Instead of a battery, the new concept is a kind of fuel cell — which is similar to a battery but can be quickly refueled rather than recharged. In this case, the fuel is liquid sodium metal, an inexpensive and widely available commodity. The other side of the cell is just ordinary air, which serves as a source of oxygen atoms. In between, a layer of solid ceramic material serves as the electrolyte, allowing sodium ions to pass freely through, and a porous air-facing electrode helps the sodium to chemically react with oxygen and produce electricity.
In a series of experiments with a prototype device, the researchers demonstrated that this cell could carry more than three times as much energy per unit of weight as the lithium-ion batteries used in virtually all electric vehicles today.
A great deal of research has gone into developing lithium-air or sodium-air batteries over the last three decades, but it has been hard to make them fully rechargeable. “People have been aware of the energy density you could get with metal-air batteries for a very long time, and it’s been hugely attractive, but it’s just never been realized in practice,” Chiang says.
By using the same basic electrochemical concept, only making it a fuel cell instead of a battery, the researchers were able to get the advantages of the high energy density in a practical form. Unlike a battery, whose materials are assembled once and sealed in a container, with a fuel cell the energy-carrying materials go in and out.
The researchers envision that to use this system in an aircraft, fuel packs containing stacks of cells, like racks of food trays in a cafeteria, would be inserted into the fuel cells; the sodium metal inside these packs gets chemically transformed as it provides the power. A stream of its chemical byproduct is given off, and in the case of aircraft this would be emitted out the back, not unlike the exhaust from a jet engine.
But there’s a very big difference: There would be no carbon dioxide emissions. Instead the emissions, consisting of sodium oxide, would actually soak up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. This compound would quickly combine with moisture in the air to make sodium hydroxide — a material commonly used as a drain cleaner — which readily combines with carbon dioxide to form a solid material, sodium carbonate, which in turn forms sodium bicarbonate, otherwise known as baking soda.
“There’s this natural cascade of reactions that happens when you start with sodium metal,” Chiang says. “It’s all spontaneous. We don’t have to do anything to make it happen, we just have to fly the airplane.”
As an added benefit, if the final product, the sodium bicarbonate, ends up in the ocean, it could help to de-acidify the water, countering another of the damaging effects of greenhouse gases.
Initially, the plan is to produce a brick-sized fuel cell that can deliver about 1,000 watt-hours of energy, enough to power a large drone, in order to prove the concept in a practical form that could be used for agriculture, for example. The team hopes to have such a demonstration ready within the next year
Our entire economic system, and the world along with it, are doomed to fail if we dont move the money that billionaires have been squatting on. All the exploitation and poverty that exists in the world can be tied to billionaires parking money that should be moving through the hands of Americans and out to the rest of the world.
Ive recently started looking into just where our money went. Although we all know the answer inherently, I suppose moreso I have been trying to more acutely visualize how it has been taken away.
The median income today is roughly equivalent to the median income of 1958, so if you are just looking at raw inflation you might think people are paid on par with the value of money in 1958. The reality is that inflation does a piss poor job of showing you the whole story.
In 1958 the median household could afford everything that was needed for a family of four and then some. The 2% richest income bracket in 1958 made only $15k or more, equating to an income of around $170k today. There was only 1 billionaire at the time, J Paul Getty, who was the richest man in the world and worth the equivalent of $12B today.
Flash forward to today, the median is at a nearly inflationary equivalent point, but appx. $75k a year is hardly enough for 1 individual to live comfortably, let alone an entire family of four. This means that 50% of all households are well below what it costs for one person to have healthy finances in 2025. It also means that the richest 2% of households in 1958 would hardly be able to afford a comfortable cost of living of a family of four in 2025 (about 170k at its cheapest).
If that isnt a ridiculous enough statistic to show you how viciously American wages have stagnated in favor of making the rich even richer, then consider this: In 1958 child laborers were paid $1 per hour, the minimum wage at the time. Assuming that child worked 40 hours in a week, they would have made a little over $2k in the year. Relative to the GDP of the united states at the time (about $480B) that would equate to making over $1M per year today. Therefore, everyone currently making less than $1M per year (pretty much everybody) has less buying power than the average 10 year old child laborer in 1958.
With this in mind, its easier to see how inflation doesnt tell the whole story. That $1 minimum wage might equate to $12 today, which is higher than the federal minimum wage, and the state minimum in about 25 states. But even if the minimum wage were brought on par with that base metric (which again was considered the appropriate wage for literal children), a person making $12 would have absolutely no buying power relative to a minimum wage earner back then.
To put it further in perspective, a household earning the median income of $5k back in the day would be the GDP-relative equivalent of making over $40M per year in 2025, even though it would be the inflationary equivalent of earning less than $75k a year.
Now, Im not an economist whatsoever. Im just a guy. And im sure there are some methodological issues with looking at wage strength relative to GDP for serious purposes. But I think doing so makes it pretty clear that we have hardly a fraction of the buying power of the average American back then. Where did all that money go? Into the bank accounts of billionaires.
Going back to Getty, the first billionaire, would have had the equivalent of an unfathomable $12B today. Elon Musk has $433B just himself. He is 36x richer than how rich Getty ever was. He is not alone up there either. In total, the US today has 812 more billionaires than we had in 1958. If we capped all wealth at $12B, or the equivalent of Getty’s wealth back then, then every billionaire in the US would still have $1B-$12B, and we could immediately move the excess $5T that they have collectively been sitting on. US worker wages could be raised to a point which meets actual cost of living. Wages around the world could finally rise in step, ending crushing poverty that plagues the globe.
Even if we pegged modern billionaires to the same level of wealth relative to GDP as Getty, who was 1/481B, then no one would be allowed to be worth over $62B today.
The wool has collectively been pulled over our eyes for nearly 100 years. We have been pushed to accept the bare minimum that they could get away with, while they stuff their pockets for no functional reason. A game of numbers that creates limitless suffering around the world for the benefit of no one. All so they can feel good looking at their estimated worth in Forbes magazine. We dont deserve this, the people of the world dont deserve this. And the whole world is gonna go tits up if we dont fix it. The existence of the 0.01% comes at the cost of the rest of humanity. The next time you cant afford child care, healthcare, or even your groceries, remember where your money is. Its in their accounts