How We Can Turn Desert Air Into Drinking Water
With solar on your roof and a battery in your garage, you can make your own power today. Water is the one essential you still have to buy. Now a machine pulls water from air so dry it could give you a nosebleed. The secret is a metal organic framework, a powder so remarkable that Omar Yaghi shared…
This Seaweed Was a Caribbean Disaster, Now It's Gold
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.
Why Mushrooms are Starting to Replace Everything
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
How Magnetic Cooling Is Breaking All the Rules
What if I told you your fridge — that humming box in the kitchen — could be cooled without gas, without chemicals … just magnets? It sounds futuristic, but researchers are already making it happen. It not only promises higher efficiency, but solves a critical problem with the status quo…yes, a critical
Why Ice Might Be the Future of Heating
Heat from ice? It sounds like a joke—or maybe a paradox. But what if the future of warm, cozy homes lies in freezing water? As outlandish as it seems, an English research team is working on a heat pump that runs off actual ice … well, more like slushies. It’
Can Industry Really Save the Planet?
Industries have long been criticized for their environmental impact, but some companies are starting to break away from the pack and set new standards for sustainability and innovation. These companies aren’t just cutting back on emissions and waste, but reinventing the entire life cycle of their products. And who
Why NASA’s New 3D Printed Rocket Engine Matters
3D printing rocket engines? It seems like these days you can 3D print just about anything. Just on this channel, we’ve talked about 3D printed next-gen perovskite solar panels, houses, and the development of advanced toroidal propellers for boats and drones. So you probably shouldn’t be surprised to
Why CO2 Heat Pumps Are The Future Of Cooling
How can CO2 actually help us keep the planet cooler? When it's the refrigerant in a heat pump! And these heat pumps can warm your house while they heat your water. All while being more than twice as energy efficient as their competitors, at least according to some
Top 5 Crazy innovations for Reusing Waste
The saying goes that “one man’s trash is another man’s treasure,” and as we speak, researchers around the globe are experimenting with taking this phrase literally. Right now, it’s possible to turn leftovers from brewing beer into batteries and to generate electricity from wastewater. There’s a
Why is this Propeller Getting So Much Attention?
Hey, want to hear the most annoying sound in the world? Okay, “most annoying” may be subjective, but according to a 2017 study from NASA’s Langley branch, humans find the buzz of a drone’s propellers to be more annoying than any other machine-based sound on earth, which really
Why Worms May Be the Future of Plastic Recycling
The vast majority of the world’s plastic isn’t recycled … and when it is, we spend more money to achieve less quality. It’s currently cheaper to keep producing newer plastics — at the much higher cost of human and environmental health. But nature has evolved in response. Several species
How Solar Panels Are Changing Agriculture - Agrivoltaics Revisited
As our needs for energy and food continue to rise, we’re revisiting the sunny topic of Agrivoltaics - or using land to grow food and host solar panels at the same time. Experiments in this hot space have had some really promising results over the last year, like using