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Anything

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This series presents information based in part on theory and conjecture.

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The producer's purpose is to suggest some possible explanation, but not necessarily

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the only one to the mysteries we will examine.

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What links this modern sun worshiper to this girl who is about to die?

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In this reenactment, she is about to be sacrificed to the sun in a ritual

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practiced many centuries ago on the plains of North America.

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Continents away, great civilizations built soaring temples, and their priests

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devoted their lives to the worship and study of the sun.

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Human sacrifice, fantastic architectural achievement,

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entire cultures dedicated to the sun.

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Are these also haunting reminders of earlier civilizations?

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Or do these silent sentinels point the way to the future?

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This Aztec calendar depicts a vengeful sun at its center,

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a god who could only be appeased with human blood.

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Over the centuries, our views and our rituals have changed.

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We can hardly wait for the first sparkle of morning light to rush to our mechas of solar worship.

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To the beaches, the mountains, the deserts,

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anywhere that we can put on ritual garments, cover ourselves with soothing ointments,

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and dedicate our bodies to the sun.

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Technology has brought the sun indoors for year-round worship.

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Does a vengeful sun god still exact his price?

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This is skin cancer.

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I'm a sun worshiper.

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I spend a lot of time in the sun, and I always have.

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Up until the time I had the cancer.

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John McMahon was cured of skin cancer by Dr. James Sternberg.

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The problem is that most of these people who are going out and getting tanned

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don't understand what they're doing to themselves,

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because the sun really can be hazardous.

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You know, and you don't think about the horrible aspects of the sun,

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because it's wonderful, it's warm, and it's a lot of the social thing in there.

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Nobody thinks about the cancerous aspects of it. Nobody.

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The important thing is that you understand what the sun does.

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Each individual person can make their own decision on whether or not they want to get sun or not.

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Is the same sun that once demanded human sacrifice now the key to human survival?

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And there are several forms of solar energy that are ready to use right now.

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Too many people have been misled to believe that the sun is going to solve all of our problems.

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We could achieve

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100% use of solar energy.

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There's no way that this can be done in this century.

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For a century and a half we have mined our planet for fuel.

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But the earth and her resources are not limitless.

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There are signs that nature is beginning to choke

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in the grip of technology.

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How long can we afford to ignore a source of energy greater than any that man has created?

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We need to have power

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Robert Deitch of Southern California Edison does not believe solar technology is ready.

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But in order to meet our demands in the 1980s we're going to have to depend on the conventional technologies that we know and that we can install now.

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And that is coal and nuclear.

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Dr. Barry Cominer of Washington University has doubts about nuclear energy.

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Nuclear is not renewable.

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Nuclear energy as we now use it is based on burning up uranium.

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And if we built all the nuclear power plants that we're supposed to

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the uranium supplies would run out in 25 to 30 years.

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That's why we have to turn to solar energy.

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The search for a solar future starts with a trip back

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almost to the Stone Age.

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Back to these Indian dwellings literally carved out of the side of a mountain.

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The Indians of Mesa Verde scratched their existence from the hostile soil of the Colorado Desert.

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They survived against the freezing winters and burning summers.

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They protected themselves against the elements in houses heated and cooled by solar energy.

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Without machines or technology the Anasazi Indians created these houses that shaded themselves in summer

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and in winter stored needed heat in thick stone walls.

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Do these lessons hold any value today?

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This house uses techniques developed over 800 years ago.

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Bill Wilson, an expert in solar energy, explains the more advanced techniques used.

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Active solar is a situation where you are capturing the sun by use of a collector

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and then using a pump or a blower to move that heat to some place else where it will be utilized or stored.

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These rocks store the sun's energy and make it available at night and on cloudy days.

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The technology may seem simple but the fact is the sun provides most of the heating and cooling needed here

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and the sun is absolutely free.

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An even greater test of the techniques developed at Mesa Verde occurred here in Modesto, California.

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Using only light from the sun this commercial greenhouse maintains a controlled environment

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essential for the growth of vulnerable young plants.

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How does it differ from greenhouses that rely on conventional energy sources?

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The design is intended to heat and cool the greenhouse with minimum energy input

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and is proving very successful so far.

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In the winter time the sunshine comes through that skylight and gives us a very broad band.

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In the middle of winter it strikes these barrels and they'll soak up the heat to keep the house warm.

