Basic Analog Circuits, LENR, Sustainable Energy

Timeline for photovoltaic technology

1839 – Nineteen-year-old Edmund Becquerel, a French experimental physicist, discovered the photovoltaic effect with two electrodes in an electrochemical cell.

Becquerel’s 1839 PV cell

1887 The photoelectric effect was first observed by Heinrich Hertz.

In 1905 Einstein created the mathematical and theoretical framework to explain the photoelectric effect.

1915, after ten years of experimentation, Millikan proved Einstein’s photoelectric theory correct.

In 1921 Einstein received a Nobel Prize, “for his services to Theoretical Physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect“.

1954 Bell Labs (New Jersey) developed the direct ancestor the silicon solar cell.
Solar Cell Patent from 1957

1955 – Western Electric licensed commercial solar cell technologies.  Hoffman Electronics-Semiconductor Division created a 2% efficient commercial solar cell for $25/cell or $1,785/Watt.

“12 Volts from one reflector? Do you know what this could mean?”

“It means that if we knew enough about that electrical field, we could operate every appliance in Oak Ridge by sunlight.”

“[Do] you mean it converts light into electric current just like that?”

“Just like that.” – Cosmic Man, 1959

2013 – Fossil fuel businesses introduce legislation in nineteen states to curb the use of photovoltaic/renewable technology.

It has taken over one hundred and seventy-five years for the observations of a nineteen year-old electrochemical experimenter-scientist-tinkerer to develop into a technology which has begun to threaten the hegemony of petroleum-based public utilities.

We can only wonder about other discoveries which languish at the periphery of physics waiting to be developed for the betterment of humankind.   I’m not quite certain why the discussion of Low Energy Nuclear Reactions (LENR) causes a problem in so many areas: many common day events of our physical world exist due to sub-atomic actions occurring at room temperatures.

Since the photoelectric effect took nearly 200 years to become a useful technology, it doesn’t seem far-fetched that something positive will come from the observed, poorly understood phenomena  known as Cold Fusion.  If the investor in the Fortune article below is correct, we may see something truly marvelous in a very near future:

They missed that heat was the main by-product. In addition, I learned that there have been nearly 50 reported positive test results, including experiments at Oak Ridge, Los Alamos, EPRI, and SRI. Q: The conventional wisdom is that LENR violates the laws of physics. A: That’s right. To create fusion energy you have to break the bonds in atoms and that takes a tremendous amount of force. That’s why the big government fusion projects have to use massive lasers or extreme heat—millions degrees centigrade—to break the bonds. Breaking those bonds at much lower temperatures is inconsistent with the laws of physics, as they’re now known. Q: What changed your mind? A: Scientists get locked into paradigms until the paradigm shifts. Then everyone happily shifts to the new truth and no one apologizes for being so stupid before. Low temperature fusion could be consistent with existing theories, we just don’t know how. It’s like when physicists say that according to the laws of aerodynamics bumblebees can’t fly but they do.