‘It was an accident’: the scientists who have turned humid air into renewable power

Tesla speculated electricity from thin air was possible – now the question is whether it will be possible to harness it on the scale needed to power our homesIn the early 20th century, Serbian inventorNikola Tesla dreamed of pullinglimitless free electricityfrom the air around us. Ever ambitious, Tesla was thinking on a vast scale, effectively looking at the Earth and upper atmosphere as two ends of an enormous battery. Needless to say, his dreams were never realised, but the promise of air-derived electricity –hygroelectricity– is now capturing researchers’ imaginations again. The difference: they’re not thinking big, but very, very small.In May, a team at the University of Massachusetts (UMass) Amherstpublished a paper declaring they had successfully generated a small but continuous electric current from humidity in the air. It ’s a claim that will probably raise a few eyebrows, and when the team made the discovery that inspired this new research in 2018, it did.Continue reading...
Source: Guardian Unlimited Science - Category: Science Authors: Tags: Science Nikola Tesla Energy Environment Technology Technology sector Business Nanotechnology Source Type: news