Japan has taken a recent interest in alternative forms of power generation, and one of their latest ideas is this 160 foot tall hexagonal tower that works twice as efficiently as conventional wind turbines, without giant spinning blades of death.
Now, I know what you're wondering. You're wondering why this tower contraption is necessary when we already have such good luck with regular old wind turbines, the ones that look like giant propellers. Well, besides being a menace to both birds and majestic vistas, my gut feeling is that since they look like giant propellers, they probably generate enough thrust to slowly but surely speed up the rotation of our planet until at some point in the future, days will last only minutes, minutes will last only seconds, and seconds will barely last long enough for you to wonder why the days are so short all of a sudden.
It's entirely possible that I'm dead wrong about all of that stuff, but why take the risk? And Japan, I assume, agrees with me, which is why this tower is designed to suck in wind from all directions at once, funneling it down a tunnel through the center of the structure and compressing it to spin turbines and generate electricity:
The tower can harvest wind energy over its entire surface area, and is about 2.5 times more efficient than a conventional turbine system while costing half as much to maintain. The design comes from Zena Systems, and they're planning to build it Fukuoka, Japan
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