Incandescents may not become obsolete after all
pimg height=183 src=http://l.yimg.com/a/feeds/us/grn/green_ecogeek/incandescent.jpg width=468 //ppWith all the new developments in a href=http://www.ecogeek.org/content/view/2683/74/CFL/a, a href=http://www.ecogeek.org/content/view/2520/74/LED/a and a href=http://www.ecogeek.org/content/view/2045/74/HID/a technology and the fact that a href=http://www.ecogeek.org/content/view/2212/74/countries are lining up to ban them/a, it’s seemed certain that incandescents are on a death march. But wait! What if traditional bulbs could be made just as efficient as CFLs and keep their cheap price tag?/ppThat’s what scientists at the University of Rochester have discovered is possible and, yes, it involves lasers. A team of researchers have come up with a process that makes a 100-watt bulb consume less energy than a 60-watt bulb by creating nano- and micro-scale structures on the tungsten filament. The structures make the tungsten more effective at radiating light and the bulb much more efficient./ppThe structures are made on the filament by an ultra-intense femto-second laser pulse that lasts only quadrillionths of a second. The power of that minute burst of laser is equivalent to the entire grid of North America, yet the laser can be powered by a wall outlet, meaning implementing these lasers into manufacturing should be a simple task./ppThe process can be used not only to make the light brighter, but to also change the hue of the light by manipulating those nano-structures. If this process is commercialized, all those who want the efficiency of CFLs, but hate the color and price could finally have their perfect bulb.br /br /
via a href=http://www.rochester.edu/news/show.php?id=3385University of Rochester/a/p