BREAKTHROUGH BY MIT! Read for your own good...

Whether you knew it or not, your life was affected by this day.
Today was the day that Professor Daniel Nocera and Postdoc student Matthew Kanan unveiled to the world the device that will revolutionize the way we think about obtaining energy. Here's the situation: for years we have had the technology to harness the power of nature in clean, Carbon emission-free ways such as wind power, solar, tidal, etc. The problem with these sources is their reliability--no one will use a system where a cloudy Sunday afternoon means they can't watch the big game--and their cost. The sources are abundant, indeed, since Prof. Nocera himself says that in one day the earth receives enough energy through sunlight to meet the needs of its inhabitants for a whole year. If only we could run off these sources when they're available, but also store energy for times when they're not. If only...

http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/oxygen-0731.html
www.mit.edu Pretty picture...

The crazy thing is, hardly three weeks ago, a faculty member at the OME was kind enough to arrange a lunch for those interested where we could meet with Prof. Nocera, discuss energy policy, and even hear in a sort of "sneak preview" the project he had up his sleeve: this ingenious device. He's really confident in its potential, having already made an arrangement with a company in the Middle East that's developing an entirely green city. Think of the possibilities: no need to be hooked up to the power grid, houses could generate enough electricity from their own rooftops to heat and power the house and charge up the electric car before the next morning. The innovation of clean energy devices like photo-voltaic cells and wind turbines are finally made practical! All with a low-cost, low-tech system whose only waste product would be reusable, purified water.
Now I know this all sounds quite idealistic, and it would be naive to think there won't be snags along the path to mass implementation (the pocketbooks of the oil moguls, for one). But the admirable thing about what Prof. Nocera and his MIT crew have done is that they have released it, on this day, to engineers the world over, inviting them to jump on the challenge of making the device efficient, fully adaptable to today's P-V cells, and commercially available. The actual device might be a long way off, but the world is racing to work on it...
So, MIT births yet another good one... This is such a crazy environment, where the guys you eat lunch with one day are the ones who change the world the next... That settles it: I wanna be an environmental engineer!