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A Norwegian town built a giant mirror to deflect the sun (2017)
- kawfey 7y ago*reflect Deflect means to shield an area from sun; this project is to bring sunlight into a perpetually shaded area.
- Johnny555 7y agoDeflect (verb) cause (something) to change direction by interposing something; turn aside from a straight course. "the bullet was deflected harmlessly into the ceiling"
- intertextuality 7y agoAlthough you are correct and GP was mistaken in their definition, `reflect` fits better here. Definition of reflect transitive verb 1 : to prevent passage of and cause to change direction // a mirror reflects light --- Definition of deflect transitive verb : to turn (something) aside especially from a straight course or fixed direction // armor that deflects bullets, deflecting a question --- With deflect, something is simply being diverted, whereas with reflect, it's more intentionally being aimed somewhere. This is the nuance I feel innately, although at this point we're splitting hairs I think.
- function_seven 7y agoYeah. Tough questions are deflected. Glory is reflected. Deflection is typically used when the would-be target is protected from the incoming object. Reflection is when the never-was target is now a target.
- Johnny555 7y agoAlthough you are correct and GP was mistaken in their definition, `reflect` fits better here. I don't see why deflect isn't acceptable. Previously the sun was shining on the hillside below, now it's been deflected to the town square.
- kwhitefoot 7y agodeflect is not appropriate in that sentence because it means that the sun itself would be moved.
- sergioj97 7y agoWhat I understood is just that reflect seems to fit better here, given the most common use cases for the word.
- rurounijones 7y agoRay Mears documentary "The real heroes of Telemark" is also worth a look.
- lucb1e 7y agoThank you for mentioning that, as a non native speaker I was a little confused.
- dang 7y agoTo my ear 'reflect' could also mean to shield from. More so, in fact, because it tends to imply a 180 degree angle where 'deflect' implies something else. Of course people have many different associations.
- el_benhameen 7y agoIn a sort of related/inverse vein, I thought the engineering at play here was pretty interesting. 96 million shade balls on a public water supply reservoir: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxPdPpi5W4o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxPdPpi5W4o
- tenpies 7y agoI just find it hilarious that they do this on the tail of wanting to ban plastic everywhere. Why yes, please take these black plastic balls, coat them in a known carcinogen, place them over drinking water, and let them bake over the sun[1]. --- [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shade_balls https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shade_balls
- knodi123 7y ago> coat them in a known carcinogen That's actually the opposite of what's going on. From wikipedia: Starting in mid-2008, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) deployed around 400,000 balls in the Ivanhoe reservoir with the main objective of preventing the formation of a carcinogenic chemical, bromate, which forms when naturally occurring bromine reacts with chlorine in the presence of sunlight.
- ryandvm 7y agoFortunately it's because the kind of people that want to thoughtlessly "ban plastic everywhere" are thankfully not making decisions about our water quality. The entire shade-ball program was created to mitigate high levels of bromate which were forming when sunlight interacted with chlorinated water. Bromate is an _actual_ carcinogen; as opposed to the carbon black coating on the shade-balls which is only carcinogenic when inhaled as dust (otherwise the activated charcoal in all those drinking filters would be pretty bad news).
- s0rce 7y agoAFAIK they aren't even coated in carbon black the HDPE is mixed with carbon black (same as many other black plastics/rubbers) and then formed into the spheres.
- outside1234 7y agoThis is sort of off topic, but this valley is pretty famous actually for being a strategic place in World War II (but not widely known) because it was a crucial source of heavy water. If you haven't seen it already, I'd highly recommend the Netflix series "The Heavy Water War" (trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_K3Ry2K4yNE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_K3Ry2K4yNE)
- reitanqild 7y agohttps://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwegian_heavy_water_sabotage#Operation_Gunnerside https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwegian_heavy_water_sabota...
- anderber 7y agoOh dang, doesn't look like it's available in the US. It looks really good. I remember hearing about this part of history from this short doc: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eiy3b5HkUVw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eiy3b5HkUVw
- saluki 7y agoWow, this looks really good, it's available on Amazon Video, not free but looks worth watching. Thanks for sharing.
