A Super-Efficient Light Bulb 468
Chroniton writes with news of a Silicon Valley company, Luxim, that has developed a tiny, full-spectrum light bulb, based on a plasma of argon gas, that gives off as much light as a streetlight while using less power. The Tic Tac-sized bulb operates at temperatures up to 6000K and produces 140 lumens/watt, almost ten times as efficient as standard incandescent lamps, and twice the efficiency of high-end LEDs. The new bulbs also have a lifetime of 20,000 hours. There's no mention of mercury or other heavy metals, which pose a problem for compact fluorescents.
That's all well and good... (Score:5, Funny)
Beware - Parent post links to a virus (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Don't click that link
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Short answer.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Time to add nimp.org to your hosts file [wikipedia.org]. The link is an auto redirect from rds.yahoo.com to members.on.nimp.org. This is how Yahoo redirects search results to find out who clicked what. Yawho? search results are thus no longer safe to click. For best results, add rds.yahoo.com to your hosts file or equivalent blocker as well.
members.on.nimp.org resolves to poulet0.zoy.org. The IP address is [80.65.228.130]. Best to block that as well. The DNS administrator for this server is Slashdot User "Sam H [slashdot.org]", UID 3979.
Somebody at slashdot should have a look at our anonymous coward's IP address. It would be nice if we could quit this nonsense. I hope this isn't some troll that bought a low UID in the auction.
And maybe some slashdotter in Paris [domaintools.com] could call Sam [zoy.org] and ask him to fix his compromised [netcraft.com] server [netcraft.com]. It does look like someone truly nasty took it over in August of 2005. Big Debian fan this one. Likes the GNAA routine and the whole bit.
I'm not certain about pinning this on Sam. sam.zoy.org resolves to a different IP. One of you intertubes wizards want to weigh in here?
Re:Short answer.... (Score:4, Informative)
Apparently Sam is a debian developer of some major projects [zoy.org].
If you're interested, the links on the left at that page give some interesting depth of background. He has a long and interesting history.
Be careful with this stuff. The above link goes to his server and they can be changed at any time. They appear to be harmless at the time I'm writing this though. Some of the content is NSFW.
He's apparently a big deal [zoy.org] in IT.
It's possible his server's been owned, but if somebody did that, they did a remarkably convincing job of integrating the bad into the good.
I'm torn here. Responsible geek reaches his dotage at the ripe old age of 30? Trolls have decided to reach over into illegal activity? Some combination of the above? I regret I lack the time and tools to look into it further.
We'll just have to be more careful.
That's not what I wrote (Score:3, Interesting)
I missed your thread.
Certain aspects of this troll may be illegal in some jurisdictions. I don't know for sure - I'm not in law enforcement. It may not actually be a virus, but only a file that contains a signature. I'm not going to fire up a VM and infect it just to find out. Using Yahoo for URL obfuscation is interesting, though.
I also did not say that he is the actor here -- only that he's the DNS administrator for the server involved, and that novices shouldn't toy with such levels of uncertainty
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
Re:Light pollution (Score:5, Informative)
Light pollution isn't so much about astronomy but being able to see when it is dark out, because some idiot is lighting up his yard like fen way park. At night less is more. I can use 5 watt 12 volt bulbs and light up your house better than spotlights. more of the house will be lit with less random dark spaces, and more importantly less shadows in which people can hid.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I live on the 30th floor of an apartment building. One full block away, someone is using a 150 or 300 watt incandescent to light up their backyard. Unshielded of course. 50% of it's light is spilled directly into the sky. It's the brightest visible thing in the entire city, RUINS the entire view of the nighttime cityscape because it's so out of place, and at night casts such brightness on my ceiling that if I don't want to be kept awake by the light, I have to pull my curtains (which pisses me o
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
So what you're saying is that the problem will propably solve itself sooner or later ?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Light pollution (Score:5, Insightful)
What makes you think these aren't just going to be used to... replace streetlights? Halving the power usage of streetlights nationwide would reduce atmospheric pollution measurably. If the choice is between light pollution and atmospheric polution...
Halving power usage of streetlights, easy. (Score:3, Insightful)
OK maybe not quite half, perhaps cut by a third. Why do we need near daylight conditions for drivers at 2 in the morning, when they have perfectly good headlights?
