Gas giant planets are among the most beautiful and awe-inspiring worlds. In our own solar system we’ve long gazed at Jupiter’s extraordinary swirling atmosphere, where stormy circulations like the Great Red Spot persist for centuries. We’ve also been captivated by Saturn’s vast ring system, on average barely sixty or so feet in thickness but over [...]

“We are starstuff”, it’s a well-used phrase in popular astronomy (yes, we are. The nuclei of most heavy atoms in your body were forged long before our solar system existed, a million kilometers down inside the cores of long-since-gone massive stars). “We contain matter as old as the universe” (absolutely. Pretty much all the hydrogen [...]

It may seem slightly ridiculous to consider the prospects for a future solar-hydrogen economy at an institute for theoretical physics in Waterloo, Canada. After all, Canada is the capital of unconventional oil, also known as oil sands, also known as tar sands, which supply more than a million barrels of oil per day to the [...]

As automakers ramp up their plans to put greener vehicles on the road, hydrogen storage has become a pivotal issue. Whereas it’s been suggested that graphene could play an important role in retaining hydrogen for use in fuel cells and other technologies, a team of researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) [...]

One drinking-water bottle could provide enough energy for an entire household in the developing world if Dan Nocera has his way. A chemist from M.I.T. and founder of the company Sun Catalytix, Nocera has developed a cobalt-based catalyst that allows him to store energy the same way plants do: by splitting water. "Almost all the [...]

Editor’s Note: A team of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute students traveled up New York’s Hudson River on the New Clermont, a 6.7-meter boat outfitted with a pair of 2.2-kilowatt hydrogen fuel cells to power the boat’s motor. The 240-kilometer journey began from Manhattan’s Pier 84 on September 21 and concluded October 2 near Rensselaer’s campus in [...]

Editor’s Note: A team of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute students was traveling up New York’s Hudson River this week on the New Clermont, a 6.7-meter boat outfitted with a pair of 2.2-kilowatt hydrogen fuel cells to power the boat’s motors. Their journey began September 21 from Manhattan’s Pier 84 and was to cover 240 kilometers (at [...]

In the future, Apple might be using hydrogen to power its iPhones and iPods. According to the Daily Mail, Apple has already filed a patent application for a new hydrogen battery technology. In its “Fuel Cell System to Power a Portable Computing Device” patent application, Apple claims that “[s]uch fuel cells and associated fuels can [...]

If petroleum-based fuels are not the future for the transportation industry, what will take their place? Today, biofuels play a significant role, moving a portion of the nation’s energy supply away from traditional gasoline and diesel. But, concerns surrounding the amount of farmland used to produce these biofuels rise, it becomes increasingly unlikely that biofuels [...]