Changing the Light on a Thousand Worlds (or something)

This idea has been mocking me for completion, on my desktop, for let's say at least 6 months.

Space Exploration is, hopefully, the destiny of the human race and in some distant future we will try to colonize the wider galaxy.  One of the challenges of colonizing other planets is the available sunlight.  Some of the most common stars in the galaxy are red dwarfs, so if we can figure out how to make life around a red dwarf work, you can make colonization work in a large swath of the universe. The reason red dwarfs are potentially difficult to colonize is the amount of energy they radiate.  Unlike brighter stars, including the Earth's yellow sun, red dwarfs burn slowly, releasing the energy of fusing hydrogen and helium over a span of trillions of years.  This rate of energy output means that planets orbiting a red dwarf will be unlikely to receive enough energy to power the engine of an Earth like ecology. 

One potential solution, a modified Dyson swarm. For the uninitiated a Dyson swarm is a massive collection of artificial satellites orbiting a star, capturing as much energy as possible to power the needs of the satellite.  Instead of capturing the energy and locally consuming it, this modified design would redirect the energy of the star towards the planet(s), that is being terraformed.  The means of redirecting this energy are fairly legion, and that is with our current understanding of physics.  The image below gives a really crude example of what that could look like. 

Option 1) simple mirrors:  the name says it all and is pretty straight forward, sunlight hits a specially designed mirror, light is bounced roughly in the direction of the planet. Crude but reasonable.

Option 2) solar power converters, the individual elements of the swarm have solar collectors and some class of light emitter, the satellites capture the energy of the star, the broad spectrum energy is converted into electricity, which then powers some class of laser that aims light at the planet, (said lasers could be mono-chromatic or produce a range of useful light frequencies.

Option 3) Quantum dots.  This idea is similar to Option 2 but more sci-fi.  Quantum dots are cool pieces of material science where the piece captures energy in one part of the electromagnetic spectrum and re-emits that energy at a different frequency, examples include transforming infrared rays into visible light.  (there would probably need to be some mirrors to redirect the light emitted by the quantum dots.

These 3 options are broad categories and only indicate my inferences on possible solutions, others will most likely emerge if this idea is given credence.  

Challenges to this concept are legion, first and foremost, manufacturing and distributing these proposed swarm satellites, followed by how does a civilization guarantee that the satellites they use to ensure that the whole planet doesn't fall back into an ice-age.  

Positives of implementing light directing swarm. 

Multi-planet terraforming:  there are already proposals by engineers and science fiction authors to place arrays of mirrors at the langrangian points of Venus, Earth, and Mars to modify the quantity of solar radiation reaching these bodies with the hopes of regulating climates.  With a fully established swarm of satellites, a civilization bordering on Type 2 classification would have the ability to simultaneously regulate the climates of several worlds as opposed to a new array for each planet that needed to be modified.

Interplanetary trade would be far more feasible with a swarm of light directing satellites.  Depending on the level of sophistication of the swarm a civilization could provide highways of concentrated solar radiation, powering fleets of spaceships propelled by solar sails.

The planning required to produce this kind of swarm would be incredible, realistically building something as mind boggingly massive as a proper Dyson swarm would take centuries, but the benefits to the descendants of those who planned so far into the future would be tremendous.

Another thought before I go.  The nature of this kind of swarm, as opposed to more all encompassing proposals for modifying a star system, would ideally minimally impact the orbital plane that most planets find.  For researchers looking from Earth, I believe we would see the solar radiation of the star heavily modified, appearing compressed with semi-regular modifications to outputs that correspond to planetary orbits.  (honestly I'm talking out my ass here)

Edit 9/25/15:  I really should have re-read the Dyson Sphere entry on Wikipedia, in it they describe a range of designs, and consequently this entry is more of an example of a sub-category of development, that being said I still like the idea.

Ideas that Have Started to Happen

I have been meaning to write this post for a while, a post that highlights cool ideas that I wish I could claim I had been the inspiration for (my money is on convergent thought processes)

E-Ink in the keyboard. (similar to Keeping Your Input Dynamic) In the gizmag article Microsoft shows off a keyboard that has an e-ink multi-touch input device on the top row of the attachable keyboard, allowing for more inputs, similar to what I had imagined, (I should really get better about concept renders), although I wonder why they limited themselves to only the top of the keyboard.

Wired has an article about Dutch researcher's work into developing semi-transparent solar panels as a noise absorbing material, so the application is totally different than what I suggested in my semi-transparent solar panel article, but the core technology could be re-purposed for my suggestion, here's hoping the tech is cost effective enough for the greenhouse concept.

