This is great news. They'll have enough salt to last a life time!

Excellent. British science and technology at it's very best!

Where's the picture of a "sieve" that's been used to do this?

@RXStephen has a point: the problem with desalinization is the salt brine which can be around a quarter of the volume treated. It has to go somewhere without destroying ecosystems.

Like many other new developments that threaten major economic interests, this technology may wind up being bought and locked in a vault. Those who are trying to corner the market on water-delivery worldwide, will not be happy with such a simple solution.

How do you clean out the filter? I imagine that sea water would have to be ultra-filtered before it could even start this process (to remove the giant squids, etc).

One can imagine a series of these filters in gradualy decreasing porosity, each stage capitalizing on the filtered out material before passing the solution on to the next smaller mesh in the series. This would be like the screens that are used in gravel yards to arrive at an assortment of different sizes of gravel.

This will be great when they can make it quantities large enough to be economically viable. I just wish they had said what all it filters out and what size these little filter holes are. I use a Sawyer Point One water filter now, with ceramic 0.1 micron holes.

i wonder if this could be used to filter out oil when there is a spill where water is present.

So, just how big is a gold atom compared to a water molecule...?