Colorful Glass Delivers Massive Solar Energy Boost

The secret to affordable fuel-free energy may lie in some pretty-looking glass. Scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have found a way to use dye-colored glass to harness clean and renewable energy — and to do it in a practical and cost-effective way. The research, published in Friday’s Science journal, builds off ideas first tested in the ’70s. The work back then, however, never found a way to effectively absorb the light without losing its energy. The MIT procedure uses something called a “solar concentrator.”