It is really exciting to see how seemingly sci-fi ideas are becoming reality.  Here's hoping I can make more updates like this, highlighting co-incidental innovations (or better, brag about bringing my ideas into RL)

Can I fix it

Relatively Simple Concept, really difficult execution
An app that lets you suggest a project you want to do, and through tracking your tool selection, knowledge of use, and available hardware, can suggest an estimated time to complete a project and calculate potential budget

Embedding Server Farms where the Power is

When Google or Microsoft want to build a server farm they do their best to build their facilities as close to major energy sources as possible.  The logic behind building their server farms close to energy sources is relatively simple the power is cheapest closest to the source.  Both companies have stated sustainability goals, Google to have all of its power produced by renewable energy sources and Microsoft to become carbon neutral, these sustainability goals, combined with our society's ravenous desire for cloud based services mean that unique solutions for powering server farms will become necessary as time goes on.  

Currently the majority of server farms are massive facilities covering thousands of square feet, what I would like to suggest is a complimentary server farm design that is intended to work with more distributed energy sources.  Instead of massive facilities organizations could invest in smaller systems designed to be installed right next to large scale wind turbines and solar arrays.  Under normal operations the distributed servers would operate at some baseline of data processing, when surplus power is being produced the servers would do scale up how much data they would crunch. 

These servers would most likely make the most sense serving as supplemental archival storage capacity and large scale data crunching where the time the processing completion time is more flexible.  The utilization of this capacity could be implimented in a range of ways, the servers could be owned out right by either cloud service providers, the power producer, or a 3rd party owner operator.  

Hopefully these smaller server arrays would also benefit from increased surface area, said increased surface area would mean more space for hot air to escape, assuming solar gain was not excessive.

Note to self add links for reference.

Window Heating Units

As an Alaskan transplanted to the New England area, my battle with the summer heat has been a constant uphill struggle to find some kind of happy medium to keep my core temperature from becoming entirely unpleasant.  My current solution has been to have a window AC unit at home set to as close to glacial as physically possible.  Come winter I have a different problem of not wanting to spend excessive money on keeping my apartment warm.  In an ideal world my residence would have thermostats in each individual room so that my bedroom was toasty, the living room pleasant, and if I magically had any other rooms in the space they wouldn't be huge energy draws.  In a more realistic version of reality getting a rented apartment to have a highly granular zoned temperature control is unlikely, so how is a renter to reduce their apartment's heating costs.  REVERSE AIR-CONDITIONING otherwise known as "Air Source Heat Pumps" can be used to capture the thermal energy of the outdoors (yes, if it is above zero degrees Fahrenheit, possibly colder, you can harvest thermal energy from the ambient air).

Currently there are a range of these heating systems available for general consumption, but none of them, according to my ten minute web search, are designed to be seasonally added to a window sill.  The benefit of this could be huge, instead of home owners buying incredibly inefficient heating element style home heating systems, consumers could buy a smart window unit that would capture ambient outdoor energy.

 Design challenges would be great, but not insurmountable. The total cost of the unit would need to achieve a reasonably short ROI, preferably less than three years, ideally less than one.   Cost consideration is where a clever business plan is most important.  Depending on the actual material cost of this system home-owners might balk at the up-front cost and not buy in, regardless of long term saving potential, so how do you get people to invest in a long term money saver, options include but are not limited to a model similar to roof top solar companies that rent your roof space and sell you the power.  The window heat pumps would not be owned by the home owner, but by a leasing organization, where the home-owner/renter simply buys the hot air from the company (some political joke here).  Power producers that identify customers who use electrical heating in their space could provide financial incentives to offset the cost to the consumer.  The window system would need to weigh no more than that of a currently available window AC unit that consumers would use in the summer.  After cost and weight are accounted for in the design, ease of use and ideally overall attractiveness of the design should then be accounted for.

Down the line dream features, the system can change which side it is pumping heat to and from, cooling in the summer, warming in the winter.  Connectivity to smart home systems, allowing the unit to know when to crank up the heat, ideally it could work with other systems in the home in concert, allowing for finer control of home energy use.

An alternative technology that I am unsure if it deserves its own post, so I will write it down here for the moment.

Smart blinds and curtains.  Windows can allow for a large amount of thermal energy to enter or escape the home, even well insulated windows can allow the energy of visible spectrum light to come and go as it pleases.  Well designed window coverings could offset some of a home's energy use (I'm going to need to look into that particular number 7/27).  On hot days in the summer, when no one is home, the smart blinds would lower a white and or silver curtain intended to reflect away excess sunlight.  In the winter the blinds would lower a darker covering designed to convert the visible energy of the light into thermal energy that would go into the house.  A very simple version of this system would use a small solar panel to power itself (or plug if need be) and use two types of curtains, one black one reflective to cool the house.  More sophisticated versions would use either smart materials or several layers of curtain material to give finer control of the amount of light allowed in and energy converted.

links for me to embed later http://energy.gov/energysaver/articles/air-source-heat-pumps
http://energy.gov/energysaver/articles/heat-pump-systems