- rypskar 7y agoCan also check out the old movie The Heroes of Telemark to get parts of the story https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0059263/?ref_=nv_sr_1?ref_=nv_sr_1 https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0059263/?ref_=nv_sr_1?ref_=nv_s...
- NullPrefix 7y agoWhat's heavy water?
- salty_biscuits 7y agoWater with the deuterium isotope of hydrogen, instead of the common isotope of hydrogen.
- tobib 7y agoIt's a neat idea but I wouldn't say "three mirrors, each measuring 17 sq m" is particularly "giant".
- ducktypegoose 7y agoDepends on how you think about it, relative to the mirrors that were there before they are collosal. I do take humbrence with the author's use of the word, "deflecting". Sounds like they're trying to divert the Sun's wonderous glory away from their town. Reflecting is the word, praise the Sun.
- soperj 7y agoDeflect is to change direction. It's why you can deflect a puck in hockey into the net. Don't know why people keep reading it as a negative.
- jws 7y agoDeflect most often is used in a sense of deflecting something away from something else. e.g. to deflect a bullet. That would mean away from its target, not into a target. In English there isn't a general word for altering a trajectory into an object. In this case however, reflect is precisely suited to what mirrors do to light and doesn't have the confusing inverse connotation of away. You reflect away from something or onto something equally well in English.
- mpweiher 7y agoThe Italian town of Viganella installed mirrors in 2006 (Rjukan was in 2013). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viganella https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viganella
- McDev 7y agoIt's like a giant SAD lamp, only you share it with other people
- cgh 7y agoI spent part of my childhood in a similar place in far northern BC. The north-south orientation of the valley we were in prevented much winter sun from hitting the town. On top of that, there was an asbestos mine nearby and sometimes when they were blasting up at the mine site, dust would settle on the town. Once the mine closed, the town was basically erased and everyone left.
- nxpnsv 7y agoI’ve been there. It makes a few m2 in the town square slightly lighter. Neat but certainly not mind blowing.
- badideaprojects 7y agoRjukan (the town from the article) is also a great destination for ice climbing. Lots of frozen waterfalls only a stones throw from the road. Only a couple of hours drive from Oslo. In case you need an excuse to visit.
- marvin 7y agoAlso some of Norway's most reasonable real estate prices, with detached homes starting at less than $100,000.
- okusa 7y agoI used Google Translate's camera feature to translate a few estate agent window ads while I was there and genuinely assumed I must have been looking at the deposit prices given the price of everything else in Norway.
- marvin 7y agoIf you were anywhere else, you'd probably see the deposit price and figure it was the full price of the property :P Actually, things are not as bad as in Seattle/SF/LA/New York, but modest things are still very expensive in our cities.
- isostatic 7y agoI hope they don't try to steal candy from any babies! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9Ve2pzTp3Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9Ve2pzTp3Q
- turtlebits 7y agoI've always wanted my own heliostat(s) as I think they'd be more useful than solar panels (at least for me) - sending concentrated sunlight and heat in through your windows. But can't find any good design/plans for DIY or anyone selling one.
- jamiek88 7y agohttps://lm.solar/order/ https://lm.solar/order/ I have the vacuum mirror focusing upgrade pack. Works really well and I roughly calculate that you get 80% of the growing power from the sun as direct light. I use it for a part of the garden that never got light due to building and trees and was always soggy and damp. Nothing grew there very long, now I maintain native wildflowers and a butterfly garden there. It’s really cool. The heliostat follows the sun mechanically and also can tune in the focus with a vacuum system.
- turtlebits 7y agoIMO, $2500 seems extremely expensive for focusing 1.45m2 of light, especially when you can get at least 2.5kW of solar panels for the same price.
- natch 7y agoIt’s a completely different technology that’s solving a different problem. And sun tracking is more complex when you are reflecting onto a fixed point as opposed to simply pointing the surface (in the case of solar cells) toward the sun.
