Heather Hunsperger is a scientist, writer, and wordplay enthusiast. After earning a PhD at the University of Washington, she traded her lab coat for a keyboard to tell the stories behind the science.
We've been told for years that fast-charging kills batteries. The typical warning is that if you spring for too much current too quickly, you'll cook the lifespan. But what if that rule is wrong? A team at the Georgia Institute of Technology just flipped the script.
Thanks to reusable rockets that fly, land, and fly again, launch costs are coming back down to Earth. And that’s revived a ‘70s dream to beam clean solar energy from orbit. Space agencies around the world are revamping blueprints for giant solar farms capturing sunlight 24/7 and wirelessly
Caribbean beaches are ankle-deep in slimy, smelly seaweed. Wave after wave of sargassum is blanketing shorelines from Barbados to Cancún. It traps sea turtles. It smothers coral reefs. And it drives tourists away from islands that depend on them. This seaweed isn't just crashing weddings on the beach.
This Battery Has Blood In It (Kinda). What if the secret to next-generation batteries is circulating in your blood, and the blueprint for powering AR contact lenses is swimming in the Amazon? Humans have been building batteries for a couple hundred years, but nature has been perfecting energy systems for
When we talk about the circular economy, we picture batteries stripped for their metals, factory floor scraps spun into sweaters, and agricultural waste transformed into biogas. We don’t picture mucking out the barn to collect material for surgical masks and food packaging. Engineers are constantly looking for ways to
Imagine a world where the homes we live in, the clothes we wear, and even the sensors in our electronics weren’t manufactured, but grown. Mycelium, the root structure of fungi, is shaking up everything from sustainable construction to meatless bacon. It’s turning agricultural waste into walls, hemp into
Thorium reactors are like the solid-state batteries of nuclear power: vastly superior, yet forever on the horizon. But now, a Danish company is closer than ever to turning them into a reality. Its reactors are designed to deliver on thorium’s decades-old promise: a self-sustaining chain reaction that breeds fresh
Freshwater may soon flow from the depths of the ocean to drought-stricken coastal cities. A handful of companies are betting that crushing deep-sea pressures can replace the energy-hungry pumps and toxic chemicals that are desalination’s inconvenient truth. By going the extra quarter-mile into the ocean, they’re pioneering a
Every crashing wave delivers a pulse of power. Add them all up, and the ocean carries more energy than the roughly 30,000 TWh of electricity generated globally in 2023.12 But for decades, wave power has been a sea of broken dreams — sunk prototypes, busted budgets, and forgotten startups.
You’ve heard of paper straws and cups, but how about a paper battery? One you can compost when you’re done with it. Two companies are already proving it works, one of them with a battery that runs on sugar. So how did humble paper become a next-generation battery
CORRECTION: the original version stated that silver "price has tripled in the past three years." It's demand that tripled, not price. As renewable energy installations multiply across the globe, the first generation of solar panels, wind turbine blades, and lithium batteries is reaching the end of
Solid-state batteries could address some of the biggest issues facing energy storage and EVs; safety, charge capacity, and longevity. But the biggest problem they face? Cost. You can probably see why my interest was piqued when I heard about a new electrode manufacturing technique that apparently uses less energy, less
