It is hoped that sails many times larger (we're talking football fields) will eventually propel long-range missions into deep space, with the help of lasers here on Earth firing light into their sails. The NanoSail-D is sticking in near-Earth orbit to perform its tests, which will inform later uses of the tech.

One caveat is that the launch is scheduled for July 29 aboard a SpaceX Falcon 1 rocket, which like to go ka-boom and have yet to deliver a payload into orbit successfully. Our fingers are crossed for the little sailor. [Technology Review]

According to Ikeda, the material is not very efficient at converting light into energy, but he is confident that it will improve in time. He also noted that the material is about 4 times more elastic than human muscle, and it maintained its strength during a test despite contracting and expanding every 7 seconds for 30 hours. He hopes that one day the technology will come of age to the point that we will all be driving around in light-powered plastic automobiles. Maybe—if by "we" he means our grandchildren and great grandchildren. [Pink Tentacle via DVICE]

The set has a contrast ratio of 10000:1 and a 20mm thick display panel. It requires about 30% less power than regular LCD TVs and gets its juice from one of Sharp's triple-junction thin-film solar cell modules. The modules are about the same size as the television's screen.

Sharp plans to market the LCD and the energy system as a pair and says that its product could be a hit with both people living off the grid and environmentally-conscious consumers. The company will be exhibiting this, and other energy-saving technologies, at the G8 summit on Monday. [Physorg]

The only real problem with today's portable electronics is battery life. The gear gets more powerful but sadly battery technology really hasn't kept up, that's why we write about things like solar power. But there are also nifty things called dynamos, devices you pump or crank to juice up your batteries. O2, a large mobile carrier in the UK, will be installing bicycle-powered dynamos around a festival it's sponsoring this coming weekend to charge up music fans' mobiles. Sure, they could have run power cables and created power stations, but where's the fun in that? And as anyone who's been to a large outdoor festival in the last few years knows, you're going to want to power up at least once a day or else you're cut off. And if you've got our luck, it'd be right before Winehouse takes the stage, so you'd have no bawdy SMS session to distract you. [Pocket Picks]

Caught in the crossroads are environmentalists who both love the desert tortoise and solar power. The industry says that the government could do impact studies without halting new proposals for solar projects—we think they're telling the truth, since they're probably less evil than oil companies and actually do want the Mojave ground squirrel to thrive and live happy furry lives. And I mean, two years, really? [NYT via Fark]

The new pod, an evolution from the Orange portable wind charger that debuted at Glastonbury 2007, will act as a trial in using renewable energy sources on a larger scale. If everything goes well, the technology will become a staple at “Chill n' Charge tents” in future festivals. The pod can be found within the Pennard Hill camping grounds at Worthy Farm in Somerset. [Slashphone]

Reported to be the "most official solar collector in existence" by those behind the project. But how does this light-focusing panel actually create electricity?

The plan is to hold a water-filled 12-foot black coil right in front of the dish. The heat from the focused sunlight is enough to quickly vaporize the water into steam, which could be harnessed in a variety of ways (including a steam-powered turbine to create electricity).

While you can't buy the dish yet, the students have formed a company named RawSolar. Hopefully they'll be mass producing their designs soon. [RawSolar and MIT] Thanks Eric!

According to NASA, at its closest approach Solar Probe+ will be about 7 million km from the sun (image below). At that point, the probe's incredibly important carbon-composite heat shield must withstand temperatures greater than 1400 C. Oh, and there's the incessant blasts of radiation at "levels not experienced by any previous spacecraft" to contend with too.
And those mysterious alluded to earlier? NASA spells them out thusly:

• Mystery #1—the corona: If you stuck a thermometer in the surface of the sun, it would read about 6000o C. Intuition says the temperature should drop as you back away; instead, it rises. The sun's outer atmosphere, the corona, registers more than a million degrees Celsius, hundreds of times hotter than the star below. This high temperature remains a mystery more than 60 years after it was first measured.
• Mystery #2—the solar wind: The sun spews a hot, million mph wind of charged particles throughout the solar system. Planets, comets, asteroids—they all feel it. Curiously, there is no organized wind close to the sun's surface, yet out among the planets there blows a veritable gale. Somewhere in between, some unknown agent gives the solar wind its great velocity. The question is, what?