- joshe 7y agoThere are home versions of these heliostats too, I always thought it would be a nice home improvement. You could make a new sunny room, sunnier garden, or a warmer patio. Just googling, $2,000 gets you 1300 watts of heat. Or 115,000 lumens. (100 watt incandescent is 1600 lumens). The mirror part is about 4 feet x 4 feet. https://lm.solar/order/ https://lm.solar/order/
- slumos 7y agoReally neat. I can see mounting their $300 mirror on my apartment balcony to extend my “direct” sunlight a couple of hours.
- gpsx 7y agoI live in sunny California but I still have problems with not enough sun. I used to be a cyclist and triathlete, being outside for many hours a week, and now I am doing maninly dancing. I am inside way more than I used to be. I can feel when I need more sun. Incedentally, I also had a recent physical where they measured that I had a vitamin D deficiency. They said a lot of interesting things in this article related to the sun, so I leared some new things. At the same time I am surprised about some things they did not say. I'm not an authority on the bodies need for sun, but I will give my non-scientifci observations. If some one finds this interesting they should do some additional research on the topic before they do anything I did, rather than just trust what I write here. One thing that really interested me was an article I saw here on Hacker News a several months ago. It said it is well known people with higher vitamin D levels had some health bvenefits. However, one particular study found that giving vitiamin D supplements did not seem to give the same health benefits. The authors concluded from their results that people who have high vitamin D often get this from the sun, and the sun gives them a different result from just taking vitamin D supplements. I tried going to a sun tanning salon and found that did make me feel a subtle "high", as if I had been out on a sunny day. (Your experience may very.) From what I understand it is UVB that is responsible for this, the "bad" UV. It is considered bad because your body does not shield against it and it does not cause you to tan. General tanning salons want to give you UVA. The expensive machines limit your UVB exposure, and the cheaper ones give you more UVB (salons often have different options for beds). You want to go to the cheaper option. I used beds at tswo salons with 5% and 6% UVB, for reference. They should know the UVA/B statistics for the machines. As far as length of time, you don't need to go that long. The point is not to get a tan necessarily. I found that i would get more tired if I stayed in too long, so there is sort of an optimal time, for me at least. (I am very pale, by the way.) I also noticed that the sun tanning bed was not enough. It is almost as if there are two effects. I feel good from the tanning salon, but at the same time it feels like there is something missing. I also need to go outside, I assume to get visible light. To repeat above, these are not scientific results. I find this seems to work for me, and that is good enough. I would not suggest someone trust what I say here as authoritative, but hopefully it can be an inspiration to look into this if you have similar problems. FYI, one thing I want to look into as a result of this article is timing of getting visible light. I do know that if I wake up in pitch black I have trouble getting out of bed. I would link to get more bright light in the morning right when I wake up and see how that effects me.
- duxup 7y agoI grew up on the Great Plains of the US. I remember my first visit to Switzerland clearly. We get into this town in a valley with these massive mountains all around. I had this really strong sense of being confined, along with feeling like the mountains could come tumbling down on me at anytime. It was strange, but also really odd when it felt like the sun would go down so early as it crossed behind the mountains.
- wavefunction 7y agoI experienced serious anxiety the first time I drove through North Texas (flat as a pancake), having grown up in Colorado with the mountains ever present. It was a weird time in my life and... I was coming from Colorado, but I felt like I was going to slide right off the earth with such a flat horizon surrounding me.
- dylan604 7y agoI grew up in North Texas, and I still feel very weird by how flat it is.
- takk309 7y agoGrowing up I had the opposite experience. I grew up in a mountain valley in Montana and would go to Minnesota each summer. It was strange not having something on the horizon.
- duxup 7y ago>It was strange not having something on the horizon. But that is where the sky is supposed to be! ;)
- phs318u 7y agoI had that exact same feeling visiting the village where my wife is from in the mountains around Karpenisi, Greece. I couldn’t stop looking up and at times I felt this oppressive and menacing sense of claustrophobia (which I don’t usually suffer from). Am now more used to it but I wouldn’t want to live there. Born in Australia near the coast I’m definitely a beach guy and like others have mentioned I am very happy to see the sun on the horizon.
