They already exist and are in use for other applications:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luneburg_lens

sigh. I don't even know where to begin with responding to that.

Not by assuming I think the film above is valid, for which I have no evidence, but "spherical lenses" are real. As far as I know their use for this purpose is the same as to the "real" bits that go into a cold fusion experiment.

ok, ill clarify it for you.

Using a glass sphere weighing hundreds of pounds, energy to make it, the waste/energy to shape and polish it into a uniform optically clear lens, and the heavy duty frames to hold it up - just to save a couple square feet of very thin silicon...


but yes, you are right, glass does exist and others have made big spheres with it before.

WE ARE ALL DOOMED! RUN YOU FOOLS!

Can't you just enjoy the sphere and imagine what it would be like to drive past a field of these things.

NO, FUCK THAT! IT'S PEOPLE EATING THEIR OWN CHILDREN OR NOTHING!

Unless maybe one of the panels that receive the focused sunbeams falls off and at dawn or dusk a super-concentrated ray of sunlight accidentally sets a kid ablaze. That would be cool.

Fuck this lame hippie glass bead wiccan crystal ball shit, BP dug another deep ass well in Gulf and found more oil, and we all know it only costs $.0000001 per ton of oil to pump up and refine into Internet!

So is it like that scam where someone builds a flywheel engine that can drive a truck a few hundred feet after being spun up by some flashlight batteries, and names it after themselves and canvasses rural areas for investors who can't do the math and see how far the truck would go hauling 4000 flashlight batteries, how it would turn a corner with a giant gyroscope inside of it, and how much worse for the environment it would ultimately be because angular is like holy shit magic compared to boring diesel or even a plain old goddamned electric motor, because they stop thinking the moment they hear "truck runs on flashlight batteries" and have never heard of thermodynamics? Because I am amused by those.

Or is it more like "solar electricity is free, so it will quickly pay for the 25 tons of environmentally friendly lead-acid batteries you'll need to keep your home running at night" problem?

Making clean energy is not the problem, making, storing, and using it without ultimately doing more damage to the environment per Megawatt hour than a nuclear reactor seems to be the problem.

I'm seeing two sides of a retarded coin.

One side is any criticism of any green energy in any small way = sucking big black oil cock

Other side is any weak point to green energy at all, at any time, in any configuration, means all green energy is useless.

There's only one side to the Internet coin, the side that isn't real territory that people fight tooth and claw over, gaining nothing and losing real ground in the real world in lost time and attention. poeTV isn't going to solve the energy crisis, or the NSA crisis, or the nerd rage crisis.

Come now, Meme. There's also the much overlooked edge of the coin. That's where all the real action is happening. Always has, and always will. It's all a lot closer than you think.

I'm tough on green energy because I want it, so I think there's no room for it to be secretly hypocritical. It's not "this sucks because mmm slurp oil", it's "this sucks because it would be worse than oil right now, and we need something better, not something that just kinda feels better."

Promoting something that's worse for the environment in the long run because it looks better for the environment right now is an evil thing, and it is exactly what Big Oil wants to see (and actively helps promote) because it makes green energy look like hippie dreams instead of practical hard science.

Besides, when you're a cynic, buzzkills are the closest you get to fun.

I'm waiting for the Solar Icosahedron! Each morning I would roll for Power Initiative.

It's absurd but it's also absurdly beautiful.

It's also in the patent literature, I find as far back as '59.

He's not a unique and beautiful snowflake. Smells more like stale gitanes and greed. God loves these folks, he made so many of them.

Mr. Angry McBitterscience over here ladies and gentleman!!!

You hit the trifecta, B! But you might be too, chained as I am to this rock. With the stars so close now to my outstretched hands.

BTW, how was Fred Meyers today? Busy?

I went to QFC today.
It was pretty nice. I saw a homeless woman with her son in the parking lot and gave her . I bought some broccoli.

Render unto Caesar, that which is Caesar's.

That is some bad science right there, we all know you roll initiative on a dodecahedron (unless you mean some kind of Christian science dice system, in which case wake up sheeple).

Ha! It just struck me, how appropriate the name of the device. It's a Raw Lemon.

Saudi Arabia is building a corridor of those mirrors I believe.
I honestly didn't submit this to suggest it's the best new possible energy technology, but take the opportunity to get your alt energy rocks off any way you can.