Show Notes 10 March 2023
Story 1: Scientists have discovered a way to boost the efficiency of solar panels by 250%
Source: Sciencealert.com Story by David Nield
- Before we dig into this breakthrough I need to say a few words about current solar panel technology:
- Almost 90% of the World’s solar panels today are based on some variation of silicon which is used to make the photovoltaic cells that convert sunlight into electricity.
- And today’s solar panels use glass that does two things:
- Transmit sunlight without absorbing it and
- Concentrate that light thanks to a reflective coating applied to one or both sides of the glass.
- With this in mind, here’s the big news.
- A team of international researchers, headed by scientists at the University of Rochester in New York, recently announced a new way to make solar panels dramatically more productive by using alternatives for both silicon and glass.
- The scientists discovered that a low-cost and abundant mineral called perovskite is better than silicon at absorbing higher energy forms of light.
- They also discovered that by combining a specific form of perovskite called lead-halide perovskite with a substrate of metal instead of the treated glass commonly used in solar panels to concentrate light, the efficiency of converting solar light to electricity increased by 250 percent!
- More on the metal substrate:
- Solar panels work by using photons of sunlight to excite electrons into leaving their place next to an atom to produce an electrical current. When electrons and the gaps they’ve left behind recombine, however, energy that could be used as electricity is instead lost as heat.
- By adding a metal substrate, the researchers found they could reduce that recombination and increase efficiency. The team also showed that alternating layers of metal and dielectric (insulating) material as a substrate for the light-absorbing perovskite could improve efficiency rates in the same way.
- This is great news, but the researchers also noted they still need to figure out how to make the perovskite materials more stable and longer-lasting.
Story 2: The James Webb Space Telescope spotted something that’s shaking up the scientific world!
Source: CNN Story by Ashley Strickland
Link: https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/22/world/webb-telescope-massive-early-galaxies-scn
- For decades scientists have agreed that galaxies began as small clouds of stars and dust that grew slowly over vast amounts of time.
- But when astronomers recently used the James Webb Space Telescope to peer back in time to the early days of the universe, they spotted something totally unexpected.
- This month [in the journal Nature] an international team of scientists disclosed that the telescope has revealed six massive galaxies that existed between 500 million and 700 million years after the big bang that created the universe.
- Quick aside – how do scientists measure or figure out the age of a galaxy [or star] – Determine how far the light has traveled from a star or galaxy will give you an idea of the age. That is, determine how many light years the light has traveled.
- According to established scientific theories, galaxies of this age should be small.
- The huge size of the recently discovered six galaxies means the universe developed much faster than previously thought.
- This discovery conflicts with 99% of scientific models representing early galaxies in the universe, which means scientists need to entirely rethink how galaxies formed and evolved.
Story 3: Key trend to watch: Microsoft wants to bring ChatGPT’s artificial intelligence capabilities to robots
Source: Microsoft Blog
See video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYd0QcZcS6Q
- A few weeks ago, Microsoft announced its effort to inject artificial intelligence capabilities into their Bing and Edge web browsers using technology based on ChatGPT from an outfit called OpenAI.
- And at that time Microsoft disclosed plan to invest billions in OpenAI.
- Time out, what is ChatGPT?
- ChatGPT is an artificial intelligence chatbot launched in November last year that can respond to a user’s questions and requests with detailed human-like text responses and answers.
- ChatGPT does this by tapping vast databases spanning many domains of knowledge.
- ChatGPT has been controversial with stories about its sometimes-uneven factual accuracy.
- But it’s a key artificial intelligence development that’s got the tech community buzzing.
- In a recent blog post Microsoft outlined its goal to see if ChatGPT can think beyond text, and reason about the physical world to help with robotics tasks.
- In a nutshell, here’s what Microsoft hopes to do with ChatGPT:
- Even though language is the most intuitive way for us to express our intentions, today we still rely heavily on hand-written software code to program and control robots.
- Current robotics programming begins with a highly skilled expert who can translate the instructions [or steps] needed for a robot to perform a task into software code for the system.
- And an engineer sits in the loop, meaning that they need to write new code and specifications as they correct and perfect a robot’s behavior.
- Overall, this process is:
- slow (as the user needs to write low-level code),
- expensive (as it requires highly skilled users with deep knowledge of robotics), and
- inefficient (as it requires multiple interactions to get things working properly).
- Our [Microsoft] team has been exploring how we can change this reality and make natural human-robot interactions possible using OpenAI‘s new artificial intelligence language model, ChatGPT.
- So, the end goal is to enable a non-technical user to have a natural, conversational interaction with ChatGPT to ask a robot to perform a specific task, such as go to the kitchen and find my coffee mug, and the request generates the commands needed to make it happen?
- Microsoft believes this will work by following Microsoft’s set of design principles that leverage ChatGPT’s large artificial intelligence language model while monitoring the robot’s performance progress.
- If Microsoft’s experimental research fully pans out and becomes real-world deployable it will fundamentally democratize robotics, and I plan to monitor it closely.
Story 4: It’s women’s history month – on Discover.com you can learn about 10 women in science who changed the world
Source: Discover.com Story by Megan Schmnidt
Link: https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/meet-10-women-in-science-who-changed-the-world
- Here are three examples:
Ada Lovelace – who was a gifted mathematician
Born 1815 Died 1852
- Lovelace is regarded as the first computer programmer — long before modern computers were invented.
- Her notes on Charles Babbage’s analytical engine (which was a programmable, general-purpose computer proposed in 1833), are considered to contain the very first computer algorithm.
Gladys West – another remarkable mathematician
born 1930
- West’s work in developing mathematical modeling of the shape of the Earth served as the foundation of GPS technology.
- In 2018, she was inducted into the U.S. Air Force Space and Missile Pioneers Hall of Fame, one of the Air Force space command’s highest honors.
Jennifer Doudna, a groundbreaking biochemist
Born 1964
- Doudna was one of the primary developers of CRISPR, a ground-breaking technology for editing the complete set of genes or genetic material present in a cell or organism.
- The approach offers the promise to put an end to [many] diseases.