Carbon

An ambitious startup called Climeworks is looking to eat into the world's carbon emissions and has just taken its biggest bite yet, flicking the switch on the largest direct air capture and CO2 storage plant on the planet.

Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere attracts most of the attention in environmental concerns, but much of that ends up in oceans, making them more acidic. Now scientists have created nanojars that can easily capture this and other pollutants from water.

Climate change can feel inevitable, but we’ve stepped up to the challenge before. New modeling shows how bad things would be if CFCs hadn’t been banned decades ago – depleted ozone would've increased UV exposure and stopped plants capturing carbon.

Ordinarily, airliners have to run their engines in order to taxi along the runway – this uses a lot of fuel, plus it generates a lot of CO2. A new in-ground towing system, however, offers what could be a more efficient and eco-friendly alternative.

Audeze helped design a pair of headphones to facilitate communication between doctor and patient during an MRI scan, without affecting the imagery produced. And this led to the development of the CRBN Electrostatic headphones for audiophiles.

Astronomers have counted the number of neutrons inside carbon atoms from 2.8 quadrillion km away. The team managed to measure the ratios of carbon isotopes in the atmosphere of an exoplanet for the first time, which can tell us about how it formed.

Along with their batteries, many electric cars now utilize supercapacitors for tasks such as quickly delivering power while accelerating. Thanks to new research, a key component of such devices could soon be made from waste tamarind shells.

A new method converts carbon from a variety of sources straight into useful forms such as graphene or diamond. The technique uses a “flash” of electricity to heat the carbon, converting it into a final form determined by the length of the flash.

MIT has developed a device that generates electricity using a completely new mechanism. “Particles” made of carbon nanotubes are dunked in an organic solvent, which induces a current to potentially power small robots or drive chemical reactions.

Researchers in Europe have developed an entirely new form of carbon, one that bears similarities to the wonder material graphene but with some useful differences that could open up new possibilities in electronics and advanced lithium batteries.

Have you ever wondered how many bubbles there are in your Friday knockoff beer? No? Well scientists apparently have, and in a new study they’ve finally answered the question nobody’s been asking, with a vague “a lot, we guess.”

Researchers at the National University of Singapore have put forward a new formula for stronger concrete that not only removes a large amount of damaging materials from the equation, but makes use of upcycled waste clay at the same time.