Related papers: R{\'e}flexions sur la puissance motrice du Soleil
Radiance is widely regarded as the principal quantity in light transport theory. Yet, the concept of radiance in use today has remained mostly unchanged since Lambert's work in the 18th century. His formulation of the measurement of light…
Historically, battery is the power source for mobile, embedded and remote system applications. However, the development of battery techniques does not follow the Moore's Law. The large physical size, limited electric quantity and high-cost…
The evaporation of water is ubiquitous in nature and industrial technologies. The known mechanism for evaporation is "thermal evaporation" which highlights the energy input for evaporation is via heat. Due to the weak absorption of water to…
The neutrino flux at Earth is dominated in the keV energy range by the neutrinos produced in the Sun through thermal processes, namely photo production, bremsstrahlung, plasmon decay, and emission in free-bound and bound-bound transitions…
In a very conservative approach, supposing that total heat flow of the Earth is exclusively due to resonant capture inside the Earth of axions, emitted by 57-Fe nuclei on Sun, we obtain limit on mass of hadronic axion: m_a<1.8 keV. Taking…
The Sun's global inertial modes are very sensitive to the solar differential rotation and to properties of the deep solar convection zone which are currently poorly constrained. These properties include the superadiabatic temperature…
The wide public sees solar energy as the future of mankind, and media channels quite oftenly states that our challenge is to improve efficiencies and reduce cost. However, one may point some unconvenient truth's about the physical limits we…
As photovoltaic power is expanding rapidly worldwide, it is imperative to assess its promise under future climate scenarios. While a great deal of research has been devoted to trends of mean solar radiation, less attention has been paid to…
In this short review, I present some of the recent progresses on the pending questions of solar physics. These questions let us revisit the solar wind, the solar dynamo problem, the dynamics of the photosphere and finally have a glimpse at…
Climate changes and its many associated impacts are one of the most critical global challenges. Photovoltaics has been instrumental in mitigation of CO$_2$ through the generation of electricity. However, the goal of limiting global warming…
The application of machine learning in solar physics has the potential to greatly enhance our understanding of the complex processes that take place in the atmosphere of the Sun. By using techniques such as deep learning, we are now in the…
The name 'sorption heat engines' is proposed for simple negative entropy generators that are driven by thermal cycling and work on alternating adsorption and desorption. These generators are in general not explicitly recognized as heat…
The Sun provides the energy necessary to sustain our existence. While the Sun provides for us, it is also capable of taking away. The weather and climatic scales of solar evolution and the Sun-Earth connection are not well understood. There…
The Sun is the major source of heat and light in our solar system. The solar cycle is the 11-year cycle of solar activity that can be determined by the rise and fall in the numbers and surface area of sunspots. Solar activity is associated…
Hot-carrier solar cells are envisioned to utilize energy filtering to extract power from photogenerated electron-hole pairs before they thermalize with the lattice, and thus potentially offer higher power conversion efficiency compared to…
Some basic properties of the solar convection zone are considered and the use of helioseismology as an observational tool to determine its depth and internal angular velocity is discussed. Aspects of solar magnetism are described and…
A thermal diode transports heat mainly in one preferential direction rather than in the opposite direction. This behavior is generally due to the non-linear dependence of certain physical properties with respect to the temperature. Here we…
Cosmic ray interactions in the solar atmosphere yield a flux of electron and muon neutrinos with energies greater than 10 GeV. We discuss the influence of neutrino oscillations on the event rates in water-based Cerenkov detectors due to…
In the course of the energy transition, energy generation from nuclear power - through nuclear fission and perhaps in the future through nuclear fusion - is often proposed as an alternative or supplement to renewable energy sources. There…
The corona is a layer of hot plasma that surrounds the Sun, traces out its complex magnetic field, and ultimately expands into interplanetary space as the supersonic solar wind. Although much has been learned in recent decades from advances…