Framing It: 10.14.19

Dark bulbs, Nobels, Аппле II, and Long Phone is Long

Generating Electricity From Nothing

• The news is abluster with the “anti-solar panel,” a device that generates electricity from darkness. No, it’s not a photovoltaic panel that only works in the dark. It’s just a thermoelectric junction (a peltier) coupled on one side to an aluminum disk painted black. When the black disc is pointed at the night sky it cools off producing a temperature differential at the thermoelectric junction. Yeah, you could make this with a $20 trip to Home Depot, but you didn’t, and that’s why you didn’t get the publication.
• The existence of an “anti-solar panel” is a great time to bring up a favorite physics question: Is it possible to create a ‘dark bulb’, or a light bulb that emits “dark?” The answer is no, because that would be a black hole. However, this only applies to reality, not a virtual world. Yes, you can write a game engine that supports ‘lights that emit dark’. It’s weird and disorienting.

Nobel Prizes

• The Nobel Prize in Physics has been awarded to three researchers. The first, James Peebles of Princeton, won the prize for laying the foundation of our modern understanding of the universe’s history. Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz of the University of Geneva, won the prize for detecting the first extrasolar planet, 51 Pegasi B, in 1995.
• The Nobel in Chemistry has been awarded to John Goodenough, M. Stanley Whittingham and Akira Yoshino for the development of lithium-ion batteries. Lithium batteries have been an integral part of all consumer electronics since the mid-90s onward, and are the reason we have electric cars today. Remember, the GM EV-1 first used lead acid batteries.

Lion phones. Long phone is long.

• The first smartphone to be made in Africa has been made in Africa. The Mara group has released the Mara X and Mara Z smartphones, using components that have all been manufactured in Africa. Yes, other smartphones are assembled in Africa (with assembly plants in Egypt and South Africa), but this is the first smartphone that is (mostly) wholly manufactured in Africa.
• Andy Rubin, co-founder of Android, co-creator of the T-Mobile Sidekick, and probably a creepy dude, has revealed the Project Gem smartphone. It’s… well, it’s a long phone. Project Gem has a very wide aspect ratio, and the apps are in a sort of ‘card’ format. Yeah, it runs Android. Oh, the enclosure is a sort of a metallic hypercolor that changes color as you view it from different angles.

Аппле II

• The V.I. Lenin museum — no, not the mausoleum — runs on Apple II computers. The museum is apparently a low-rent imagineer type of thing, with Pepper’s Ghost illusion depicting life-size historical reenactments of Lenin’s life. All of this is controlled with an Apple II and an Electrosonic ES4000 card that is apparently used to switch a few relays and turn a laser on and off. A great look at how to get western tech beyond the iron curtain.