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In the summer time you'll notice the X implies that we have no direct sunshine coming in

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but we have enough light to give our plants the energy to grow well by the fact that we're bouncing it off the reflective roof

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and off the white ceiling.

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This greenhouse is staying cooler by 5 or 10 degrees with no energy input

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than are the two commercially designed greenhouses of which have electrical cooling.

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Sunshine, universal, inexhaustible and free.

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It is clear that the legacy of the Mesa Verde Indians is a valuable and practical lesson

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but 800 years of scientific and technological development have increased our ability to exploit the sun

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and its enormous store of power.

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In Modesto, California, scientists are releasing solar energy from sewage

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and running city vehicles at a cost of only 35 cents a gallon.

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In order to understand this process called biomass,

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we must realize that every living thing gets energy from the sun.

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This energy is stored in every plant, in every leaf, in every flower.

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And when plants die, their energy can be recaptured as methane gas.

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Is it possible that America's great farmlands could become a source of fuel?

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According to Bill Wilson, the answer may be yes.

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The Modesto plant is doing nothing more than taking what was before a wasted fuel,

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taking some of the unneeded gases out of it, compressing it and using it to run the pickups and cars for the city.

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The plant is producing methane at 35 cents a gallon and producing a thousand gallons per day.

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A seemingly impossible dream is becoming a reality in this laboratory in Santa Monica, California.

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Solar energy is turning water into fuel.

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This jeep runs on hydrogen made from water.

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Gerald Schaaflander pioneered a new process to make automotive fuel.

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It relies on free energy from the sun to manufacture hydrogen.

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We make a liquid hydride which we call high fuel.

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That's non-flammable, that's very inexpensive, is done through a well-known process called the Haber process.

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The process starts with this solar cell.

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It turns light into electricity.

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In normal use, the light would be sunshine.

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When the solar cells are arranged in collectors like these, the sun's energy is focused and multiplied.

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The electricity created produces hydrogen, but hydrogen is explosive.

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In this synthesizer, it combines with ammonia to create a safe liquid called a hydride.

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It is the fuel that powers this engine.

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We can make modest changes in the carburetor and the fuel line, modest change in the gas tank,

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and we can run any vehicle, any vehicle, any standard car can be verted down about three hours to run on our high fuel.

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A simple jeep, but with a new carburetor and the addition of this pressure regulator,

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it now runs on solar-created hydrogen fuel.

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The exhaust is almost entirely water vapor.

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Soon, this non-polluting solar fuel may be sold to the public for only 59 cents a gallon.

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From the simple stone dwellings of the ancients, we have taken many steps toward a solar future.

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What new technologies will tomorrow's sunrise reveal?

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Lacking the oil resources of its neighbors, Israel is turning to an intriguing form of solar energy.

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Israel was the first country to move forward into solar energy.

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Tom Hayden, chairman of Solar Cow, explains.

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They have a project at the Dead Sea called a solar pond and it generates electricity

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and potentially it could generate the 3,000 megawatts of electricity that the whole country needs.

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The Dead Sea absorbs and stores heat from the sun because of the extreme amount of salt in its water.

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A natural property of salt water is the ability to retain heat.

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A layer of fresh water is added to trap the heat at the bottom where the water becomes so hot, it actually boils.

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The steam created can run a turbine and generate electricity.

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We see solar ponds having a wide area.

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Bob French of Jet Propulsion Laboratories is an advocate.

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We can use that 200 degree source temperature for heating greenhouses, for drying crops.

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In certain industrial applications it can be used. We even think we can use it for desalinating water.

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This potent source of power is not confined to the ancient waters of the Dead Sea.

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At the Salton Sea in Southern California, Israeli and American scientists are working on a similar project.

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Without burning a drop of oil or using an ounce of uranium, this project could supply the daily needs of 600,000 people.

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I am very excited about solar ponds and I think that holding it in perspective, it can be one major element in our quest to solve our energy problems.

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It's not the solution but it is a piece of it.

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Robert Deitch of Southern California Edison.

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Solar energy has a place in the future. There's no question about that.

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It's a matter of how much and how fast we get solar energy.

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How much, how fast? These questions are a prime concern of Sandia Laboratories in Albuquerque.

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We spoke to the director, Glenn Brandfold, about the potential of photovoltaic cells.

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Photovoltaic cells are a relatively new invention, something like only 25 years old.

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A solar cell is one of the simplest devices you can think of. You take one of the most common materials on earth, silicon, purify it, put a very small amount of electrode material on it, expose it to sunlight and electricity flows.

