A Possible New Air Conditioning Technology

[Recusant]

Some scientists at Stanford have apparently found a way to dissipate heat from the surface of the Earth into outer space. It may never be commercially viable, but it's intriguing, nonetheless.

"Future air conditioning could work by beaming heat into space" | New Scientist

With temperatures as cold as -270 °C, space is one hell of a heat sink.

Physicists have achieved record levels of temperature reduction using the process of radiative cooling, by which heat is beamed from Earth's surface into outer space. Zhen Chen and his colleagues at Stanford University lowered the temperature of a thermal emitter – a device designed to give out more heat than it takes in – to 42.2 °C below that of the surrounding air

"To achieve high-performance cooling, the key is to couple whatever object you want to cool with outer space and to decouple it from the ambient environment," says Chen. The researchers placed the emitter in a vacuum chamber, isolating it from the atmosphere and cutting off almost any heat transfer through conduction or convection, which could cause the emitter to warm up. Heat from the emitter was radiated out of a specially designed window on top of the vacuum chamber, which was directed at a clear patch of sky.

Earth's atmosphere allows thermal radiation of wavelengths between 8 and 13 micrometres to pass through it into outer space – but most objects release heat at different wavelengths. The Stanford emitter, however, was specifically designed so that most of the heat it emits falls within that range, meaning that on a clear day it will pass straight out into space without being bounced back by the atmosphere

Within half an hour of pumping air out of the vacuum chamber, the temperature of the emitter plummeted to 40 °C below that of the surrounding air. Over the next 24 hours, it averaged 37 °C below the air temperature, and reached its biggest reduction of 42.2 °C when exposed to the peak of the sun's heat.

[Continues . . .]

[No one]

That's pretty cool.

[Dave]

That's pretty cool.

Ho, ho, ho

[Pasta Chick]

My Huskies would like to know how soon we can have this in the house.

[joeactor]

So...

With enough of these, we could reverse global warming?

[Tank]

Really smart.

[Arturo]

So...

With enough of these, we could reverse global warming?

I thought the same thing lol