‘Solar battery’ stores sunlight for days, then releases hydrogen on demand

'Solar battery' stores sunlight for days, then releases hydrogen on demand
Catalyst solutions with luminescent ruthenium dye, which are irradiated with visible light in the reactor. Credit: Elvira Eberhardt, Ulm University

A new material can store energy from sunlight and convert it into hydrogen days later. The material, jointly developed by researchers from Ulm and Jena, can do this even in the dark. The process is reversible and can be reactivated several times using a pH switch. The results are published in the journal Nature Communications.

Green hydrogen is one of the most important pillars of the energy transition. It is produced from sunlight using photocatalytic processes. There are now a variety of technologies for converting and storing solar energy into chemical energy...

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A lost moon may have created Titan and Saturn’s rings

Cassini gazes upon Titan in the distance beyond Saturn. Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute.

Titan may be the battered survivor of a colossal moon merger that reshaped Saturn’s rings and rewrote the planet’s history.

Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, may have been born in a colossal cosmic crash. New research suggests Titan formed when two older moons slammed together hundreds of millions of years ago—an event so violent it reshaped Saturn’s entire moon system and may have indirectly sparked the formation of its iconic rings. Clues come from Titan’s unusual orbit, its surprisingly smooth surface, and the strange behavior of the tumbling moon Hyperion.

New research suggests that Saturn’s brilliant rings and its largest moon, Titan, may share a violent past shaped by c...

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Quantum effect could power the next generation of battery-free devices

A new study has revealed how tiny imperfections and vibrations inside a promising quantum material could be used to control an unusual quantum effect, opening new possibilities for smaller, faster, and more efficient energy-harvesting devices.

The international team, led by Professor Dongchen Qi from the QUT School of Chemistry and Physics and Professor Xiao Renshaw Wang from Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, studied the mechanism governing the so-called nonlinear Hall effect (NLHE). The research is published in the journal Newton.

Unlike the classical Hall effect, this quantum version allows alternating electrical signals, like those found in wireless or ambient energy sources, to be converted directly into usable direct current without the need for traditional dio...

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20 billion galaxies: New survey of the sky will reveal the universe in unprecedented detail

A cosmic tapestry of glowing tan and pink gas clouds with dark dust lanes. In the upper right, the Trifid Nebula resembles a small flower in space. Its soft, pinkish gas petals are surrounded by blue gas, and streaked with dark, finger-like veins of dust that divide it into three parts. It radiates a gentle, misty glow, diffuse and soft like the warmth of breath on a cold hand. To the lower left, the much larger Lagoon Nebula stretches wide like a churning sea of magenta gas, with bright blue, knotted clumps sprinkled throughout where new stars are born. Both nebulae are embedded in a soft tan backdrop of gas that is brighter on the left than on the right, etched with dark tendrils of dust and sprinkled with the pinpricks of millions of stars.
This image combines 678 separate images taken by NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory in just over seven hours of observing time. Combining many images in this way clearly reveals otherwise faint or invisible details, such as the clouds of gas and dust that comprise the Trifid nebula (top) and the Lagoon nebula, which are several thousand light-years away from Earth. More information about this image is available on RubinObservatory.org. Download Trifid and Lagoon at full resolution (24.14GB)
Credit: NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory

When you look up at the night sky, it appears unchanging. But if you look deep enough you will find that the sky is in fact constantly shifting. Satellites, asteroids and interstellar objects pass by...

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