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Guest Thinkers

Solar Wind Power

"Forget wind power or conventional solar power, the world's energy needs could be met 100 billion times over using a satellite to harness the solar wind and beam the energy to Earth."

“The concept for the so-called Dyson-Harrop satellite begins with a long metal wire loop pointed at the sun. This wire is charged to generate a cylindrical magnetic field that snags the electrons that make up half the solar wind. These electrons get funnelled into a metal spherical receiver to produce a current, which generates the wire’s magnetic field—making the system self-sustaining. Any current not needed for the magnetic field powers an infrared laser trained on satellite dishes back on Earth, designed to collect the energy. Air is transparent to infrared so Earth’s atmosphere won’t suck up energy from the beam before it reaches the ground.”


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