Re:Halving power usage of streetlights, easy. (Score:5, Insightful)
Where I live the lights arent to prevent accidents (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
because we have these rare pieces of real estate called sidewalks, and people who actually use them for walking.
Which is often counter-productive because they kill situational awareness. Sure the people walking on the sidewalk can see the ground right in front of them just fine, but what they can't see is 3 feet off to the left or the right where a mugger is standing just beyond the edge of the light waiting for them.
I'd rather they spent the money on better quality sidewalks and let our eyes do what they were made to do - adjust to the light.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Halving power usage of streetlights, easy. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Halving power usage of streetlights, easy. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Astronomers prefer low pressure sodium too since they can be easily filtered. Full spectrum lights will be the bane of astronomy.
Re:Light pollution (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Light pollution (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The only "Dark Side of the Moon" I know of is from Pink Floyd. How do you plan to fit a huge observatory on a cd?
Re:Light pollution (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Light pollution (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
2. polar regions are always day/night so that's a constant
3. Hubble seems to do ok without an atmosphere
4. even ground based telescopes like my puny 6 incher need some time to equilibrate thermaly
Re:Light pollution (Score:5, Informative)
The real benefit is for radio astronomy. The far side always faces away from earth, which is a giant radio noise source, and the bulk of the moon itself blocks all the signal. It's really the only place where you won't get such interference (a few space probes notwithstanding).
Re:Light pollution (Score:5, Informative)
140 lumens per watt by 2012 would be nice, but I'll believe it when I see it.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Switch streetlights to a 33% duty cycle with pseudo-random (or really random) timing and instantly reduce power use for street lighting by 66% AND allow people to actually see those mysterious lights in the sky the old Greek dudes were talking about. As a side benefit, studies have shown that crime actually goes DOWN when lights come on at random rather than staying on all the time.
Re:Light pollution (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
"During the vast majority of our evolution we didn't have artificial light, but we did just fine" During the vast majority of our evolution, we didn't drive cars. The culture was also completely different so we may or may not have had any reason to walk outside at night. We may have had better night vision "back then" because no one grew up with artificial lights.
The next time you're going to make a "We didn't have XYZ, but we did fine!" argument, think about
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
We clearly did not do fine before artificial lighting. Think for a second about what color is associated with evil. In virtually every culture on the planet, it was black. Do you know why? Because when you would wander around in the black of night, your chances of dieing went up dramatically. Since lots more people died in the black of night, the night must have been inhabited by evil beings, and thus black is the color
Re:Crime goes DOWN... (Score:5, Informative)
I'm reminded of a time in my youth, when I was traveling by car with a group of friends. One road out of town has intense streetlights, spaced some distance apart. The darkness between them is amazing. As I blew down the road, definitely "under the speed limit" should any adult have asked, I came across a large, black dog, midway between two streetlights. I swerved across the road, onto the shoulder, and narrowly missed a mailbox and a tree. My friends behind me in another car had no idea what I was doing, until they also almost hit the dog.
No matter how bright they make those streetlights, until there is *uniform* brightness, there will be danger. I wish I knew how to clearly point this out to people.
Where does it talk about cancer? Nowhere... (Score:3, Insightful)
I can't believe people are modding you insightful. First, where does it say that anyone is stopping work on curing cancer? I must have missed that in the article.
Second, this thing saves power, which is typically a good thing (TM). Why, with the power we save, we might even have more resources to look for a cure for cancer!
Commercial use (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3)
Re:Commercial use (Score:5, Informative)
This isn't dangerous at all.
Re:Commercial use (Score:4, Interesting)
http://www.ecogeek.org/content/view/1466/74/ [ecogeek.org]
Re: (Score:2)
=Smidge=
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Commercial use (Score:5, Insightful)
To the contrary. The eye's range of sensitivity is tuned to the solar spectrum, emitted at a blackbody temperature just a bit below 6000 K. A bulb is most efficient if it emits light in the spectrum that the eye is sensitive to, and not in, say the infrared spectrum. So a bulb emitting blackbody spectrum becomes more efficient as the emission temperature goes up, and peaks in efficiency at around 6000.
Incandescent bulbs are not inefficient because they are too hot-- they are inefficient because they are not hot enough. They run somewhere about 2500 or 3000, and hence most of the light is emitted in the infrared, not the visible.
