British boffins build diamond battery capable of working for a millennium or five The UK Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) and the University of Bristol have built a diamond battery capable of delivering power, albeit a tiny amount, for thousands of years. The university had an idea for a battery powered by carbon-14, the longest-lived radioactive isotope of carbon with a half-life of around 5,700 years. For …
But I think that the distinguished commentard noted that there seems to be no standard El Reg unit of measure for power output, as "Watt" is for strivers... Humble us, who come here regularly, expect something along the lines of "how much ant-power it delivers?" or "how many such diamonds are required to run Crysis in Full-HD, 4xAA, 120 FPS?".
Incidentally, there is an archive copy of a deleted Wikipedia page which claims that an Antpower is approximately equal to 15 microwatts
Apparently it is also possible to harvest several antpower out of the modern RF-noisy environment, using little more than an antenna and a Germanium diode..
The question is I suppose, would a robo-ant prefer to carry a leaf-sized dipole antenna or a diamond-encased radioactive source? Probably, the former. Unless it was hunting down a queen ant from the past which was to give birth to its future nemesis, in which case it might need a self-contained, hardened power source.
Apparently it is also possible to harvest several antpower out of the modern RF-noisy environment, using little more than an antenna and a Germanium diode..
The crystal set lives! ;) Had one when I was a kid and AM was still king - even had a chunk of galena which worked but not as well as a Ge diode.
Having only one local station I listened to a lot of Garner Ted Armstrong's slightly ridiculous prognostications in his The World Tomorrow only offset by a fair bit of classic Brit radio comedy.
For powering a satellite I would have thought there would be far more radiation up there (cosmic rays, etc) than in the ant testicle's worth of C14 embedded in the synthetic diamond.
If this diamond battery had a few more antpower,* wrist watches might be an application (Citizen Eco-drive & Seiko Solar watches are fairly popular.)
* or gnats-sweat.
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You want some energy units for small amounts of energy. One that you might want to use is the energy stored in a molecule of ATP -- used by biological systems. This is between 20.5 and 45.6 kilojoules per mole. Dividing by 6.02x 1023 means one molecule produces between 3.4×10-20 and 7.6×10-20 joules. Pick the average: 5.5×10-20 joules.
But that is too boring for the discerning El-Reg reader. An bacterium flagellum uses some 6.6 × 104 ATPs per second or 36×10-17 joules per second.
I think the basic problem here is that the Reg Standards Bureau does not cover Power or Energy well..
The closest I can find in terms of derived units would be 0.2715 Norris-Linguine per Truss?
Norris-sheep sounds like a generic term for a commons' backbencher who are definitely not known for their energy* (or intelligence.)
1 Norris-sheep = 12 rees-moggs/parliamentary-term? :)
Poking the Reg unit calculator it appears the max velocity of a sheep in vacuo appears to be .01×c. Can't you give the bleaters enough welly to get their mutton up to lightspeed or does the wool snag on the vacuum fluctuations? Found the explanation... something to do with wool drag, Welshman and interstellar space being slightly denser than the space between a Hollywood starlet 's ears.
* like a static magnetic field... exerts a force on a moving charge but doesn't do any (useful) work.
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"Shirley a battery is made of one or more cells?"
No, because a cell is...err...a cell. A group of two or more becomes a battery. Similar with an artillery battery. One is a gun, many are a battery. It's a collective noun :-)
Although, to be fair, so many people just call everything a battery these days, whether it be a 1.5v "D" cell or a collect of small cells in a single package making up a 9v PP3 battery.
Agree with the premise of assisting in some implants but with cochlear implants and similar hearing implants they’re powered wholly from the external processor and the power demand is such that the batteries only last a few days at best. (I’ve got a cochlear branded hearing implant where the internals are powered by magnetic induction from the external processor)
I wouldn't write it off entirely.
The microphone and processing is certainly doable at that kind of scale, but not sure about the stimulator. With 'normal' hearing aids, a 312 zinc-air cell is 160mAh and lasts 7-10 days, so 1400uW - most of which is for the speaker/transducer. A cochlear stimulator must require less than that.
Back in late 1990s it seems that the cochlear stimulator part itself consumed around 1mW (1997 paper), which was over an order of magnitude improvement on previous designs.
The induction itself is very inefficient. It's used because it ensures there's no break in the skin, but if that was avoided by having a 100 year battery pack instead?
It'd only need about three orders of magnitude improvement in stimulator power consumption since 1997. That seems surprisingly plausible.
along with other elements the atmospheric tests are a calibration point now they are sufficiently old. BTW, a nuclear decay power source is not a reactor. See nuclear powered space probes use of decaying uranium. However a great idea. Sometimes when I think the Poms are technologically spent something like this pops up.
And WW1 ones. Scotland had a thriving industry cutting up the German High Seas Fleet where it had scuttled itself in Scapa Flow after WW1 ended. It was a great source of material because:
1. The ships were scuttled rather than being sunk so they weren't a war grave, and thus could be disturbed (not that that's stopped less scrupulous people from other nations, especially in the Far East)
b. They were in relatively shallow and protected water in a harbour so could be dived on more easily than other sites
I'm having a hard time thinking up a case where a low power supply useful for 1,000 years has any application. The Voyager probes have been going at it for decades, but they are having more and more issues as time goes by and it might not be long before they can't even respond to a ping. They use a Radio-Isotopic Thermal power source (RTG) that converts decay heat from a Plutonium isotope into electricity very inefficiently, but for a long time. Perseverance and Curiosity rovers on Mars use a similar type of power supply which means they don't have to worry about dust on solar cells and seasonal insolation. Even if Spirit and Opportunity were RTG powered, their mechanics were limping along and both finally gave up well past their best-by dates. Drills were dull, the sources for the Raman spectrometers were fading, etc. Even if they could still drive, the science they could do would have been very limited so it would be pointless to have fitted them with a power source that could last centuries even if it were possible.
This sort of thing is interesting, but hardly ground-breaking or of immediate use. The claims of longevity are very difficult to demonstrate since there can be so many additional variables that can't be measured in the short term and only accumulate enough in a few decades to be measurable. Constant bombardment of the materials by Beta particles might make the cells completely useless in 100 years as the structure on an atomic scale is changed.
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