5 ms·
I’m not an expert on this, and I might be missing something because to me this sounds like a spectacularly useful idea. Compared to something I would have thou
by AlbertoGP 4y ago
I’m not an expert on this, and I might be missing something because to me this sounds like a spectacularly useful idea.
Compared to something I would have thought of, like the trivial idea of raised solar panels that left enough space below for animals and plants to grow, those glass trees have wide manufacturing tolerances and work independently of each other.
Thinking now about their degradation process, they might produce a blanket of fine glass shards which would make animal life impossible. I wonder whether there would be ways of mitigating that.
- Retric 4y agoThere’s another name for Blanket of very fine glass shards, it’s sand. Which suggests the mitigation process might be to insure degradation doesn’t stop in an unpleasant middle ground. Not that glass trees are a good idea…
- kragen 4y agoSand is not normally made of glass, but there are obsidian beaches in, for example, Hawai‘i that are.
- actionfromafar 4y agoI think it's not much of a problem, but even so it can probably be mitigated. There are types of glass (tempered safety glass) which break into tiny little cubes instead of shards.
- samatman 4y agoThis wouldn't so much be glass, as sintered sand. Energy spent rendering the sand fully amorphous would be wasted. There are analogous igneous rocks, they aren't good for knapping into blades, leading me to think that broken glass trees wouldn't be especially dangerous either. Frits used in chemistry are sintered glass, and they don't break into sharp edges either.