Re:Commercial use (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Commercial use (Score:5, Informative)
A 6000K plasma may even be safer, depending on the density of the plasma.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
It's the color of a body of iron at those temperatures in Kelvin. This has nothing to do with the temperature of the bulb, that is a 7500 degree Kelvin 4 foot fluorescent bulb may be 7500K *in color* but it's barely 80 degrees F in operation. Although degrees Ke
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Commercial use (Score:4, Informative)
Temperature (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
So in the case of an incandescent bulbs the temperature of the tungsten filament is close to the observed color temperature of the light as the filament is close to being a blackbody radiator (although the bulb itself will be cooler since it is not in direct contact with the filament producing the light).
Since
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Um folks, when you're talking about black body radiation the "color temperature" is the temperature. And the glowing object doesn't have to be iron. Glowing argon emits the same way. The video makes it clear that that bitty argon light is 6000 K at the core. I'm sure it's much cooler at the surface of the bulb. With a core temperature of 6000 K most of the energy will be emitted as visible light, not infrared, which of course is the point.
Fluorescent lights do not produce light via black body radiati
COLOR temperature, not thermal temp (Score:2, Informative)
http://www.fullspectrumsolutions.com/cri_explained.htm [fullspectr...utions.com]
Provides a table of other light sources for comparison and a bit of discussion about color theory.
Re:COLOR temperature, not thermal temp (Score:5, Informative)
As other shave pointed out, this is not too much of a problem for household use as ordinary incandescents reach 3600 at the filament. You just need to encase it in a glass bulb.
Re:COLOR temperature, not thermal temp (Score:5, Informative)
Moreover, this lamp appears to be a high bandwidth lamp -- "full spectrum" as they said. This implies that it does not depend on the absorbsion and emission characteristics of specific atoms. Lamps like these -- fluorescents, high efficiency sodium lamps, and the like -- emit light at discrete wavelengths. High bandwidth lamps depend on incandescence to produce light. Indeed, color temperature doesn't make sense for these kinds of lamps -- no black body radiator will emit discrete spectra. (There's a "corrected" color temperature unit for these lamps used in the lighting trade)
The point is: these lamps get hot. They reach about 6000K.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
In light physics, temperature and color temperature are the same thing.
Correction, for a blackbody, in physics, temperature and color temperature are the same thing.
For an object which is not emitting as a blackbody, "color temperature" means, basically, the temperature that a blackbody would have to be at in order to emit the same color of light, where "color of light" has mostly a lot to do with physics of perception, and not physics of light. For an object that's not a blackbody, "color temperature" is not the same as temperature.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
It kind of makes sense to assume that an incandescent light source is hot because, to quote the all-knowing Wikipedia, incandescence is the release o [wikipedia.org]
Internal Temperature Doesn't matter. (Score:5, Informative)
> - the risk of fire would simply be too great.
Don't be silly. 6000K is the internal temperature of the gas. The filament in an incandescent lamp can reach 3000K. What matters is the external temperature, which is likely to be lower for a more efficient lamp.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Lighting at 8.8%. [doe.gov]
Lighting at 22%. [energy.gov]
Re:Commercial use (Score:4, Informative)
Oh lord.
What do you think color temperature is? It is the temperature at which an ideal black body radiator emits a given light spectrum. It most certainly has to do with the temperature at which an incandescent bulb operates. The hotter the bulb gets, the higher the color temperature. And moreover, the smaller the light emitter becomes, the closer color temperature and operating temperature become.
In this case, it would be physically impossible for a light of any sort to give off that much energy and only consume the amount of electricity available to even a street light.
Temperature isn't energy. Temperature is energy density. For a given amount of energy, the smaller the emitter is, the hotter it will be.
My space heater uses 1500watts and requires I believe 12amps to operate and it would never be able to get anywhere near 6000k even if it were to ignite.
And? The heat emitter is huge. Scale it down to about a 10th its size and run 1500W through it. It will glow a nice bright white before melting.
Price? (Score:5, Insightful)
So...how much does it cost compared to an incandescent? Or an LED?
Dan Aris
they tell you in the video (Score:5, Funny)
Not as low energy as you think (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Not as low energy as you think (Score:4, Interesting)
Well they say in the video that it is almost 10 times as efficient in terms of Lumen's per watt (140 vs 15 for a normal bulb). I assume what you mean though is that the new argon bulb might not be able to run at lower powers. So if you just wanted a 60 Watt bulb equivalent, it might not be possible. Is that what you mean?