The FreshStart Phone

A few days ago a friend of mine texted me asking about how hard it would be to embed solar panels in a low cost cellphone, so that individuals who for whatever reason were trying to get established, would have some way to communicate with their healthcare provider, parole officer, who ever they needed to reach out to to get back on their feet.  The core sentiment is an excellent one, provide a resource for those who are at the greatest risk to engage with society, my primary point of feedback was the power output of the solar panel.  Even under the best circumstances the available surface area of a cellphone would have a hard time collecting enough sunlight to conveniently charge a cellphone.  (I may do the math showing this later, but for the moment I am just going to keep the work conceptual)
Just because a cellphone would have a hard time being charged by sunlight does not mean we as a society couldn't create a device that would be truly useful to those less enfranchised.
Whatever design that is eventually developed it will need to meet a rather challenging list of constraints.  The design suggestions I am putting forth below are just one way a product could be designed to meet a user's needs but I feel it would represent what individuals  might desire in their smart device.  My temporary title for this phone is the FreshStart, if someone in marketing wants to change it, great, I never said I was great at naming things.

The biggest limiting factor is cost, no matter how you want to slice it the primary customers of our starter phone are not the end users, but organizations that need to be able to buy hundreds, if not thousands of devices without destroying their budget. While I have no idea how much per unit either the governments of the world or non-profits would be willing to go, I am going to assume that these phones are being distributed in countries like the US and as such a maximum price of $50 is far from unreasonable.  Current Nokia feature phones cost something like $30 so it shouldn't be that unreasonable to keep the dollar cost of the device close to that.

After cost comes reliability, the device needs to be physically tough and have a very high endurance.  Users may not be guaranteed the opportunity to charge their phone every day and so the battery capacity should reflect the need for going several days without charging.

Close after reliability is attractiveness of the device, users need to feel like the phone they are getting is something important and worth holding onto, it may be free to them, but it should also be something that they value for more than the phone calls.

So far I am reasonably describing currently available feature phones, many now have very excellent run times, so long as they are only used for calls and texting they can work for days. Personally I enjoy the simple look of the Nokia style brick phones (this could be a result of early 2000's nostalgia.)  What would be a distinguishing characteristic of the design is integrating the charger, the majority of phones require you to have a second piece of hardware to charge your phone.  By integrating  the charger you are reducing the number of things someone has to keep track of.  The FreshStart's back would have a simple two prong A/C connector that would allow the device to be directly plugged into a wall  outlet.  To compliment the A/C adapter and to acknowledge the fact that individuals are mobile and may not have a long period of time near an outlet, for example the time it takes for them to finish their coffee, the FreshStart would have part of its battery capacity be a non-removable high endurance rapid charging element, either an ultra-capacitor or an optimized breed of battery that I can't think of right now.  This batter would be intended to charge in under 2 minutes while providing enough energy for ten times or more run time, ideally several hours of use.

Additional features that would be nice but not required, built in USB ports to allow other devices to charge while the phone itself charges, a USB plug to allow the use of charging ports that are now showing up in cities, a flashlight, an E-Ink display.

As of now this is as far as I've gotten with the FreshStart's concept, when I get back to my desktop with CADsoftware I will try to create a 3-D render.


some follow up links, here is a case for the Iphone 5 that has the charger in built as suggested http://www.amazon.com/Prong-PocketPlug-Case-Protective-built/dp/B00F0X1JUC
 and here is where I got the Nokia price point
http://www.pcworld.com/article/2865184/microsofts-29-nokia-215-is-a-smarter-feature-phone-for-the-masses.html

Dear Electronics Manufacturers, Stop Keeping Me Up at NIght

Years ago I recall reading an article noting the reason why electronics devices have bright LEDs is that manufacturers want consumers to pay more attention to their product on show room floors, but most of us don't live in a showroom, so why do the LEDs remain at the same brightness?  Honestly, I'm going to blame some corporate marketing genius, but I HAZ SOLUTION!

Photo resistors, that's right, simple photoresistors.

Manufacturers could readily embed one or more micro light sensors, that would provide feed back into the power supply of any visible spectrum LEDs.  Using a relatively simple PWM on the power of the LED, your device could dim its lights in real world conditions but still be annoyingly bright on the showroom.  

Unfortunately the reason technology like this isn't implemented isn't a result of lack of technology, it's a result of lack of incentives for them to make this feature common place.

7/15/15 Follow Up

Option B, instead of using circuits that add to the cost and complexity of manufacturing electronics lighting, sticky pads.  Using the same style of adhesive that painters tape and Post It Notes (tm), make pads of material that are designed to cover individual LEDs.  A company could make a generic pad that covers a given area, read a square of material, or you could get customized pieces that more closely match a given device.

The reason for this, I hate putting pieces of tape on my electronics, but it seems like it is the only way to ensure that my bedroom isn't a damn glow cave