7 September 2019 | New Scientist |The back pages Feedback
Sunset boulevard
Almost three years after it opened,
the world’s first solar roadway has
been labelled a disaster. Engineers
announced that the 1-kilometre-
long Wattway in Tourouvre-au-
Perche, north-west France, was
crumbling due to traffic and the
effects of weathering. To make
matters worse, the 3000 square
metres of photovoltaic cells spent
so much time covered in leaves
that they only produced half the
expected energy.
It is difficult to find a positive spin
on a road that can’t be travelled,
made of solar panels that don’t
work. Yet this is unlikely to dent
the allure of solar farms that double
as highways. The premise is that
two things that are good in their
own right would be even better if
combined. This logic holds true for
peanut butter and jelly sandwiches,
but less so for climate change, say,
or root canals.
The €5 million Wattway – or, to
give it its full name, the Wattawaste
of money – never struck Feedback
as a particularly sound investment.
At its inauguration, the former
French energy minister proposed
that 1000 kilometres of solar
roadways would be built in the next
five years. But even that impressive
figure would only amount to
600 hectares of solar panels. By
comparison, a single conventional
farm, Cestas Solar Park in Bordeaux,
covers 250 hectares.
That’s a shame, really, because
the concept is such an elegant way
of making use of an otherwise
wasted resource. As an alternative,
substituting the ever-beating rays
of the sun for the liberal circulation
of hot air, might we suggest a wind
farm in London’s Parliament Square?
Oh the humanity!
Approximately 500 hours of
video are uploaded to YouTube
every minute, too much #content
for mere human eyes to monitor.
That is where AI comes in:
machines capable of distinguishing
violent and graphic content
from your cousin’s make-up
The Duraline White Lacquered
Floating Shelf is reportedly “100%
invisible when attached to the wall”.
To be honest, this seems like quite
an inconvenient quality for
something hard that sticks
out of a wall – although holiday
tchotchkes will probably look
impressive as they float in space,
defying the forces of gravity
and good taste.
Speaking of space, Peter notes
the shelf ’s impressive depth:
“235Mm”, or 235,000 kilometres,
“which would simplify getting to
the moon and back, and for £11”.
Quite a bargain, we agree. But once
you had installed those thousands
of kilometres of shelving, how
would you ever get any of your
beloved knick-knacks down?King’s ransom
Previously, Feedback mused on
the mortality rates for different
chess pieces in battle (17 August).
David Shaw takes issue with our
claim that all non-drawn games
end with one king’s demise.
“The king is never captured,”
he says. “The game ends when
the king is in check and has no
valid move.”
He isn’t wrong – clearly a
rook-y error on our part. Though
it does make us wonder, what
happens after checkmate?
And why are we, as omniscient
observers, not party to it?
For such profoundly spiritual
questions, we suggest you
consult your closest bishop. ❚tutorial or baffling list of
egg-based lifehacks. Last
week, hobbyists and engineers
discovered that the AI in charge
of YouTube’s moderation was
consistently removing videos
of robot battles, labelling them as
“animal cruelty”. A spokesperson
promised that the error would
soon be resolved and the videos
reinstated. Feedback thinks that
when the robot revolution arrives,
we can’t say we weren’t warned.Easy rider
We all know that cycling to
work is a good way to reduce
your carbon footprint. So Feedback
was intrigued to hear that British
architect Neil Campbell had broken
the cycling speed record when he
“reached more than 174mph”
on a specially constructed bicycle,
according to BBC News.
That’s certainly one way to
reduce your time spent commuting,
though the speeding fines may not
be worth it. Yet we were struck by
a small detail: among the bicycle’s
special adaptations was a coupling
that hooked it to a Porsche Cayenne
sports utility vehicle. After being
towed up to speed, Campbell was
released to fly through the timing
gate “under his own power”.
As cycling records go, those
four words may be doing more work
than the person in the saddle, but
it does raise an interesting question.
Might we say Neil Armstrong
walked to the moon, having been
accelerated by a Saturn V rocket
before stepping onto the regolith
under his own power? The next
time someone chides you about
the environmental impact of flying
to Barbados for your holiday,
Feedback suggests you reassure
them: I walked all the way. The
aeroplane simply stopped me
falling down.Know thy shelf
Browsing the catalogue of
building merchants Wickes,
Peter Oakley has discovered a
truly phenomenal piece of home
improvement paraphernalia.Got a story for Feedback?
Send it to New Scientist, 25 Bedford Street,
London WC2E 9ES or you can email us at
[email protected]@louiseligabite discovering nature on Tūja Beach in Latvia.The next theme is the future, to commemorate H. G. Wells’s
birthday on 21 September. Email us your related photos to
readerpics @ newscientist.com by Tuesday 10 September.
Terms and conditions at newscientist.com/pictureoftheweek-termsPicture of the week Discovery
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