Optical Fuel Cell

[PicassoCT]

I most recently stumbled upon quite a die-off-pattern with some really neat ideas. The end always were batteries. They suck.
Even the lithium-ion ones.

I was daydreaming, after re-reading alastair Reynolds "The Prefect", about how a fully Image-augmenting and 3d-camera equipped Google-Glas would allow to change humans vanity habbits, when the Battery fairy appeared, and killed it all off, with a blink of the low-Akku-Plug-in Wand.

So i looked at alternatives.
There is the Fuelcell. The ultimate Chemical alternatives, which finally would archieve for alcoholics what the cellphone did for shizos years ago. You wouldnt stand out anymore, carrying a pack of pure booze around you all the time. The battery-fairy was flying diffrent this time, but it came none the less.

So i looked and thought- what if energy had no weight at all- what if the stored energy would actually be light.

So my question is.. can a beam of laser light be stored?
There is sort of fanfic for the idea..
http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/006551.html

and there is been this:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 111151.htm

Can anybody explain me why im still visited by the battery fairy?

[zwzsg]

From what I understand in your article, they didn't slow the light particles themselves. It's more like they made a imprint of what the light looked like: They stored the information, not the power, of the light.

[PicassoCT]

Ooh.. it would have been sweet..

[hoijui]

if you want no weight, you would have to extract the energy from the environment when you need it. the environment also often contains light!

bacteria that grow batteries or solar cells:
https://www.ted.com/talks/angela_belche ... _batteries

urine powered fuel cell:
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style ... 13564.html

[raaar]

for energy sources, RTGs seem promising

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioisoto ... _generator

radioactive nuclear waste can be used as a power source!

- 238Pu emits 0.54kw/kg with a half-life of 87.7 years
- 90Sr emits 0.46kw/kg with a half-life of 28.8 years
- 210Po emits 140 Kw/kg (!!!!!!) with a half-life of 138days

sadly, compact generators use thermocouples which have low efficiency, between 3 and 7%

[PicassoCT]

not viable because of weight, danger (even if contaiment is sufficient, psychological fear will stop sales) and not rechargeable..

[varikonniemi]

What you need is LI-PO not LI-ION.

The amount of light you would need stored to achieve any kind of energy density is just ridiculous. What happens in the experiments you link to is that light is not transformed in any kind, it transmits exactly as it is supposed to. The only new thing is that scientists have been able to produce is conditions where the number of absorptions and emitting events is so high that the effective speed of light is slowed down significantly.

It does not store the amount of energy that passes through, it only delays it. Otherwise you could say that empty space stores light.

[PicassoCT]

for a very short time it does..
and filled space does even longer..
and mirrored chambers even longer..
the experiments dont?

And is a indefinte delay not storage?