Harnessing energy directly from the sun via quantum tunneling

In the universe of my story, the Earth is ridden with metahumans with uncanny powers that do all sorts of different things. Of course, to do all this, they would require a tremendous amount of energy, greater than anything the human body can produce alone. So that got me thinking of what their energy source could be.

Obviously, we all know solar panels are able to convert ultraviolet rays from the sun into electrical energy, but because the level of radiation (and therefore energy) dissipates the further away the rays are from the sun, we can only collect an incredibly small portion of the sun's energy for a solar panel.

But what if we cut out the middle man? What if there was some device that could directly harness the energy straight from the sun itself via quantum tunneling perhaps? Scientists have actually done something similar. https://bigthink.com/philip-perry/physicists-leverage-quantum-tunneling-to-collect-energy-from-earths-heat. As you can see from the article here, they say that the waves of the infrared radiation from the sun are miniscule and only last for less than a second. But what if there was a device precise and fast enough to catch these waves?

So basically what I'm asking is what could be the plausible science behind this sort of thing for the world I'm building?

posted about 4 years ago

Strivs‭

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