Thursday, November 03, 2005

The Kind of Research $60 Crude Generates - YEAH

I have been a Star Trek fan for as long as it has been on TV. I'm old so I remember Scotty, Capt Kirk et al.

But the best actually was Star Trek Next Gen. I have seen every single episode at least once and some several times. I have favorites.

So, it was not without some fascination that I saw this article about deconstructing water into Hydrogen and Oxygen without the use of electricity. Up till now, you could put a plus and minus electrode in water, induce power and H2 and O would bubble up.

Problem was it took 10 times the energy to produce a single therm of power. Even I can do that.

But, you remember in Star Trek NG, Jordie and Data were always fiddling with the Dilithium Crystals. No one knows what that was. But it powered the Enterprise. Sometimes they had to stop off at some planet to find fresh Dilithium.

Scientists in Tokyo have discovered a crystal which produces Hydrogen and Oxygen from water without using electricity. It uses light. And the catalyst is, Get This, ""Tokyo University of Science said Wednesday that they have succeeded in producing hydrogen from water through the use of gallium nitride (GaN) crystals.""

Beam me up, I'm ready for transport

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