I’ve been reading a lot of science articles in the mornings
as anyone who follows me on Twitter @nealasher or Facebook will be aware, but
this one I have to put here.
As an SF writer you’re always in danger of being tripped up
by the science geek who will point out your errors. Back in The Line of Polity
(I think) I used ‘laser cooling’ for a space ship and someone – in a review I
believe – dismissed this as a ridiculous idea.
In micro electronics heat often causes problems and
engineers have to put a lot of technical effort into cooling, for example micro
chips, to dissipate heat that is generated during operation. Austrian
physicists have now suggested a concept for a laser that could be powered by
heat. This idea may open a completely new way for cooling microchips.
5 comments:
The first mention I recall of "laser refrigerator" technology in SF was David Brin's Sundiver (to the level of dropping a ship into cold sleep while awaiting rescue from deep inside the Sun), and that backed itself up with some plausible thermodynamics. Seeing something similar in the lab is just reality catching up with the literature.
I think just about any form of energy conversion cannot be discounted now, Steve. I realized that when reading about the idea of harvesting energy from the zero point field with arrays of nanotech rectifiers.
But is it nice to be proved right.
And there's much more: http://phys.org/tags/laser+cooling/
Well ner ner ner nerd. The power of the ner ner cannot be over stated in arguments with logical people.
Well there's no point in winning an argument if you can't enjoy it, Graeme.
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