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No moving parts, nothing to wear out. Kind of the ideal solar to electric converter.

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Can this simple device be even more efficient? Sandia engineer, Glenn Schaefer, explains one approach.

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We can use a concentrating lens such as this one to concentrate the sunlight onto the solar cell and thus replace expensive solar cell with a low-cost lens.

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It turns out nature is occasionally kind. If one doubles the sunlight illumination on a cell, you get more than twice as much electricity out.

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Presently, we're designing systems with optical concentrations of, as we say, 50 to a couple of hundred suns illumination.

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And the prospects are encouraging that these kind of systems, in fact, can be lower cost than flat panel silicon cells.

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Producing electricity in a laboratory is one thing, but can photovoltaic cells work under actual conditions?

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Strangely enough, the search took us back to a desert landscape like the one seen from the cliffside dwellings of Mesa Verde.

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The village is Chuchulik, and the 95 people who live here are Papago Indians.

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Many generations of their people are buried in this parched soil. In many ways, the passing generations have brought little change.

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The people of Chuchulik still struggle against the elements to raise their livestock and eke out a living under a burning sun.

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Until recently, the town had no electricity. The villagers gathered water by hand from a single well.

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The only sources of light were candles and kerosene lanterns.

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In 1978, Chuchulik became the first community in the world to rely entirely on solar power.

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These photovoltaic cells were installed by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

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They create 3.5 kilowatts of electricity, which can be stored in this special cluster of batteries.

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David Santos, chairman of the village, monitors the system. In spirit at least, he is a descendant of the cliff-dwelling Indians of Mesa Verde, pioneering a solar future.

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What the Nesa people put in was the refrigerators and the washing machine and the sawing machine and also the water pump.

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It runs the water pump. Everything is automatic.

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A single washing machine, electric lights, refrigeration.

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A humble step perhaps, but a fundamental one for these Papago Indians.

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They do believe that they are happy with the lights and out of their refrigerators, getting ice cubes and the washing machine.

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I believe they are pretty happy about it.

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Next, producing enough electricity for a small town is one thing. But can solar energy meet the needs of our high-tech society?

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We'll take a look when In Search of continues.

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Today, there is electricity in Chuchulik. What does the future hold? Can solar energy meet the demands of a growing technological society?

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Glenn Brandvolt of Sandia Labs.

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The country is a big country. We need a lot of energy for a variety of purposes, both centralized and decentralized.

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To do that with solar would require land size, the size of the state of Oregon.

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These huge mirrors are still now. They are part of an experimental power plant called a central receiver tower.

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When these heliostats begin to move, they will act as a concentrating lens the size of eight football fields.

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Computer control allows each mirror to track the sun with total precision.

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As they begin to move and turn their reflecting surfaces skyward, the mirrors will multiply the power of the sun over 2,000 times.

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The heat generated will be so great that our In Search of crew was only allowed to film the process from the safety of ground level.

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Liquid in the boiler at the top of the tower will be heated to temperatures of up to 4,000 degrees.

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This super heated liquid could be used to generate electricity without the use of oil or uranium.

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The forecast for solar thermal systems, whether from central receivers or line focused technology, suggests that within the next five or ten years,

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really mostly depending on volume production, that energy can be delivered at cost competitive with energy from oil or natural gas.

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This is an experiment, but at this moment a working power plant is being built at Barstow, California.

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Its 1,900 heliostats will produce 10 million watts of electricity.

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That facility will operate and cost on the order of 90 cents per kilowatt hour once it's in operation, and this is the cost to the customer.

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Whereas other energy sources, for instance, today, our nuclear energy costs approximately 1.7 cents per kilowatt hour.

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Oil generation costs approximately 4 to 5 cents per kilowatt hour and coal approximately 2 cents per kilowatt hour, so there's a vast difference in cost.

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Dr. Barry Commonerle, it's entirely possible, as I've said, to have solar devices that are bad, that are economically costly,

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and even solar techniques that are harmful to the environment.

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I think one should be very careful about creating a new solar mythology.

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From solar worship to advanced solar technology, there seems little doubt that our civilization will build its own temples to the sun.

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Solar power may never meet all of our energy needs. The future may be unclear, but here, in the isolated village of Tchuculik, right now, it works.

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A lot of people don't understand what the sun can be useful, and I don't either, but I know, I mean, it's going to, because I work at it, and so I know what the sun can do, and I'm happy about it.