Scorching London skyscraper: how do you stop a 37-story ‘solar death ray’?

In what sounds like the opening scene from a Doctor Who episode, a new skyscraper in London is focusing sunlight into beams that are hot enough to damage cars and buildings.

20 Fenchurch Street, a 37-story office building nearing completion just north of the Tower of London, has earned a few nicknames from locals during its construction. Already called 'The Walkie Talkie' and 'The Pint', based on the building's shape, it's been dubbed with a new name lately, 'Walkie Scorchie'.

Due to the current angle of the Sun in the sky, for a couple of hours each day, the south face of building is reflecting sunlight down onto the street. Since that face of the building is curved inward (concave), the light reflected from each individual mirrored window pane is being focused on the ground in a circle only a few metres wide. The concentrated light is so hot that temperatures on the ground reach up to 70°C. It's scorched the carpet just inside the front door of a hair salon and caused paint to bubble up on the shop's door frame, and it even cracked some slate tiles in front of the restaurant next door.

The latest damage caused was to a Jaguar XJ owned by Martin Lindsay. He parked the car on the street for an hour, according to BBC News, only to find that the beam of light had melted parts of it, including the side mirror, the Jaguar badge and one of the back window panels.

Apparently, James Waterson, a reporter for City A.M., was able to use the cracked tiles as a hot plate to fry an egg (which he then ate for lunch), and according to NBC News, he said that spending 10 minutes under the beam was "deeply unpleasant."

So how do you stop a 'solar death ray' being beamed down from above?

Well, apparently this effect only happens for two hours a day, during two to three weeks of the year. So, for the moment, while they search for a permanent solution, the company that owns the building has put up a temporary screen at street level to act as a shield against the beam.

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A permanent solution will be needed, too. When the sun is higher in the sky, the light beam apparently doesn't reach the street, but it will be shining down onto the roofs directly underneath the building's south face (the buildings there really should check for a spike in their a/c use over the past month). When the sun is lower in the sky, the beam of reflected light will likely causing problems for anyone south of the building who has a north-facing window, possibly even as far away as Southwark, on the other side of the River Thames.

Also, the only thing that's preventing the beam from being even more intense is the distance between the building and where the light hits. So, if the beam falls on a point further away, it could cause even more damage than just melted car parts and cracked tiles, and someone could even get hurt.

Perhaps the company should consider an 'anti-reflective' coating on the windows on that side of the building, or maybe some kind of screen over the windows. It'd probably be expensive to do at this point, but likely cheaper than any resulting lawsuits.

(Photos courtesy: Getty Images)

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