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A burning glass or burning lens is a large convex lens that can concentrate the Sun's rays onto a small area, heating up the area and thus resulting in ignition of the exposed surface. Burning mirrors achieve a similar effect by using reflecting surfaces to focus the light. They were used in 18th-century chemical studies for burning materials in closed glass vessels where the products of combustion could be trapped for analysis. The burning glass was a useful contrivance in the days before electrical ignition was easily achieved.
Solar energy is the radiant energy from the Sun's light and heat, which can be harnessed using a range of technologies such as solar electricity, solar thermal energy and solar architecture. It is an essential source of renewable energy, and its technologies are broadly characterized as either passive solar or active solar depending on how they capture and distribute solar energy or convert it into solar power. Active solar techniques include the use of photovoltaic systems, concentrated solar power, and solar water heating to harness the energy. Passive solar techniques include designing a building for better daylighting, selecting materials with favorable thermal mass or light-dispersing properties, and organizing spaces that naturally circulate air.
A solar furnace is a structure that uses concentrated solar power to produce high temperatures, usually for industry. Parabolic mirrors or heliostats concentrate light (Insolation) onto a focal point. The temperature at the focal point may reach 3,500 °C (6,330 °F), and this heat can be used to generate electricity, melt steel, make hydrogen fuel or nanomaterials.
A parabolicreflector is a reflective surface used to collect or project energy such as light, sound, or radio waves. Its shape is part of a circular paraboloid, that is, the surface generated by a parabola revolving around its axis. The parabolic reflector transforms an incoming plane wave travelling along the axis into a spherical wave converging toward the focus. Conversely, a spherical wave generated by a point source placed in the focus is reflected into a plane wave propagating as a collimated beam along the axis.
Solar thermal energy (STE) is a form of energy and a technology for harnessing solar energy to generate thermal energy for use in industry, and in the residential and commercial sectors. Solar thermal collectors are classified by the United States Energy Information Administration as low-, medium-, or high-temperature collectors. Low-temperature collectors are generally unglazed and used to heat swimming pools or to heat ventilation air. Medium-temperature collectors are also usually flat plates but are used for heating water or air for residential and commercial use.
A solar thermal collector collects heat by absorbing sunlight. The term "solar collector" commonly refers to a device for solar hot water heating, but may refer to large power generating installations such as solar parabolic troughs and solar towers or non-water heating devices such as solar cookers or solar air heaters.
A parabolic trough collector (PTC) is a type of solar thermal collector that is straight in one dimension and curved as a parabola in the other two, lined with a polished metal mirror. The sunlight which enters the mirror parallel to its plane of symmetry is focused along the focal line, where objects are positioned that are intended to be heated. In a solar cooker, for example, food is placed at the focal line of a trough, which is cooked when the trough is aimed so the Sun is in its plane of symmetry.
A space sunshade or sunshield is something that diverts or otherwise reduces some of the Sun's radiation, preventing it from hitting the Earth and thereby reducing its insolation, which results in reduced heating. Light can be diverted by different methods. The concept of the construction of sunshade as a method of climate engineering dates back to the years 1923, 1929, 1957 and 1978 by the physicist Hermann Oberth. Space mirrors in orbit around the Earth with a diameter of 100 to 300 km, as designed by Hermann Oberth, were intended to focus sunlight on individual regions of the Earth’s surface or deflect it into space so that the solar radiation is weakened in a specifically controlled manner for individual regions on the Earth’s surface.
A heliostat is a device that includes a mirror, usually a plane mirror, which turns so as to keep reflecting sunlight toward a predetermined target, compensating for the Sun's apparent motions in the sky.
A solar mirror contains a substrate with a reflective layer for reflecting the solar energy, and in most cases an interference layer. This may be a planar mirror or parabolic arrays of solar mirrors used to achieve a substantially concentrated reflection factor for solar energy systems.
A solar cooker is a device which uses the energy of direct sunlight to heat, cook or pasteurize drink and other food materials. Many solar cookers currently in use are relatively inexpensive, low-tech devices, although some are as powerful or as expensive as traditional stoves, and advanced, large scale solar cookers can cook for hundreds of people. Because these cookers use no fuel and cost nothing to operate, many nonprofit organizations are promoting their use worldwide in order to help reduce fuel costs and air pollution, and to help slow down deforestation and desertification.