"To solve these mysteries, Solar Probe+ will actually enter the corona," said program scientist Lika Guhathakurta of NASA Headquarters. "That's where the action is." No kidding. Just be sure to bring the SPF 10,000, little guy. [NASA]

When it was built in 1996, the Pacific Wheel was the only solar powered ferris wheel in the world. The old wheel was auctioned off on eBay for over $130,000 to an Oklahoma City real-estate developer. Grant Humphreys, the developer, plans on incorporating the wheel into a mixed use residential community.

It has appeared in several Hollywood films, including A Night at the Roxbury and Thank You for Smoking. There's no doubt that its younger and more attractive replacement will probably get some screen time as well. [Crunch Gear]

It sounds all well and good, except how often does anyone keep their phone out in the open gathering sunlight? Usually if I'm out and about, my cell stays firmly in the depths of my handbag or in my back pocket and, last time I checked, sunlight doesn't reach there. I guess this phone is going to stay a concept. [Yanko Design]

Motorola has already toyed with an idea involving infusing their LCDs with solar panels, and to be honest, most if not all of the major companies out there have at least investigated the possibilities. However, given the limitations of solar power, it seems unlikely that a major manufacturer would go this route in the near future. [Patent Filing Forbes and MacRumors via Inhabitat]

The boat is made from 100 percent carbon fiber and has an LCD touch-screen control system, leather trimmings and, most importantly, photovoltaic cells on almost all its horizontal services. Czeers is hoping to produce between 4 and 8 boats per year. Pricing is not yet available, but considering that the last version of the MK1 was last shown at the Millionaire Fair, you can probably bet it's super expensive. [Gizmag]

The biggest trick was in working out how to cool the chips from all the extra thermal input created by the focused sunlight. To do this, IBM borrowed ideas from its own research into a liquid metal cooling system developed for semiconductors and used a thin liquid metal gallium-indium compound to bind the chip to a cooling block.

This new high power technique could of course result in smaller solar farms, or higher energy output from existing systems. Best of all, it's potentially a fairly low cost solution, which can only be a good thing for the environment. [Physorg]

Plus, the solar charging properties of the compounds means that there would be no need for a traditional power source. When applied to a surface, the OLED screen could run under the power that it generates for an indefinite amount of time. It could even be applied to the back of cellphones to provide a constant charge. Again, this sort of technology seems seriously out there, but the researchers believe that they can have a working prototype up and running within two years. I'll believe it when I see it. [Tech Radar via OLED-info]

From what else I can gather from reading the blurb, Triumph is going into the household energy business. Expect to see a bunch of dome-shaped solar panels on the top of Japanese building soon. [Impress]

The GreenPix Zero Energy Media Wall, designed by Simon Giostra & Partners and Arup, uses thousands of solar capture cells attached to each of its glass panels to charge up during the day and then release dazzling light shows at night. It's the first time perforated photovoltaics laminated in glass have ever been used in a building in China, but if all goes off without a hitch, it most certainly won't be the last.

The wall is a combination of three textured panels in low-, medium-, and high-transparency glass, employed together to create a "continuous carpet" of flowing design that's actually roughly 7 feet deep. The wall will showcase low-resolution LED imagery, to help conserve energy and paint an artsy gauze on whatever does get shown.

The project will be completed in June and will feature performance works by artists from all over the world. [Technabob]

Properly angled and lined up to reflect light from the sun, the mirrors could be used to increase the amount of light reflected by the Earth-Moon system by up to 20%. Any alien eye scanning the heavens—or, more likely, an automated system like SETI set up by aliens—should be able to easily spot the modulations. A set of prime numbers in flashes would be a good choice, since these are easily distinguishable from natural variations. Furthermore, pop photovoltaic cells on the other side of the mirrors, beam the energy to Earth by microwaves and you'd have enough power to seriously impact the climate crisis. Not a bad idea, eh? [New Scientist via KurzweilAI]

It will apparently weigh in at 770 and 990 pounds for the single- and dual-seat versions, and Falx sees it having many applications, including as a police vehicle (visions of the hover cars from Bladerunner zipped through your head then didn't they?)

