Scientists Discover How to Convert CO2 into Powder That Can Be Stored for Decades

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January 03, 2024

Welcome to 2024! We're sailing into the New Year with an exciting discovery out of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Researchers have successfully transformed carbon dioxide into a powdery substance called sodium formate that could safely be stored for decades or used as fuel. If given the space and resources to scale up the process, this could be a game-changing achievement. Read more about the technology in this week's top story!

Andrea Gawrylewski, Chief Newsletter Editor @AGawrylewski

Climate Change Scientist Discover How to Convert CO2 into Powder That Can Be Stored for Decades A team of scientists has figured out how to convert planet-warming carbon dioxide into a harmless powdery fuel that could be converted into clean electricity By John Fialka,E&E News

Artificial Intelligence Tech Billionaires Need to Stop Trying to Make the Science Fiction They Grew Up on Real Today's Silicon Valley billionaires grew up reading classic American science fiction. Now they're trying to make it come true, embodying a dangerous political outlook By Charles Stross

Automobiles Sorry, It's $15 to Drive into Midtown Manhattan The first U.S. congestion pricing program, starting in New York City as soon as May, aims to slash emissions and traffic By Minho Kim,E&E News

Computing The Most Important Unsolved Problem in Computer Science Here's a look at the million-dollar math problem at the heart of computation By Jack Murtagh

Artificial Intelligence New Class of Antibiotics Discovered Using AI A deep-learning algorithm helped identify new compounds that are effective against antibiotic-resistant infections in mice, opening the door to AI-guided drug discovery By Tanya Lewis

Renewable Energy There's a Better Way to Mine for Electric Vehicle Batteries We do not want to trade the harm of emissions from gasoline vehicles for the harm caused by unsustainable mining practices By Beia Spiller,Sangita Kannan

Politics How Search Engines Boost Misinformation Data voids in search results can lead down rabbit holes that bolster belief in fake news By Lauren Leffer

Behavior Technology Is Secretly Stealing Your Time. Here's How to Get It Back Technology is supposed to save us time, right? Turns out, it's stealing some of our most precious time, but it's not too late to get it back By Ruth Ogden,Joanna Witowska,Vanda Černohorská,The Conversation US

Automobiles EV Batteries Are Dangerous to Repair. Here's Why Mechanics Are Doing So Anyway Fixing car and e-bike batteries saves money and resources, but challenges are holding back the industry By Maddie Stone,Grist

Artificial Intelligence AI Beats Humans on Unsolved Math Problem Large language model does better than human mathematicians trying to solve combinatorics problems inspired by the card game Set By Davide Castelvecchi,Nature magazine

QUOTE OF THE DAY "I think we have a big break here. I could leave 10 tons of this stuff to my granddaughter for 50 years." Ju Li, MIT professor leading the research team that transformed CO2 into powder.

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