EuroWire May 2017

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more reliable and controllable Sun for laboratory work, built one of their own. Their three-storey “Synlight” in Jülich, North Rhine-Westphalia, will support such research projects as the development of processes for producing hydrogen fuel from sunlight. (“World’s Largest Arti cial Sun Rises in Germany,” 23 rd March) Essentially a sunlamp powered by electricity, the huge device works like a backwards parabolic re ector. As explained by Mr Szondy, where a more conventional spotlamp uses a single powerful light source focused by re ection from a parabolic mirror, Synlight is itself a giant parabola made up of 149 xenon short-arc lamps. These can be adjusted to focus on a single spot measuring 8 inches square and exposed to solar radiant power of disparate strengths. At maximum setting, the device reportedly can deliver 320 kilowatts (kW), or 10,000 times the normal solar radiation experienced on Earth’s surface, and temperatures up to 3,000ºC (5,400ºF). According to DLR, these extremely high temperatures are necessary to carry out research on processes that use the Sun to produce solar fuels. As noted in New Atlas , although hydrogen is seen by some as the “green” fuel of the future because it leaves behind only water when it burns, producing it requires large amounts of energy – usually from the burning of fossil fuels. Synlight may provide the solution. In addition to solar-generated hydrogen, DLR envisions it proving useful in the study of how materials age under extreme UV rays.

and these assistance systems are key to achieving our goal. We do believe that accident-free driving is a realistic vision. And that is why we’re very supportive of perfecting these assistance systems, which ultimately will lead to Stage 5 autonomous driving as well. I would say that, by the beginning of the next decade, it [will become] more and more di cult to have an accident with a Mercedes. † As de ned in Wired (26 th August, 2016), a Stage 5 car can handle all driving tasks and go anywhere: “No human, no steering wheel, no pedals. Climb in, tell it where you want to go (if it doesn’t already know from reading your calendar), and get back to looking at your phone.”

Energy

One of the greatest potential sources of renewable energy, the Sun, inspires an electrically powered German rival

“Our parent star is a very nicky worker. It refuses to work at night, dislikes cloudy days, doesn’t do as well at higher latitudes, and in some parts of the world it disappears entirely for months at a time.” Writing from Monroe, Washington, in New Atlas , David Szondy reviewed the public debut of the brainchild of scientists and engineers at the German Space Center (DLR) who, needing a

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May 2017