Russians harness star power in new battery

Russian scientists have invented a battery that can capture energy not only from the sun, but also from the stars,
the head of a research institute at the Dubna Nuclear Institute, near Moscow, said.

"This is a battery like no other," Samoilov, who head's the Institute's center for applied research, told the Itar-Tass news agency, explaining that it could function 24 hours a day and was twice as effective as an ordinary solar panel at converting light into electricity.

Moreover, Samoilov declared, the new battery was cheaper than a solar panel.
>>>>.snip http://www.physorg.com/news67796415.html

This might be a major breakthrough but you know the people that put the first person in space don't know much about science......sarcasm

I'll just put that one on the shelf right next to the 300MPG carburetor.

...and don't convert light into electricity.

something not exactly science.

I hope the OP wasn't bieng serious in that last line.

superconductors, however the sources made no mention of any battery that operated in similar fashion.

Related question: When I go this far afield, I am forced to use Google Scholar :(x(, can someone direct me to somewhere better? Personally I don't trust something I can't find in a peer review journal.

"hetero-electronics". I don't know if there's actually a normative translation for this. It supposedly not only is more efficient at visible wavelengths than most other solar cells, but also handles IR.

I'm suspicious because the applied science center hasn't submitted anything to peer-reviewed journals, and because a crucial part of the device is also a high-capacity capacitor.

BTW, 'batereja' can be a lot of things: accumulator, pile, and with 'solar' it can be 'cell' or 'array'.

This was in LBN a couple of days ago, and I looked up a longer Russian version of the news release. It didn't help--it provided a bit of detail about efficiency claims, and the bit about IR and the capacitor. But what the cell actually does and how it works was conveyed in unorthodox, sometimes novel jargon that didn't so much illuminate as give the impression that illumination had occurred.

Instead I smushed the headline of this with the chocolate one and read this in my mind:

"Russians harness chocolate power in new battery"

Imagine my disapointment once I read the thread. :D

Sorry, but it reads like snake oil. I'm not holding my breath.

Still reads like snake-oil.

I mean, there's no front page articles about UFOs or faces on Mars or anything. :shrug:

I'm a bit skeptical, because NASA found that for more distant probes long term probes, a Stirling engine type solar collector would be more effective than any sort of PV panels, since the sunlight isn't as bright past Mars (of course, nuclear power plants have no distance limits, but run out of fuel eventually).

OTOH, if it works, it would be very useful, assuming the materials aren't too exotic and the cost too high.

There's no known magic energy bullet yet that will fulfill post-petroleum needs, but I suppose that doesn't stop us from looking for one.