I whish science could stop having to make bullshit claims to get funding. This kind of research is cool because it explain the world we live in, it's doesn't have to be a pathway to technological devices to be legitimate.
The idea to use this to explain some of the electricity generated in thunderstorms looks less impossible, but the new discovery is for temperatures below -113ºC (160K) (-171ºF), so probably too cold for Earth but may be there are some weird thunderstorms in Pluto.
I'm not sure if the IceCube team https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IceCube_Neutrino_Observatory may find it interesting.
Anyway, I don't expect it to be a useful method to harvest energy.
That's exactly my point.
Science doesn't need to be applicable to be worth doing.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45092444
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45273032
I swear this news popped up a few months ago as well.
https://repository.upenn.edu/server/api/core/bitstreams/3bc2...
> Flexoelectricity, ever since its discovery, has been regarded as an alternative of piezoelectricity at small scales. In fact, as early as the 1960s, Koehler et al. (1962), Turch´anyi, G. et al. (1973), Whitworth (1975) found that edge dislocations in centrosymmetric materials, such as sodium chloride, carry charge. Later, Perenko & Whitworth (1983) extended the observation to another kind of centrosymmetric material, ice. Piezoelectricity vanishes in these materials, therefore cannot be the source. Instead, a “pseudo-piezoelectric” effect was postulated by Evtushenko et al. (1987) for an explanation, which was later shown to be a result of flexoelectricity Mao & Purohit (2015).
Emphasis added.
So I think this was known but not fully understood by the time Perenko & Whitworth published Electric currents associated with dislocation motion in ice in 1983?
https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cluster=69134483967663101...
> In this paper we describe [an] experiment in which a small current is observed due to the movement of dislocations during plastic deformation [of ice].
The same authors of the paper TFA discusses published a preprint in 2022, which could also be what you're thinking of: https://arxiv.org/abs/2212.00323
mkagenius•4mo ago
analog8374•4mo ago
kwk1•4mo ago
maxbond•4mo ago
I'm gunnuh try crushing an aspirin (acetylsalicylic acid) and see what happens. (ETA: My headache pills that have aspirin, acetaminophen, and caffeine, along with whatever binders, did not produce any light that my camera detected. That's the only aspirin I have and I'm only willing to sacrifice one of them. Oh well!)
ETA2: Wasn't able to get it to work by peeling a banana, crushing the inside, or crushing the peel, but I don't doubt it happened. Bananas probably vary a great deal. Thanks for the fun diversion, I haven't done an experiment like this in years.
kwk1•4mo ago
Yep, and I probably should have mentioned, this was one of those giant, GMO-esque bananas, and it had a very thick, perhaps 1 cm skin, the interior of which was kinda fuzzy, such that peeling it was reminiscent of pulling apart velcro.
reaperducer•4mo ago
That's how you get girls to agree to turn off the lights when playing post office.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post_office_(game)
dekhn•4mo ago
maxbond•4mo ago
Quartz: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Tribo.ogv
I've been able to see this by going into my driveway at night, by picking up some quartz gravel, jumping up and throwing the gravel down as hard as I can directly towards the ground (where it impacts other gravel).
caphector•4mo ago