back to article Boffins find Jackie Chan's SUPERCOP is good for something

Blu-Ray might not be setting the world afire, but boffins have turned up a surprising upside of the technology that can be applied to solar PV manufacture. It turns out the pit-and-peak pattern that encodes a movie on the disk helps improve light absorption if reproduced on the surface of a solar cell. Published in Nature …

  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Finally a use for Zoolander.

    If there was ever a waste of zeros & ones, Zoolander was it. That movie sucked so hard, so bad, that BlackHoles are considering a bit of "Industrial Espionage" to find out how anything can suck >that< hard.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Finally a use for Zoolander.

      Yeah, it sucked harder than Traci Lords, BUT

      Just remember, there are worse films out there....

      "Morons From Outer Space" anyone??

      By some freak of nature, the book is even LESS funny than the film.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Finally a use for Zoolander.

      It's funny. It's not the funniest film ever, but there's a good few laughs in it.

    3. Lionel Baden
      Facepalm

      Re: Finally a use for Zoolander.

      I have absolutely no idea why, but for some reason i actually enjoyed that film......

      1. FartingHippo
        Alert

        Re: Finally a use for Zoolander.

        I'll see your Zoolander and raise you a Highlander 3. Never has a franchise gone downhill so far, so quickly....

        1. Dave 126 Silver badge

          Re: Finally a use for Zoolander.

          Zoolander - one of those films that is silly, but enjoyable if you just go with it. Similarly, The first couple of episodes of Vic and Bob's 'Shooting Stars' left me cold, but then something clicked and I now find it hilarious.

          I can do Blue Steel AND Magnum.

  2. Mark 85

    Does the RIAA know about this?

    Piracy and copyright infringement not just at the boffin scale but manufacturing scale!! Oh my <$DIETY> get more lawyers. This is going to be big!

    On a more serious note.. is it just one Blu-Ray movie or all of them will work?

    1. Martin Budden Silver badge
      Boffin

      Re: Does the RIAA know about this?

      I get the impression any movies will work, because once compressed they are all quasi-random and therefore all have similar "array of islands and pits with feature sizes between 150 and 525 nm". So to get around any potential copyright issues the solar panel manufacturer simply needs to shoot a cheap video themselves and get it blu-rayed.

      Icon: blu and disky.

      1. Dave Bell

        Re: Does the RIAA know about this?

        While it isn't quite simple, the movie-like object might need to plausibly resemble a movie, something more than a high-definition camera watching traffic on a busy road (I'm thinking of the effect of cutting from one scene to another). So taking a "real" movie might be easiest. I'm thinking that any contract might include a few clauses on how the solar cell components are mounted so as it is difficult to extract the data, maybe something as simple as no hole in the middle, or putting the pattern off-centre.

        Frankly, if the Blu-Ray is on sale, you don't need to do anything heroic with the solar cell to duplicate the data. And there are any number of cheap movies where the producers might leap at the chance of a guaranteed fee that can cover the costs of preparing the data for disk manufacture.

        1. Vladimir Plouzhnikov

          Re: Does the RIAA know about this?

          Or they could simply bulk-buy the unsold BD stock from HMV. They could probably do a deal like 1 pound for a million discs. They could probably get HMV to pay for delivery too.

          That should certainly cover mankind's needs for PV panels for the next few generations...

          1. Matt 21

            Re: Does the RIAA know about this?

            Might not putting it on your roof count as a public performance?

  3. akeane
    Facepalm

    Idiots!

    They should have used "The Prodigal Son"

    1. Horridbloke

      Re: Idiots!

      True, Sammo Hung demonstrates unparalleled randomness in that one.

  4. Frumious Bandersnatch
    WTF?

    "If you don't understand why, it's not good science"

    So repeatable observations are no good if you can't come up with a theory to explain them? Whatever happened to the idea of science being about observations trumping theories by falsifying them, among other things? Should we now throw our observations out if there are no theories available to explain them?

    My ghast is truly flabbered.

    1. sabroni Silver badge

      Re: Should we now throw our observations out if there are no theories available to explain them?

