So apparently this is the “small device eliminates need for AC” that I see advertised everywhere! </s>
But in all seriousness, it seems this converts ambient heat (not a heat differential) directly into electricity. Therefore it must necessarily cool its surroundings by the equivalent energy extracted?
So it’s a kind of air conditioner which doesn’t use electricity to move heat but rather converts heat directly to electricity? I thought we “knew” this was impossible...
> “People may think that current flowing in a resistor causes it to heat up, but the Brownian current does not. In fact, if no current was flowing, the resistor would cool down,” Thibado explained. “What we did was reroute the current in the circuit and transform it into something useful.”
Based on this I understood that it'd indeed cool down and create a heat gradient if it wasn't doing any work, but the difference it'd create is instead used to induce a current, which means it probably wouldn't cool down as long as that potential is used in this way instead (?)
If it works, it'd be a great cooler for electronics that could put back into the circuit some of the electricity that had been turned into heat. CPU and GPU coolers could become built into the structure of the ICs themselves.
But in all seriousness, it seems this converts ambient heat (not a heat differential) directly into electricity. Therefore it must necessarily cool its surroundings by the equivalent energy extracted?
So it’s a kind of air conditioner which doesn’t use electricity to move heat but rather converts heat directly to electricity? I thought we “knew” this was impossible...