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
I found it interesting that the tiny bulb - at least in the video - was still using 250 watts and internally generated a temperature of 6000K (no they weren't talking color temp; they were talking actual temp). Now that's certainly lower than the 400 watt conventional streetlight they compared it to; but there's no mention in the video about scalability or low-power use. So the submitter's comment about it having advantages over compact fluorescents may have no basis in fact.
Stick one right outside your window, pointing in, and you have daylight at night.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_body [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wien's_displacement_law [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectroscopy [wikipedia.org]
http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=095393D5B42B2266&page=2 [youtube.com]
Anyhow, these new lights are a major breakthrough... If they can get them into the hands of the general public relatively quickly.
Where's the story? (Score:2, Interesting)
I know that a lot of the stories on here are ads in disguise, but this one isn't even hiding. I didn't realize that slashdot was an a linking to unabashed ads now.
Re: (Score:2)
Long life projectors (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Ok, sombody's got to say it..... (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Okay, that was just too awesome! (Score:2)
I realize that for some reason, lighting technology punches one of my geek buttons. I was super-pumped about white LED technology, and this just blew me away. The bulb was the size of a Jelly-Belly jelly bean, and it out-shone a street lamp fixture the size of a jumbo hot-dog while burning a whole lot less power. How gee-whiz is that?
At 6000K, though, it's not going to be in my living room, but I'll be really happy to see this in street lamps.
Re: (Score:2)
I hate to be the one to break it to you, but I have to tell you that your incandescents are already running at 3000K. If you are so into lighting technology perhaps you might try to find time to actually study up on the subject.
Re:Okay, that was just too awesome! (Score:5, Informative)
Also, if you look at HPS (high-pressure sodium vapor) lamps, the orange ones they use for street lights, the vessel that produces the light is actually quite small. There is an internal tube (made of quartz, I think) that holds the sodium. For the first few minutes, the bulb appears blue because you are seeing an arc in the center of it. After the sodium boils and then turns into a plasma, it is in a higher energy state and starts throwing off photons.
The only difference in this bulb is they are eliminating the electrodes and using a different plasma. They use a high frequency RF that's tuned to the resonate frequency of the gas. Sort of like a microwave does for water, but this is more focused. The gas resonates and becomes a plasma. Then it starts throwing off photons. Your efficiency is limited by how efficiently you can make your RF circuit and amplifier and how focused you can place the RF. I imagine they are quoting the theoretical efficiency but they probably haven't achieved it yet.
Re: (Score:2)
"When electric current flows through the filament, it heats the filament to a temperature of about 3000 C (about 5000 F), causing the filament to glow [hypertextbook.com] and provide light."
Somebody please correct my math... (Score:4, Informative)
365 * 24 == 8760
20,000 / 8760 == 2.283
Is that right, or am I way off?
Re:Somebody please correct my math... (Score:5, Informative)
Good News (Score:2)
full spectrum? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:full spectrum? (Score:4, Informative)
That is 900-1500 nm.
Another few tidbits:
Ar plasma: white
Ar + H2 plasma: red
Ar + O2 plasma: purple-like
Ar + N2 plasma: greenish
Ar + too much current through the copper cathodes: priceless... (lots of copper sparks actually)
Black Body Radiation (Score:3, Informative)
Re:full spectrum? (Score:4, Informative)
Street lights? (Score:4, Interesting)
Things I want to know (Score:3, Insightful)
2. Color temperature - will it do warm white or something similarly pleasant?
3. Argon... isn't that toxic? (since the summary mentioned hazardous materials but didn't point that out, high school chem is so long ago..)
4. Price if none of the above are problematic
5. Time to market.
If someone can answer those, I'll be genuinely interested
Re:Things I want to know (Score:5, Informative)
2) 6000K is very close to sunlight so yeah it's a nice warm sunny light - should in theory be nicer than incandescent light anyway.
3) No - it's a noble gas (unreactive) and naturally present in the atmosphere, making up nearly 1% of it in fact.