      You're talking about "damned data". Some people collect it.

    2. Michael Wojcik Silver badge

      Re: "If you don't understand why, it's not good science"

      Whatever happened to the idea of science being about observations trumping theories by falsifying them, among other things?

      For one thing, Popper's model of scientific epistemology was superseded by Perfect Bayesian Reasoning, a considerably more accurate and more formally defined one. Popper's gives falsification a special epistemological status which isn't necessary; the Bayes model precisely and formally explains the proportionally greater effect of a contrary result on an established hypothesis.

      For another, he didn't say repeatable observations were "no good". He said the science wasn't good until you have a theory that's congruent with the observations (and, presumably, meets various other tests - but the man wasn't trying to provide a formal definition of scientific epistemology, so perhaps you should relax a bit). Observations by themselves are just data. They are a necessary part of scientific epistemology (along with experimentation protocols, formal methods, calculation, and so on), but they are not sufficient.

      1. Frumious Bandersnatch

        Re: "If you don't understand why, it's not good science"

        I'm not actually (formally at least) acquainted with either form of epistemology, as you put it, but I think I know what you mean in your first paragraph.

        The problem I had with what was said was with the context. Assuming something like:

        1. formulate hypothesis that PV with bumps is more efficient than a smooth one

        2. design an experiment to test it, with a smooth control and various different patterns

        3. do the experiment and make measurements

        4. compare observations to expected results:

        4A result support the hypothesis

        4B observations that Blu-ray seems to have best efficiency

        The context of the statement seems to be about the need to explain 4B with the implication that it's not good science if it's left unexplained. In reality, they just went "that's interesting" and proceeded to try and explain it. If they hadn't, but instead just published the data and results with a note about the interesting Blu-ray results, it wouldn't detract a whit from how good the science of the paper was. They followed up because it interested them (and probably because they wanted to be the first to publish a possible reason "why"). The "it wouldn't be good science if we didn't" argument is spurious in this particular context.

        but the man wasn't trying to provide a formal definition of scientific epistemology, so perhaps you should relax a bit

        Yes, you're right. It was a throwaway line, but it irked me that it was delivered as a fact about the scientific method. If it were literally true, then we'd end up saying that things like the observation of the Mpemba effect isn't good science because it didn't come with a "why."

  5. mix
    Thumb Up

    Jackie Chan saves the world again. I love that guy.

    1. Michael Wojcik Silver badge

      Credit where it's due - Michelle Yeoh was also indispensable in Supercop. (Ah, that motorcycle-onto-moving-train stunt. Priceless.)

  6. Lionel Baden

    better not use the new batman

    Its so gloomy no light will ever reach the panels !!!

  7. What? Me worry?
    Joke

    Coming soon...

    Torrents of ripped solar cells...

    1. PNGuinn
      Joke

      Re: Coming soon...

      And riassa sues the manufacturer over misuse / breaking / copying / <insert excuse here> /....our beloved by all the users 'cos they Know copying anything is THEFT unbreakable copy protection system....

      Yup, lawyers at dawn as you say.

  8. Adrian Jones

    Surely there were more appropriate films to use?

    Solaris?

    Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind?

    1. Omgwtfbbqtime

      Re: Surely there were more appropriate films to use?

      Dark City?

      1. Dave 126 Silver badge

        Re: Surely there were more appropriate films to use?

        Empire of the Sun?

        Little Miss Sunshine?

        Australia?

        1. stucs201

          Re: Surely there were more appropriate films to use?

          Pitch Black? First part is the brightest film I've ever seen.

    2. Ben Bonsall

      Re: Surely there were more appropriate films to use?

      Man With The Golden Gun, seeing as it was about a highly efficient solar cell.

      (For certain values of 'about')

    3. The last doughnut

      Re: Surely there were more appropriate films to use?

      Face/off

  9. Dr Patrick J R Harkin

    "Just so long as Hollywood's lawyers don't fire off a sueball for copying Supercop."

    Surely the casting process will have made it a copy of Pocrepus?

  10. Florida1920
    Thumb Down

    Honky Tonk Freeway

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honky_Tonk_Freeway

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