- Udik 7y agoOn a side note, having lived in a northern city famous for its bad weather (Dublin) I always wondered why instead of building with dark red bricks they don't coat the buildings with reflective material. And the sad part is that I bet it's not done because it's for the benefit of the neighbors on the opposite side of the street (though of course, it could be reciprocal).
- dhritzkiv 7y agoThe people congregating in the sun spot in the middle of the town square remind me of this Portlandia sketch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-ppr9LDaQE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-ppr9LDaQE
- natch 7y agoHere’s a cheap home version under development, funded through indiegogo. I was a backer and am hoping to receive one soon but it’s been a long wait so far: https://solenica.com/ https://solenica.com/
- dang 7y agoPretty sure this has had significant discussions on HN in the past, but I can't find them. Anyone? (The purpose is just curiosity. Reposts of a story are ok after about a year, as the FAQ explains: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html.)
- jclarkcom 7y agoMy startup has been working on a virtual skylight that produces a pretty good proxy for feeling like you are outside in the sun even if you are underground. The key invention is in collimating a large area light source so it travels in a straight line and appears to be miles away. We will be showing it at a conference in Philadelphia next week if anyone is interested. Https://Innerscene.com/products
- iknowstuff 7y agoWhat is the price range?
- jclarkcom 7y agoIn some areas we sell through Lighting Agencies, Distributors, and contractors who will set their own prices and markups. If you let me know where you are located, I can give you a number - but as rough guide, in the USA it is somewhere around $15-$20k for a 40x20 inch unit. We will be announcing a new version next week.
- koala_man 7y ago> $15-$20k I was excited for a while there, but I guess I'll continue on my path to becoming Gollum
- nitrogen 7y agoHow much traditional lighting could that 40x20 panel replace, and what is the expected lifespan? (Also is the spectrum close to a true black body?)
- bitcurious 7y agoIf you get this down to around $5k I bet you'd have a much larger market of apartment dwellers such as myself. Any hope of getting there in the next few years?
- Darthy 7y agoInteresting. How do you differentiate yourself from CoeLux, which has been doing a very similar thing for a few years now?
- mooneater 7y agoPerhaps large, light weight deflecting mirrors in orbit could help with climate change.
- edoo 7y agoI think China was looking at putting up satellite solar reflectors to avoid the electrical cost of night time illumination in cities. If that tech gets cheap enough you could in theory target a town/agriculture like this to give it an effective latitude shift towards the equator.
- planteen 7y agoThat doesn't really pass the sniff test... distance to GEO is 36,000 km, the sun is approx. 0.5 degrees in angular size, that would mean a mirror with a diameter of 314 km in GEO. We do not have the technology for that. 2 36000 tan(0.25 deg) = 314 km
- edoo 7y agohttps://en.businesstimes.cn/articles/104124/20181018/chinese-city-chengdu-orbit-massive-solar-mirror-bring-light-night.htm https://en.businesstimes.cn/articles/104124/20181018/chinese...
- johnyzee 7y agoI'm fascinated by heliostats. Living in an apartment, I have always wanted to put up 'suncatchers' outside my windows and lead sunlight in through fibre optics to all the corridors and darker rooms. Something like this [1][2]. [1] https://www.parans.com/products/parans-luminaire-diffused-natural-light-with-a-quadrant-touch/ https://www.parans.com/products/parans-luminaire-diffused-na... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_tube#Optical_fiber https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_tube#Optical_fiber
- dmix 7y agoThat parans product bringing natural light from the roof into buildings via fiber optics is pretty cool. I hope they get plenty of business.
- bitcurious 7y agoSuper cool. Have you looked into the price for the parans system? I can't seem to find it anywhere.
- sfjailbird 7y agoWell if you have to ask... it's probably incredibly expensive. The Wikipedia link list customers as international airports, universities, etc., and calls it 'quite expensive'. Probably out of reach for private homes.
- keyle 7y agoThat would be so much better than the two dozens of gas tubes currently lighting my office floor!
- correlator 7y agoSimpsons did it
- kwhitefoot 7y agoReflect not deflect :-)
- anotheryou 7y agoThey should move it from house to house and make it an occasion to invite the next neighbors to dinner :)