How we can turn the cold of outer space into a renewable resource | Aaswath Raman
TED Talks Daily
TED
4.1 • 12.1K Ratings
🗓️ 1 June 2018
⏱️ 13 minutes
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Summary
What if we could use the cold darkness of outer space to cool buildings on earth? In this mind-blowing talk, physicist Aaswath Raman details the technology he's developing to harness "night-sky cooling" -- a natural phenomenon where infrared light escapes earth and heads to space, carrying heat along with it -- which could dramatically reduce the energy used by our cooling systems (and the pollution they cause). Learn more about how this approach could lead us towards a future where we intelligently tap into the energy of the universe.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This TED Talk features applied physicist and engineer Oswath-Raman, recorded live at TED-2018. |
| 0:09.6 | Every summer when I was growing up, I would fly from my home in Canada to visit my grandparents |
| 0:15.1 | who lived in Mumbai, India. Now, Canadian summers are pretty mild at best. |
| 0:24.1 | About 22 degrees Celsius or 72 degrees Fahrenheit is a typical summer's day and not too hot. |
| 0:27.7 | Mumbai, on the other hand, is a hot and humid place, |
| 0:30.8 | well into the 30s Celsius or 90s Fahrenheit. |
| 0:34.5 | As soon as I'd reach, I'd ask, |
| 0:36.4 | how could anyone live, work, or sleep in such weather? |
| 0:41.8 | To make things worse, my grandparents didn't have an air conditioner. And while I tried my very, |
| 0:48.1 | very best, I was never able to persuade them to get one. But this is changing and fast. |
| 0:56.3 | Cooling systems today collectively account for 17 percent of the electricity we use worldwide. |
| 1:03.0 | This includes everything from the air conditioners I so desperately wanted, |
| 1:06.3 | during my summer vacations, |
| 1:07.9 | to the refrigeration systems that keep our food safe and cold for us in our supermarkets, |
| 1:13.1 | to the industrial-scale systems that keep our data centers operational. |
| 1:18.1 | Collectively, these systems account for 8 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. |
| 1:24.2 | But what keeps me up at night is that our energy use for cooling might grow sixfold by the year 2050, |
| 1:30.8 | primarily driven by increasing usage in Asian and African countries. |
| 1:35.6 | I've seen this firsthand. |
| 1:37.5 | Nearly every apartment in and around my grandmother's place now |
| 1:40.9 | has an air conditioner. |
| 1:42.6 | And that is emphatically a good thing |
... |
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