
German Space Center has constructed the world’s largest artificial Sun - kamaal
http://newatlas.com/dlr-artificial-sun/48579/
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danielvf
I worked on the light fixtures for the US Insurance Institute for Highway
Safety, vehicle research center. [http://www.iihs.org/iihs/about-
us/vrc](http://www.iihs.org/iihs/about-us/vrc)

These lights were 72,000 watts each, with a total of around three-quarters of
a million watts of lights in the crash hall. (Almost as as much power as the
German sun installation.) High speed cameras need a lot of light.

I've stood in front of one of the lights in protective gear - but the heat
still just goes through your body.

The first time the IIHS lights were turned on it blew a power substation 20
miles away.

~~~
vhost-
Slowmo Guys actually have a video detailing some of the challenges of filming
in high speed (most of which have to do with light - or lack thereof):
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_lZvF-
YyP0s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_lZvF-YyP0s)

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Tepix
I saw the large space simulator (LSS +) at the ESTEC test centre (ESA) a few
weeks ago where they can simulate up to eight times the solar intensity (the
solar intensity is 10 times as high at Mercury) in their 15m by 10m vacuum
chamber using xenon lamps. The surface temperature of the BepiColombo
spacecraft due to launch next year will be around 500°C. That was impressive
already.

This one does not work inside a vacuum chamber but manages 10,000 times the
normal solar radiation with the temperature reaching 3,000°C. Wow!

\+
[http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Engineering_Technolo...](http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Engineering_Technology/Test_centre/Large_Space_Simulator_LSS)

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morsch
_Synlight is a giant parabola made up of 149 7-kW xenon short-arc lamps_... so
a total power draw of about 1 MW? That's nuts. Hope they remember to turn it
off when they leave the room.

~~~
jws
More importantly, I hope they remember not to turn it on when they are _in_
the room.

~~~
quakenul
Ha

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evanb
I moved to Jülich in November. There's all sorts of interesting industrial,
technological, and scientific research going on here---it's not just the
Forschungszentrum and the space agency. Cologne and Aachen aren't far. Worth a
look if you're looking for an affordable place in Germany with good access to
cities and lots of smart people to start a company.

~~~
flohrian
Since (from your profile) you have also worked in a lab in the US: How does it
compare to that? Do you like Germany so far?

~~~
evanb
I didn't live in Livermore, I lived in Berkeley, and though I had a long
anticommute I had a better network of people there. I like Germany so far
(arrived in November), but I'm more of a city person. I'm looking to move to
Cologne, but the rent is too low (although locals say it's very high), the
demand is through the roof, and the supply is small. People I've spoken to say
a year to find something to your liking isn't out of the ordinary. So I feel
isolated, but I'm trying to fix it. But a year out of a three-year postdoc is
substantial.

FZJ and LLNL are both astounding places to do science. As a postdoc you don't
notice it, but it's harder to do science at LLNL, since their core mission is
security. Both places have excellent computational resources and friendly,
brilliant people. You definitely notice the machine guns and the culture of
security at LLNL, and it can make it difficult to have foreign visitors. It
seemed to me that at LLNL / if you have DOE funding generally an inordinate
amount of your time is spent justifying and fighting for your funding, whereas
the German funding cycle seems to be a lot longer.

The German system of supporting universities by having laboratory scientists
responsible for at least 1 course a year is very interesting and healthy, I
think. It's also easier to coordinate than it might be in the states where
universities aren't all state run. Some US labs have very close connections to
universities and often have joint positions (LBL and SLAC spring to mind), but
the connections are stronger and obligations greater in Germany, I think.

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VMG
Watched a TV clip about this. I was surprised that apparently the control
system was programmed by one guy (Dmitrij Laaber). I found a Master Thesis
explaining control software for a prototype of this:
[http://elib.dlr.de/108662/1/Deepak%20Chopra-
Master%20Thesis....](http://elib.dlr.de/108662/1/Deepak%20Chopra-
Master%20Thesis.pdf) (is Deepak Chopra a common name?)

~~~
Jdam
Doesn't surprise me. It's an Engineering and not a software company. Somebody
just writes the software, because it needs to be written. When I worked there
a couple of years ago, E-Mailing source code files was a well established
process. (Depending on the department though)

~~~
VMG
IIRC it was even software _and_ the hardware (wiring etc).

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zebrafish
Pretty cheap installation for the amount of knowledge they could potentially
get out of it. I wonder how much it costs to run for an hour.

~~~
lucaspiller
Industrial rates in Germany are around €0.15/kWh

149 x 7kW = 1043kW

1043 * 0.15 = €156.45/hour

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sauronlord
...and they couldn't be bothered to turn it "on" and have at least one photo
in the article.

It's like saying "Bavarian Water Center has constructed the world's largest
artificial waterfall" ... and then not bother to show what it looks like when
the water is flowing and it is all dammed up.

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dhimes
A little OT- does anybody subscribe to this site? Is it worth supporting?

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myst
Came for fusion reactor, left disappointed.

~~~
rwmj
I was hoping to see recent news on the Wendelstein 7-X
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wendelstein_7-X](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wendelstein_7-X)

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pinkskip
Denpock?

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cmarschner
So, they put up lamps.

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balabaster
Ugh, here I was hoping for an article about nuclear fusion... so
disappointing. Instead of making power, we're wasting it.

~~~
nylonstrung
This is research that directly pertains to the fusion in the sun.

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unwind
"It refuses to work at night" ... yeah, that's exactly how the Sun works. Very
annoying stupidification of the content, in my opinion.

Humans calling the Sun "finicky" is a bit like ants calling an aircraft
carrier "slow and cramped", or something.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Curiously, that's the line that caught my attention too. Because, solar is so
popular but the sun is so 'unreliable' \- another case where popular
enthusiasm contradicts simple engineering. The sun is a terrible power source,
simply because it fails at least half the time everywhere.

~~~
maxerickson
Solar construction is dominated by energy and finance companies, with large
projects in places that don't have subsidies. Popular enthusiasm is barely
relevant.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Hm - what's the impact of roof solar in California? My brother's electric
rates went from $0.24 per kwh to $0.46 and we suspect its because the power
company is recouping its losses from buying all that off-peak rooftop
generation at retail rates. So he's installing rooftop solar too, just so he's
on the other side of that equation.

relevance: its popular enthusiasm that got the buyback rate set at retail
instead of wholesale. Thus fueling a statewide boom in pointless rooftop
solar.

~~~
maxerickson
Doesn't make sense to me. For the costs to be that significant, net metered
kilowatt hours would have to be a huge chunk of their generation, and rooftop
solar is smaller than utility solar, which is maybe ~10% of the market, and
rooftop doesn't net meter most generation, it consumes it off the grid.

It could well be the case that solar is changing the cost mix and driving up
prices, but I doubt net metering is driving that.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
But they're related in a strange way: they raise the rates a penny, they have
to pay a penny more _back to solar_ at 'retail rates'. So its a funny feedback
loop.

~~~
maxerickson
The numbers just don't work. California power consumption is something like 40
gigawatts, net metering is a fraction of 4 gigawatts.

So even if the net metering is somehow 100% cost (it isn't, they sell the
power), it still wouldn't do anything like double rates.

