were trying to explain to the reporter is they built a replica of high-intensity sunlight, like that which is focused from parabolic reflectors on next-gen solar arrays (and thus not suitable for scientific research because they run in non-controlled conditions).

In doing so they are testing an alternative way to harness solar energy, which would be in the creation of hydrogen from splitting water vapor by direct heat (so a complete fuck up of wording by the reporter) rather than generating electricity through a photovoltaic cell as for a solar panel.

Why does it need to wait for commercial use? Because hydrogen fuel cells and hydrogen combustion have been largely backlogged for now in the alternative energy game thanks to the success of all-electric cars and the boom in cheap natural gas.


To answer other-anon's question about "why not lasers," lasers fire light at only a single frequency, whereas the sun radiates at all frequencies, overwhelmingly dominated in the visual spectrum (the amalgamation of which is called "white light").

>>125872
Maybe you're wrong

Imgaine that

>>126236
Nope, but you certainly and demonstrability are though.

>>126264
Im not even that guy

>>126266
Of course you aren't.

>>126269
Yeah but i disagreed with you so I'm probably on an oil rig right now huh?

>>126376
No, you're studying seismic sounding charts or the newly opened North Atlantic in the Exxon building in downtown Houston.

>>126429
You got me

Im even jewish :(

So what if I build a robot that runs on a treadmill, that generates electricity..THAT POWERS THE ROBOT!

Someone get me a grant already

>>126509
If you had done that you'dd be busy selling it and not shitposting on 4chan.

>>124628
>>124628
>pop-sci headlines have been like that forever.
This. Pop-Sci headlines are the original clickbait. They take something with a grain of truth and stretch and contort it until it's something that will grab you. I can't really blame them; as someone who is doing their Masters in a quantitative field, explaining something to an average joe without losing them immediately can be difficult.

Take exo-planet news for example: which article would our joe six-pack click

1) "Scientists find mega-earth in our galactic neighborhood"

2) "Scientists find new planet that lives in it's sun's habitable zone, is on the same scale as (yet larger than) Earth and is 40 light-years away"

>>125856
It sort of is though...

I am a firm believer in climate change. OK, that out of the way? I have heard many stories from within academia of folks writing into their grant proposal green applications in order to up their chances of getting approved and/or get more funding.

>>126567
Post real science news then instead of being a whining faggot. For all this threads flaws, at least it isn't one of the usual /pol/bait threads that take up 3/5ths of the rest of /news/.

>>126568
Even if it were true (which it isn't), the amount of grant money from the government or academia doesn't even come close to the amount of money BigOil spends on things like PR campaigns, marketing and polls, and their own climate change research grants to counter the findings of the guys who get government or academic grants.

Hydrogen is a fuel storage tool, not a fuel source
This is a waste of money. Technocrats must go

>>126570
In which year did Big Oil spend 10bn usd on PR, marketing (and polls(?)), and their own climate change research? Every source I see says it's in the millions.

>>126600
>10 bn usd
Hilarious. What government on earth is spending that much on climate change research?
The oil companies spend on average 100-150 million a year on PR/marketing and damage control while all the governments and universities on the planet combined only gives out 10-50 million in grants if they're having a good budget year.

Sources:
https://arstechnica.com/science/2016/05/if-climate-scientists-push-the-consensus-its-not-for-the-money/

http://priceofoil.org/fossil-fuel-subsidies/

http://www.iflscience.com/environment/oil-companies-spent-least-114-million-fighting-climate-action-2015/

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/mar/25/fossil-fuel-firms-are-still-bankrolling-climate-denial-lobby-groups

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/dark-money-funds-climate-change-denial-effort/

https://www.epa.gov/research-grants/climate-change-research-grants

>>126603
>only gives out 10-50 million in grants
nice goal post shift

>>126627
Whatever source lied and told you that $10bn was being spent by governments on climate research grants is the real problem here.

>>126603
My mistake. It's ~10bn on total discretionary spending, only ~2bn of which is for research.
http://www.gao.gov/key_issues/climate_change_funding_management/issue_summary

>>126663
>climate change programs
I think you've confused climate change programs with climate change research. The billions you're citing include everything from corporate subsidies to corn farmers for ethanol to government PSAs about old lawn mowers.

Meanwhile, BigOil is funding thinkatnks like the Heartland Institute full of bought and paid for researchers, and SuperPACs with millions for ads targeting 'energy voters' to counter whatever a climate scientist says.

Remember the Luntz memo.

>>126667
i imgur com/jmy9K4m.jpg