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China is planning to build the world’s first solar power station in space to provide “inexhaustible clean energy” according  to a story  in  Science and Technology Daily,  the official newspaper of China’s Ministry of Science and Technology. They claim to be already testing the technology and intend to build the station by 2050. Xie Gengxin, deputy head of the Chongqing Collaborative Innovation Research Institute for Civil-Military Integration in Southwestern China, told the  China Daily  newspaper that a testing facility in Chongqing’s Bishan district is being built that will be used to test the theoretical viability of a space-based solar power station. The 33 acre test facility will develop space transmission technologies while studying the effect of microwaves beamed back to Earth on living organisms. The initial investment of 100 million yuan ($15 million) will be made by the Bishan district government and construction could...

Low-cost solar cells poised for commercial breakthrough Cheap materials called perovskites are insinuating themselves into silicon solar cells—a first step toward ultimately usurping the reigning cell material. Last week, at a meeting here of the Materials Research Society (MRS), researchers announced that “tandem” cells, in which perovskites are layered on top of silicon and other photovoltaic materials, have achieved record-setting efficiencies at turning sunlight into electricity. Now, researchers are moving fast to surmount the lack of durability and other problems that have hindered the commercialization of perovskites. “I think perovskites are going to make it to market,” says Aslihan Babayigit, a perovskite researcher at Hasselt University in Diepenbeek, Belgium. The progress has been “amazing,” adds David Cahen, a materials scientist at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel. “Even if all the problems are not solved, most look solvable.” Known since the ...