From a distance, the Ivanpah solar plant looks like a shimmering lake in the Mojave Desert. Up close, it’s a vast alien-like installation of hundreds of thousand of mirrors pointed at three towers, ...

Andersen recognized that modern materials, satellite-guided orientation systems, and computer-controlled mirrors could do what Eyde couldn’t achieve a century before. And so the project—called ...

Renowned Russian pace engineer Vladimir Syromiatnikov believed that an enormous mirror could be used to bounce sunlight onto ...