Another year is winding up, so it's time to look back at the scientific breakthroughs that excited us this year. From innovative new materials that open the door to more advanced tools and products, to discoveries that continue to push the borders of human knowledge, 2018 didn't fail to deliver.
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How we store that energy is a constant work in progress, and while scientists are making important but incremental advances with inventive new materials, others are out to entirely reinvent what we think of as a battery. Here are five of the most innovative examples from 2018.
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The US Department of the Interior has announced the discovery of the largest continuous oil and gas field ever found, estimated to contain 46.3 billion barrels of oil, 281 trillion ft³ of natural gas, and 20 billion barrels of natural gas liquids.
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A new study shows how fluoride might be put to work in better batteries. Researchers at Caltech, JPL, Lawrence Berkeley National Lab and the Honda Research Institute have developed fluoride-based batteries that could potentially last much longer than existing lithium-ion-based devices.
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Lithium-ion batteries aren't necessarily the best choice for grid-scale energy storage. Researchers at MIT have outlined a new system they call a “sun in a box,” which stores energy as heat in molten silicon and harvests it by tapping into the bright light it emits.
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A new study has revealed that our bodies burn calories at different rates throughout the day. The research, evaluating energy expenditure during resting states, suggests our circadian clock plays a major part in regulating metabolism.
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With a focus on storing energy from intermittent renewable sources such as wind and solar, Swiss company Energy Vault has just launched an innovative new system that stores potential energy in a huge tower of concrete blocks, which can be “dropped” by a crane to harvest the kinetic energy.
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Carbon fiber as we know it is one of the most impressive materials in our toolkit, but could it also play a role in energy storage? One team of scientists has been exploring the possibilities, raising some interesting possibilities for weight-saving vehicle design.
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More than 30 years after the worst nuclear disaster in history, the Chernobyl area is once again producing power. From the (somewhat literal) ashes of the Nuclear Power Plant springs the Chernobyl Solar Power Plant, which was officially launched with an opening ceremony on Friday.
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While experimental sodium-ion batteries continue to show promise, there are a few kinks to be ironed out before we see them become commonplace. Researchers at Purdue University are claiming to have overcome one important shortcoming by first reducing the sodium to a powder form.
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