Solar energy that doesn’t block the view

A team of researchers at Michigan State University has developed a new type of solar concentrator that when placed over a window creates solar energy while allowing people to actually see through the window. It is called a transparent luminescent solar concentrator and can be used on buildings, cell phones and any other device that has a clear surface. And, according to Richard Lunt of MSU’s College of Engineering, the key word is “transparent.”

Vera Rubin, born 1928, was the first woman to be awarded the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society since 1828.

Pictured here during her undergrad at Vassar College, she went on to get a PhD in astronomy at Georgetown, after being turned away from Princeton because she was a woman. In 1965, she became the first woman to be allowed access to the Palomar Observatory.

Rubin secured a position at the Carnegie Institution of Washington, where she continued her studies of the movement and rotations of galaxies and her observations are some of the strongest evidence we have for the existence of dark matter.