[ramchip]

Then focus the infrared light on a thermoelectric generator instead of a cube. The generator powers a widget. The dissipated heat from the generator and the friction on the widget goes back to the walls and is later reemitted as infrared.

That's a perpetual motion machine.

[anthonyb]

...until it hits a new equilibrium, at which point you're back to square one.

btw, from what I've been reading, it looks like you're right (ie. you can't heat anything directly to > the sun's temperature) but I can't find any explanation which makes any intuitive sense at all, just lots of stuff like http://en.allexperts.com/q/Physics-1358/Black-body-radiation... (note the hand waving) or else a bunch of hard core entropy equations.