Italy village gets ‘sun mirror’

A sun-deprived village in the Italian Alps has come up with a novel solution to fix the problem - by installing a giant mirror. The mirror - an eight-by-five metre (26x16ft) sheet of steel - was placed on a nearby peak to reflect sunlight onto Viganella’s main square below. The computer-operated mirror will now be constantly following the sun’s path.

Viganella sits at the bottom of a steep valley, and surrounding mountains cut off direct sunlight during the winter. The towering mirror was installed on Sunday. “It wasn’t easy,” Village Mayor Pierfranco Midali told Italy’s Ansa news agency. “We had to find the proper material, learn about the technology and especially find the money,” he said. The project cost some 100,000 euros (£67,110) and was financed by the regional authorities and a bank.

‘Like Siberia’

Viganella’s problem is that it was built at the bottom of a very steep-sided Alpine valley, right up against the Swiss border. The southern side of the valley is so sheer that on 11 November the sun disappears and does not reappear until 2 February. Not a single ray of sunlight falls on Viganella in the weeks in between.

“It’s like Siberia,” one of the village’s nearly 200 residents has said. However, the south-facing slopes to the north do get sunshine just a few hundred metres above the village. So the mirror was mounted on the mountainside to reflect sunlight into the village’s main piazza.

There are pictures in the link

http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/hoax/forums/viewthread/506/

Gee, they should have just talked to Mr. Burns of the Simpsons. He build a huge mirror in Springfield, though it was used for the opposite purpose.

So, now they will get some sunlight, but what about heat?  I read the other thread too but there is no indication (unless I just plain missed it-which is likely), that all this does is provide some light but that’s not exactly the same thing as warmth as well.

hulitoons - 20 December 2006 11:35 AM

So, now they will get some sunlight, but what about heat?  I read the other thread too but there is no indication (unless I just plain missed it-which is likely), that all this does is provide some light but that’s not exactly the same thing as warmth as well.

Well, it should reflect some heat down towards the village.  The mirror itself will certainly absorb some amount of solar radiation (just how much depends partly on the way in which they built the thing), but some of it will still be reflected.  Of course, the air between the mirror and the village will absorb a lot of the heat in passing, so if the mirror is too far away then most of the heat will be lost by the time it gets to the village.  And a mirror that size wouldn’t reflect all that much heat for an entire village anyway, even if it was working in a complete vacuum.

I imagine it would probably be more of a psychological benefit than a source of heat.

Hopefully overtime it does’t warp slightly and concentrate the light beam, setting the town on fire.

N E O - 20 December 2006 01:34 PM

Hopefully overtime it does’t warp slightly and concentrate the light beam, setting the town on fire.

N E O - 20 December 2006 01:34 PM

Hopefully overtime it does’t warp slightly and concentrate the light beam, setting the town on fire.

N E O, ever read ‘Sanctuary’ the third book in four of the Dragon Jouster series by Mercedes Lackey?  THAT’s exactly what the Magi did !  It was called (the magic device that used the sun to incinerate) The Eye.  Of course, the more people the Magi killed, the younger THEY (the Magi and friends) got so it was good incentive on their part to also incite war and THEN make up reasons for the war as well.

No never read that or even heard of it.