Space weapons are weapons used in space warfare. They include weapons that can attack space systems in orbit, attack targets on the earth from space or disable missiles travelling through space. In the course of the militarisation of space, such weapons were developed mainly by the contesting superpowers during the Cold War, and some remain under development today. Space weapons are also a central theme in military science fiction and sci-fi video games.
A solar tracker is a device that orients a payload toward the Sun. Payloads are usually solar panels, parabolic troughs, Fresnel reflectors, lenses, or the mirrors of a heliostat.
Space-based solar power is the concept of collecting solar power in outer space with solar power satellites (SPS) and distributing it to Earth. Its advantages include a higher collection of energy due to the lack of reflection and absorption by the atmosphere, the possibility of very little night, and a better ability to orient to face the Sun. Space-based solar power systems convert sunlight to some other form of energy which can be transmitted through the atmosphere to receivers on the Earth's surface.
Pekka Janhunen is a Finnish space physicist, astrobiologist, and inventor. He is a research manager at the Finnish Meteorological Institute's Space and Earth Observation Centre and a visiting professor at the University of Tartu, Estonia. He is also senior technical advisor at Aurora Propulsion Technologies, a startup company operating in the space sector. Janhunen studied theoretical physics at the University of Helsinki and earned his Ph.D. in space plasma physics simulations in 1994. He has also published a theory on the origin of multicellular life. Janhunen is best known for his electric solar wind sail invention.
Concentrated solar power systems generate solar power by using mirrors or lenses to concentrate a large area of sunlight into a receiver. Electricity is generated when the concentrated light is converted to heat, which drives a heat engine connected to an electrical power generator or powers a thermochemical reaction.
A compact linear Fresnel reflector (CLFR) – also referred to as a concentrating linear Fresnel reflector – is a specific type of linear Fresnel reflector (LFR) technology. They are named for their similarity to a Fresnel lens, in which many small, thin lens fragments are combined to simulate a much thicker simple lens. These mirrors are capable of concentrating the sun's energy to approximately 30 times its normal intensity.
Solar mirrors in space can be used to change the amount of sunlight that reaches the Earth. The concept was first theorised in 1923 by physicist Hermann Oberth and later developed in the 1980s by other scientists. Space mirrors can be used to increase or decrease the amount of solar energy that reaches a specific point of the earth for various purposes.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to solar energy:
Archimedes is purported to have invented a large scale solar furnace, sometimes described as a heat ray, and used it to burn attacking Roman ships during the Siege of Syracuse. It does not appear in the surviving works of Archimedes and there is no contemporary evidence for it, leading to modern scholars doubting its existence. It was an established story about Archimedes by around 500 AD, when Anthemius described a reconstruction, and it has become the subject of speculation about its plausibility.
References
- 1 2 3 "Science: Sun Gun". Time Magazine . July 9, 1945.
- ↑ Burke, Myles (February 3, 2025). "'It could illuminate an area the size of a football stadium': How Russia launched a giant space mirror in 1993". www.bbc.com.
- ↑ "The German Space Mirror". Life Magazine : 78. July 23, 1945.
- ↑ "Japanese Had 'Death Ray' In Stage of Development". The New York Times. 1945-10-07. ISSN 0362-4331 . Retrieved 2025-02-05.
- ↑ Fanning, William J. (2010). "The Historical Death Ray and Science Fiction in the 1920s and 1930s". Science Fiction Studies. 37 (2): 253–274. ISSN 0091-7729.
- ↑ Grunden, Walter E. (2005). Secret weapons and World War II: Japan in the shadow of big science. Modern war studies. Lawrence, Kan: University Press of Kansas. pp. 110–116. ISBN 978-0-7006-1383-0.
- ↑ Shiga, David. "Space mirrors could create Earth-like haven on Mars". New Scientist. Archived from the original on April 23, 2023. Retrieved April 23, 2023.