So why are we skeptical? Well, sure, the V-22 is a military vehicle and it's highly sophisticated—but it's been under development for over 20 years. Longer, if you include all the X-aircraft that preceded it. Two of the prototypes crashed, and two early production models crashed too. So can this small UK company really overcome the same tricky engineering obstacles faced by the V22, including that difficult transition between the hover and forward flight? We're not sure—it seems rather a lot of advanced engineering and control design. We'd love for it to be real, though. [Falx via Gizmag via Uberreview]

Unlike Superman's ship, these strands have to be very long—even a test run will require a total of 10 kilometers of the strand, which is currently stitched by hand using ultrasound. Also, as they require solar wind, they won't be much for interstellar travel. Still, as you can see in the video below, it's wild stuff, promising to provide plentiful free "fuel" for fast travel around the solar system. [New Scientist via KurzweilAI]

Apparently Sutharat uses a complex array of mirrors and glass to focus the sun's rays into one spot a la magnifying glass. As you can see, he wears big goggles and covers himself in white clothing. On a sunny day, the light is so intense that it can cook a 1.6kg chicken in 10 minutes. On an overcast day that number jumps to 20. But on a rainy day, that number drops to never.

He sells the chickens for $5 a pop.

While it's an amazing story, we can't help but consider the amount of time it takes to cook whole chickens on our grill—over the sun's flames. We're guessing that Sutharat's marinade is heavy in acids, allowing him to almost precook the chickens a bit before roasting them like ants, leaves or your buddy's pants when he's not looking.

In the meantime, if anyone would like to try this at home, feel free to send pics of your failed contraptions, but we're having nothing to do with your burns—on the arms or in the intestines. [bangkok post via inventorspot]

Better yet: the SOLo has LED lighting built in for subtle evening lighting effects, you can check on its charge status on its built-in LCD monitor, and it has a large device drawer so you can safely pop your phone, iPod or even laptop inside to keep it safe. For some reason it also has Bluetooth, allowing it "to collect, distribute and exhibit information on both the tabletop LCD display screen and wirelessly between computers and the internet"... and while we're not sure exactly what that means, it sounds pretty impressive.

It's in stainless steel and tempered glass with silicon solar cells and it's around 43 x 30 x 18 inches in size. No info on its price, but it's available through Intelligent Forms own website and considering one of it's suggested uses is aboard a cruise ship, it's going to be expensive. [Intelligent Forms via Born Rich]

Once you place an order, the site will ship one of five off-the-shelf prepackaged solar arrays and dispatch an installation crew to your door. An on-line database tracks local building and permit requirements and sends the necessary forms to you for you to fill out.

This is great news for everyone who has ever wanted to jump on the solar bandwagon, but was afraid to because of the headaches that come from any large home project. The system will also help make everything cheaper, since half of a solar system's costs are from installation hassles.

Unfortunately, the service is limited to California addresses right now, but if business is good, we could probably count on a nationwide roll-out in the near future. [Green Wombat via Wired]

[Project Or via Klemmt via The Design Blog]

The Mercury News says:

In a typical scenario for a 2.8-kilowatt system, Rive said, a customer with a $150-a-month electric bill before installing solar would end up with a $60-a-month electric bill, an $80 or $90 monthly lease payment to Solar City, and thus "positive cash flow" of as much as $10.

Because while $10,000 of traditional solar panels will produce a a kilowatt of energy over 25 square meters, the solar balloon power equivalent costs just $4,000. The engineers' biggest concerns seem to be wind resistance, as they're still finalizing the optimal design.

On the downside, the balloons will require moderate yearly maintenance (we're not sure what that entails). But simultaneously shutting up your child and producing clean energy has to involve a catch somewhere. [inhabitat via dvice]