One of Nanotechnology’s Bazillion Potential Benefits

Is it possible to cool an object to a temperature below that of its surroundings?  Let’s consider that for a moment.  If you take a pie out of your oven at 375°F and put it on the sill of an open window with outside temperature 70°, you’re not going to expect to wind up with a pie at 60°.

Enter nanophotonics.  As it turns out, our atmosphere traps heat close to the Earth’s surface, the changing content of which is thus responsible for global warming, does not trap all that heat (or you could bake that pie without the oven).  Moreover, it doesn’t do its thing uniformly, i.e., for all wavelengths.   Infrared (heat) radiation between 8 and 13 microns falls into what’s known as a “transmission window,” and passes easily out into space, where it’s a chilly -454°.

Here’s a TED talk about a scientist whose team at Stanford is building nanomaterials that use this principle that could greatly improve the efficiency of all our cooling devices, as,  theoretically, it’s possible to have materials that are as much as 43° below the ambient temperature.

The impact here is hard to say, but let’s start with the understanding that 13% of our energy is used to cool stuff, from air conditioning to commercial and industrial freezers to data centers, so there is a lot at stake.

As is the case with nano-anything, it’s ferociously counter-intuitive, reminding us of what physicist Richard Feynman told us: “If you think you understand quantum mechanics, you don’t understand quantum mechanics.”  Says it all right there.