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Recently watched Cosmos Episode 6 where Neil deGrasse Tyson speaks of photosynthesis and how all our energy problems would be solved if we were able to learn th

Recently watched Cosmos Episode 6 where Neil deGrasse Tyson speaks of photosynthesis and how all our energy problems would be solved if we were able to learn the 'trade secrets' of how plants do it. This makes a lot of sense. Can anyone point out current research on this field? I don't seem to hear much about it. Edit: Just found this after searching #photosynthesis in Twitter: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/04/20/artificial-photosynthesis-environment-energy_n_7088830.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/04/20/artificial-photosyn...

zbravo 11y ago
http://solarfuelshub.org/ http://solarfuelshub.org/
shanev 11y ago
Janine Benyus talks about this in her TED talk Biomimicry in action: http://www.ted.com/talks/janine_benyus_biomimicry_in_action http://www.ted.com/talks/janine_benyus_biomimicry_in_action. We should look to nature before designing things since it may have already solved the problem for us. Future technology should also be designed to gracefully degrade like nature, otherwise we're just replacing one problem with another.
jddw 11y ago
There are neat ways to make sunlight into fuel, but it's about what form that energy takes. If it is a fuel that needs to be burned - in the case of sugars from photosynthesis - we already do this by burning wood. I think Cosmos missed a really important lesson which is that the fuels at our disposal are all a function of time and distance. The longer a fuel source has been building, and the less distance it has to travel to be useful to us, the more valuable it may be. The sun is a result of billions of years of the shape-shifting games between mass and energy, all driven by gravity. The fusion energy produced in the sun then has to travel 93 million miles to us to be useful. The food chain harnesses this energy and accumulates it over time, and after hundreds of millions of years much of that energy has been sequestered into fossil fuels. While there is a tremendous amount of power emanating from the sun, it has to go a long way or accumulate for a long time to be useful to us. Nuclear fuel sources on the other hand bring the billions of years of nucleus building that previous generations of stars did for us to our door step. The parent stars of our sun produced heavy actinides like uranium or thorium, as well as the abundant light elements like deuterium, helium, and boron, and then scattering them across the cosmos along with leftover hydrogen in brilliant novae and supernovae. In our case, many of these elements were in the stardust that formed earth, and are here beneath our feet and above our heads. Solar, wind, and nuclear will dominate the 22nd century, but we need both, and they do and can play well together. They just need to be treated and respected equally.
- Retric 11y ago
  Heavy elements that allow for Fission are products of supernova which are really more a question of minutes than years. With the vast majority being created in under 2 minutes after the reaction starts. PS: https://what-if.xkcd.com/73/ https://what-if.xkcd.com/73/ Which of the following would be brighter, in terms of the amount of energy delivered to your retina: A supernova, seen from as far away as the Sun is from the Earth, or The detonation of a hydrogen bomb pressed against your eyeball? A: Applying the physicist rule of thumb suggests that the supernova is brighter. And indeed, it is ... by nine orders of magnitude.
- lutorm 11y ago
  Why does it matter how far away the Sun is? It's the amount of energy available to us here that matters. And it doesn't have to accumulate at all, the instantaneous energy flux is plenty high for our needs.
  - DennisP 11y ago
    Except for the darn planet getting in the way half the time.
ocschwar 11y ago
There's a more efficient way to do that. Use TCP/IP to synchronize the consumption of power with its production. Solar and wind are pretty awesome if you can schedule around them. And most of our power consumption is amenable to it.
- DennisP 11y ago
  So turn everything off when the wind's not blowing and the sun's not shining? That doesn't sound ideal to me.
  - ocschwar 11y ago
    Wind's always flowing somewhere. The sun shines pretty reliably. And a huge percentage of our electricity consumption could quite easily be time shifted.

zbravo 11y ago

http://solarfuelshub.org/ http://solarfuelshub.org/

shanev 11y ago

Janine Benyus talks about this in her TED talk Biomimicry in action: http://www.ted.com/talks/janine_benyus_biomimicry_in_action http://www.ted.com/talks/janine_benyus_biomimicry_in_action. We should look to nature before designing things since it may have already solved the problem for us. Future technology should also be designed to gracefully degrade like nature, otherwise we're just replacing one problem with another.

jddw 11y ago

There are neat ways to make sunlight into fuel, but it's about what form that energy takes. If it is a fuel that needs to be burned - in the case of sugars from photosynthesis - we already do this by burning wood. I think Cosmos missed a really important lesson which is that the fuels at our disposal are all a function of time and distance. The longer a fuel source has been building, and the less distance it has to travel to be useful to us, the more valuable it may be. The sun is a result of billions of years of the shape-shifting games between mass and energy, all driven by gravity. The fusion energy produced in the sun then has to travel 93 million miles to us to be useful. The food chain harnesses this energy and accumulates it over time, and after hundreds of millions of years much of that energy has been sequestered into fossil fuels. While there is a tremendous amount of power emanating from the sun, it has to go a long way or accumulate for a long time to be useful to us. Nuclear fuel sources on the other hand bring the billions of years of nucleus building that previous generations of stars did for us to our door step. The parent stars of our sun produced heavy actinides like uranium or thorium, as well as the abundant light elements like deuterium, helium, and boron, and then scattering them across the cosmos along with leftover hydrogen in brilliant novae and supernovae. In our case, many of these elements were in the stardust that formed earth, and are here beneath our feet and above our heads. Solar, wind, and nuclear will dominate the 22nd century, but we need both, and they do and can play well together. They just need to be treated and respected equally.

Retric 11y ago
Heavy elements that allow for Fission are products of supernova which are really more a question of minutes than years. With the vast majority being created in under 2 minutes after the reaction starts. PS: https://what-if.xkcd.com/73/ https://what-if.xkcd.com/73/ Which of the following would be brighter, in terms of the amount of energy delivered to your retina: A supernova, seen from as far away as the Sun is from the Earth, or The detonation of a hydrogen bomb pressed against your eyeball? A: Applying the physicist rule of thumb suggests that the supernova is brighter. And indeed, it is ... by nine orders of magnitude.
lutorm 11y ago
Why does it matter how far away the Sun is? It's the amount of energy available to us here that matters. And it doesn't have to accumulate at all, the instantaneous energy flux is plenty high for our needs.
- DennisP 11y ago
  Except for the darn planet getting in the way half the time.

ocschwar 11y ago

There's a more efficient way to do that. Use TCP/IP to synchronize the consumption of power with its production. Solar and wind are pretty awesome if you can schedule around them. And most of our power consumption is amenable to it.

DennisP 11y ago
So turn everything off when the wind's not blowing and the sun's not shining? That doesn't sound ideal to me.
- ocschwar 11y ago
  Wind's always flowing somewhere. The sun shines pretty reliably. And a huge percentage of our electricity consumption could quite easily be time shifted.