4 and 5) Dunno. I was just searching for the projector bulb version and couldn't find any actually for sale, which given that it was announced half a year ago isn't great going
Wow imagine the argicultural uses (Score:3, Insightful)
God this shit here is worse than digg (Score:5, Insightful)
a) Temperature=!heat=!"OMG IT WILL KILL US!!!". You dont really want to know the "temperature" of the electron beam in your old style TV... (yeah, i know its not in thermodynamical equilibrium, and thus temperature is not defined, thus the "")
b) This is nothing really new. It is based on the same principle like the old sulfure-plasma lamps in the early 90s.
c) It doesnt scale down well. It needs its power provided by microwaves, which is not efficiently possible in the lower power range.
d) Yeah, it uses 250W. But provides as much light as a 1500W halogen thrower. Wake up, moms basement (which you are most familiar with) isnt the world, there are plenty of things you would like to have 10ks of lumens for.
e) Reinforced from d: Yeah, a 250W bulb can be energy efficent. Because it puts out a fucking lot light, numbnut.
f) Doesnt compare at all with leds: Leds have low surface brightness, are effiecent and dont scale UP well. This things have a very high surface brightness, are efficient and dont scape DOWN well. Apple, meet orange.
g) A better comparison would be vs HID: there they are supperior (longer lifetime, less dangerous, not much more complex driver (HIDs need a high-voltage ballast, too).
What the Spec says (Score:5, Informative)
There must be two dozen posts here already blathering about 6000K and nobody bothered to go read the company's official documentation? Here's their website [luxim.com], here are a whole bunch of specs and videos [lifi.com], now go read something before speculating.
Minor information (Score:5, Informative)
However, their light, much like the light of this light, looks an awful lot like the light from a welder. You have to be careful about the pursuit of the almighty lumen -- it's a human-tweaked measure, not a physical measure, and lights score best by dumping all of their light into green. We probably don't want our homes to be lit by exclusively green light.
One thing to note is that there is wide spectrum (true 6000K, this new light), wide spectrum (white LEDs, a relatively smooth blob in the optical frequencies), and wide spectrum (a strategically chosen selection single frequencies, in fluorescent lights). This new bulb should produce very nice looking like, but it might benefit from some of the same phosphors used in white LEDs to down-convert the higher frequencies.
Properly run LEDs are claimed to have lifetimes in the range of 70,000 to 100,000 hours of use, and are not affected by rapid cycling (in fact, the recommended method for dimming them is to switch them on and off very quickly).
Not this again (Score:3, Interesting)
I wish people would challenge memes like these, because they're mostly bullshit crafted to stir up/reinforce discontent, in this case by the right-wing noise machine against "environmentalists", because that sells newspapers. /. post) are there for the hyper-paranoid, and apply just as much to the regular old-school fluorescent tubes (moreso, since they contain more mercury).
CFLs, like all fluorescent lights, do contain a miniscule amount of mercury (and I do mean miniscule; about 4 mg), but to call it a problem is to vastly overstate the dangers involved. If you break a bulb, you may want to open a window for a bit, but that's about it. The clean-up steps the EPA mentions on their website (mentioned in the linked
The "problem" is serious enough that if you have a large population that uses CFLs (like places where incandescents aren't allowed anymore), you want to encourage people to dispose of them safely rather than to just throw them with the rest of the trash, but even if the mercury does end up in the environment, it will be less mercury than has been prevented from getting out by its power savings (Wikipedia has this picture [wikipedia.org], which demonstrates the principle for coal plants, but the same thing applies to other types of power plants, except "green" ones like hydroelectric and wind energy; but again, this is only relevant if the bulbs are disposed of unsafely, which is illegal in many places that mandate their use).
I did research on these plasma lamps at Cornell (Score:5, Informative)
The benefits:
The Drawbacks:
They definately have some good applications, like for use in stadiums, airports, etc. However, I think there needs to be more research done to make them usable in homes and automobiles.
White LEDs at 300 lumens per watt (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Hazardous UV. You get quite a sunburn like some welders.
Not good for the eyes either. All wasted energy too.
Re:Dual purpose? (Score:4, Informative)
It also says 6000K at its center; I'm not sure whether it transmits that heat to the casing or not.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
That won't work, because the temperature it reaches has nothing to do with the amount of heat it emmits. Besides, if it's almost 10 times as efficient as ordinary bulbs, you would have 10 times as much light to get the same heat. You would get warm, but I doubt you would able to sleep with that much light.