FORGET conventional solar power – the world’s energy needs could be met 100 billion times over using a satellite to harness the solar wind and beam the energy back to Earth. Focussing the beam could be tricky, though.
The Dyson-Harrop satellite, as the new design is called, orbits the sun far from Earth. On board a long copper wire generates a magnetic field that snags the electrons in the solar wind. The electrons are funnelled into a receiver to produce a current, which generates the wire’s magnetic field to make the system self-sustaining. Any current not needed for the magnetic field…
