So apparently a controversial Nobel Peace Prize was awarded this week. Forget that one. Focus instead on the far geekier one that was also awarded this week. Why? Because we gadget lovers have a lot to be thankful for! More »
Al Gore won the Nobel Peace Prize today. The former vice prez was honored for his tireless efforts to let everyone know that climate change is real and that we should all be pretty damned scared about it. We certainly are, but we’ve been thinking the sky is falling for the past couple of decades at least. Anyway, to pay tribute to our first elected president who never served a day as president in the Oval Office, we decided to commemorate the occasion with Gizmodo’s highest honor: a 21-gadget salute to Al Gore, a gallery concentrating on those items that might do just a little something to save the environment on this pale blue dot we call home. Ready, aim… [Russia Today] (additional reporting by Jennifer Hooker) galleryPost('21gadgetsalute', 21, '21-Gadget Salute'); More »
Scientists Albert Fert and Peter Grunberg have been announced as winners of the 2007 Nobel Prize in Physics, specifically for their work in “giant magnetoresistance,” the phenomenon in which small changes in magnetism can lead to large levels of electrical resistance. Still bored by giant magnetoresistance? As explained by another professor:
Without it you would not be able to store more than one song on your iPod!
Yeah, GMR is the science behind hard drives. It’s too bad these scientists had to wait for the iPod to become popular for recognition, when we’d already been exploiting their advancements in the areas of computers and computers that store porn for so long now. Congrats you two. [bbc] More »
Nobel prize-winning scientist Alan Heeger and his buddies have figured out a way to print more-efficient plastic solar cells, boosting their efficiency to 6.5%, a world record for these photovoltaic polymers. Heeger and his colleagues perform this trick by using two layers of different types of plastic, and whenever one layer doesn’t turn light into electricity, the other one picks up the slack. Now the scientists are getting cocky, saying they can improve the tech even further.
They vow to “do significantly better than 6.5% in the near future.” Other scientists agree, saying that 10% efficiency is likely very soon. Others say phooey. University of Denver scientist Sean Shaheen calls efficiency estimates “notoriously unreliable,” accusing scientists of tweaking the solar spectrum to make their results look good. Others say that these dual-layer plastic solar cells will be trickier to manufacture than the single-layer plastic cells that are being prototyped today. More »
