Electricity from Heat

[ysabetwordsmith]

A new discovery regarding paramagnons paves the way for harvesting energy from previously wasted sources.  \o/ 

Not mentioned in the article is that this deeper understanding of electromagnetism is also a step toward understanding the unity of energy.  Right now people tend to sort it into different types, but the whole universe is really just one thing -- little whizzing bits of energy with really good imaginations.  The closer you get to the core of that concept, the more power you can obtain.

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More references

[mdlbear]

Paramagnon drag in high thermoelectric figure of merit Li-doped MnTe | Science Advances original paper, by way of
A new way to turn heat into energy, which is the article in OSU's news feed that Science News copied.

I like to track down the original research when I can, even if (as in this case) I don't understand most of it -- a lot gets lost in the popularization process. Magnons turn out to be quasiparticles -- temporary groupings of spins that behave quantum-mechanically like particles. Other quasiparticles include phonons - quantized vibrations - and the electron pairs that cause superconductivity.