Transparent solar panels. Cool.
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Short and sweet answer: No.
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Naturally, the first comment on the article brings up the solar angle debate. Blargh. Solar research is quickly reaching the point where we could, in a generation, turn nearly every exterior man-made surface into a solar electricity generator, and people are still going on about how it’s worthless unless you can achieve peak performance from every collector.
Sigh.
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Agreed. I mean, sure, having the panel not perfectly perpendicular to the sun might mean not reaching the absolute highest level of efficiency for the panel, but that’s no reason to chuck any and all solar generator system out to dedicated farms.
The problem I see is that solar panels aren’t ready right now, for varied reasons. So people wanting to put solar panels everywhere (and not just where it makes sense right now) are in the wrong. Unfortunately, other people overreact and simply say that it is worthless period.
In one generation, it’s probably reasonable to think that solar panels will have matured enough to be deployed on a large scale. But as often, some people have a hard time to differentiate between later and never.
On the tech itself, it’s pretty smart and I really hope they can turn it into a successful commercial product. I wonder how much energy those skyscrapers would collect - also, by partially turning light into electricity, would they actually help cool the building down, or would it be offset by the waste heat?
Well, obviously, they will collect some of the energy that would have gone into heating the floors and walls inside the building and convert it to electricity, so, yes, there’ll be some manner of “cooling” going on, but I have no idea how much. Depending on how much of the near-IR band it absorbs, and how much it absorbs, the biggest impact might be to make the sunlight itself feel significantly less warm to the skin.
And yeah, solar tech isn’t quite ready for ubiquitous deployment yet, and I think most people following along know that. It’s the attitude of all-or-nothing that boggles me, though. Or maybe it’s the “solar in 15-20 years will have to work by the exact same constraints as solar today” – people are maybe locked in their way of thinking about the technology?
Either way, when every window in every sky scraper in a city is a solar panel, its angle to the sun becomes a silly issue. So long as the technology is cheap enough that they panels can pay for themselves (or better) over their lifespan, optimization can be left to the min-maxing red mages.
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Why a Tennessee town has the fastest internet http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-echochambers-29038650
It’s on a scroll so I’m not shure how long it will be here.
Scientists ‘make telepathy breakthrough’ Research led by experts at Harvard University shows technology can be used to send a simple mental message from one person to another without any contact between the two. http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-29093700
Space Station Defies Humans, Launches Satellites Without Permission. The computer revolution begins.
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I remember a few messages covering this topic at the very beginning.
That’s not gonna happen anywhere near in the future.
Let’s bluntly put this as a typical computer bug and be off with it, or else we should consider Windows 95 as the best precursor to the IA since bugs are in fact a show of an independant will 
Gynandromorphs: Dual-Sex Animals. But not in a fun way, usually http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oAdTyk_fbBM
World’s First Three-Dimensional Printed Car Made in Chicago Were going to be able to design our own cars soon! http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/world-s-first-three-dimensional-printed-car-made-in-chicago/
They will be unstoppable.
Unlike Anything They Have Ever Seen Before “defy all existing classifications of life” Short story. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/09/science/unlike-anything-they-have-ever-seen-before.html?_r=2
To continue the discussion from there about blue dwarfs.
So the ‘blue-dwarf stars’ are highly hypothetical and may actually not happen, ok.
About blue main sequence stars : are all stars beginning their life as main sequence stars? When we hear about massive blue giants, are those stars ex-main sequence blue stars? Or is there a mass at which point the star switch to another class?
our sun is yellow dwarf. all stars in main sequence are dwarfs
The Formula E racing series’ opening race had a wreck at the end. Formula E is Formula One’s all-electric sister, so to speak. All the cars are electric versions of the gas-powered formula vehicles, and hopefully some of that tech will trickle down to consumer cars soon.
Not what I meant.
What is the connection between blue giants and blue main sequence stars? Are blue giant more massive stars, or are they what blue main sequence become when they evolve?
And then, why is there a jump between main sequence and blue giants?