There's a battery-free Game Boy that runs solely on the power of sunlight and the speed of your button-mashing Engineers have overhauled the classic handheld 8-bit Game Boy to include solar panels on the front and an internal electromagnetic coil to generate electrical energy from button presses. Not so much batteries not included as batteries not needed. Unfortunately, the console is not for sale and it’s not officially affiliated …
Hopefully, we're not too many years away from the glass batteries being developed by Hydro Quebec and John Goodenough.
Then, devices similar to this might have legs: Solar and electromagnetic power for the mainstay of operations and a rechargable, safe, biodegradable glass battery to give constant power in those instances where the draw is too great.
"That's exactly what they have done."
Well not really, and not in any practical sense.
In fact I'm missing the point of what makes this newsworthy. Batteries replaced (largely) with solar power? Rocket science this isn't. I did that for my outside thermometer - it's in a hotspot so destroys batteries at a prodigious rate, and it only needs to be readable during the day for obvious reasons. Took me 5 minutes.
Didn't write a research paper on it though.
There is no such thing as zero point energy. The so-called "zero point energy" is inferred from the difference between a classical calculation of ground-state energy and a quantum calculation of ground-state energy. However, since our universe is *only* quantum and is *not* classical, the difference between them has no physical meaning whatsoever.
Sometimes it can look as if there are quantum fluctuations [1], and these can - in linear systems - be treated as if due to statistical fluctuations with a "zero point" origin. But this does not mean there is actually any zero point energy, even if the approximation makes some calculations (e.g. of the Casimir effect) rather easier.
Unfortunately this means that Stargate-SG1, and the various spin offs, contain a number of episodes that are clearly nonsense, but we will just have to live with this and pretend not to notice :-)
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[1] See e.g. my post here https://forums.theregister.com/forum/all/2020/08/27/radiation_quantum_computing/#c_4098271
I see words. Lots of words. However, I don't seem to be able to make head or tails of their meaning in this particular arrangement.
Which speaks volumes about my knowledge and understanding of Quantum Physics. (Bistable cats in sealed boxes and spherical sheep in vacuums* are about as far as I go)
Have a beer on me Mr. Kinsler.
* Of course, I'm not implying that these are very small sheep, or particularly large vacuums. Or any particular model of vacuum either, but clearly your average domestic Dyson isn't going to be cutting it here...
"Unfortunately this means that Stargate-SG1, and the various spin offs, contain a number of episodes that are clearly nonsense, but we will just have to live with this and pretend not to notice :-)"
To be fair, there's a lot of SF which was based on stuff we now know to be incorrect or "cutting edge" for the time and since debunked. Just look through some old physics text books :-) Not to mention these are usually not actual scientists writing the books and even scientists get it wrong frequently when extrapolating what we think we know into the future.
Now, where's my personal jetpack, flying car, hoverboard and nuclear generated electrickery too cheap to be worth metering -)
> There is no such thing as zero point energy.
We know. We also know that even so-called 'hard' science fiction is allowed one mumbo-jumbo concept every so often for artistic licence. Such mumbo jumbo concepts can serve as place holders for things that are not only stranger than we do imagine, but stranger than we can imagine.
By 'hard' sci Fi, I mean a lot of Clarke, but not Stargate :)
There was a Gameboy Advance game which used a photometric sensor in that cartridge, to encourage the player to spend time outside. By playing outside, the player could 'charge' up their 'solar powered' weapons in their role as a vampire hunter.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boktai:_The_Sun_Is_in_Your_Hand
This concept made me think of other ways of powering a Gameboy using the player's muscles. I remembered those naff dynamo flashlights which resembled naff grip-strength exercisers... and in turn Powerballs - gyroscopic balls that are used to treat RSI and build forearm strength in musicians and rock climbers.
Of course some clever bugger has already fitted a dynamo to one:
https://hackaday.com/2010/11/22/ridiculous-exerciser-become-useful-as-a-charger/
Note: Powerballs are not ridiculous. Since the gyroscopic effect keeps your wrist straight it keeps your tendons happy. Recommended to those with RSI. Consult your doctor etc
I'm just thinking of the stationary bicycles with dynamos connected to a 60W bulb that used to be at festivals... as a young teen I struggled to get the bulb very bright.
With the usual caveats about dynamo efficiency etc, my intuition is that a cyclist would struggle to power an older Xbox (they ran hot), but might have a chance with a handheld console (with battery just used to even out the dynamo's output)
Look at the angle he's having to hold it to get max sunlight, and how much button mashing he's doing, and it STILL turns off. They've built a battery free device that doesn't actually work battery free, and instead of MAKING it work just threw in a game save workaround for when it stops working every few seconds. Nice idea, failed execution.
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