- 2 days ago
From wireless power that can charge your phone across the room to a moon crystal that could power Earth for 45,000 years - these ideas sound like sci-fi, but scientists are actually working on them right now. We are about to dive into the tech that could change the world: long-distance energy beaming, invisible power networks, space-based solar stations, and new clean-energy breakthroughs that could reshape our future. Animation is created by Bright Side.
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Music from TheSoul Sound: https://thesoul-sound.com/
Check our Bright Side podcast on Spotify and leave a positive review! https://open.spotify.com/show/0hUkPxD34jRLrMrJux4VxV
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For more videos and articles visit: http://www.brightside.me
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This video is made for entertainment purposes. We do not make any warranties about the completeness, safety and reliability. Any action you take upon the information in this video is strictly at your own risk, and we will not be liable for any damages or losses. It is the viewer's responsibility to use judgement, care and precaution if you plan to replicate.
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00:00Pretty soon, you'll be able to charge your phone in your pocket while walking around the house.
00:05And meanwhile, your electric car will refuel while just standing in your driveway.
00:11Power will run to all your gadgets through the air, without any wires whatsoever.
00:16I know it sounds a bit sci-fi, but scientists have figured out how to do it.
00:21Don't worry, they're not going to zap electricity through the air like lightning.
00:26Instead, they'll use something much safer, magnetic fields.
00:31Let's say you have a special coil of wire that makes a magnetic field when it gets power.
00:36If you bring another coil close to it, that second coil absorbs the energy and turns it into electricity.
00:44That means you can power things without plugging them in, like a light bulb that turns on all by itself.
00:50And according to scientists at the World Health Organization, these magnetic fields are completely safe.
00:58Now, I suspect you've already used an early version of wireless electricity.
01:03When you place your electric toothbrush on its charger, or the phone on the charging mat, electric energy jumps between them.
01:11There's a special coil inside the charger that creates an invisible spinning energy field when it gets electricity from the wall.
01:18The toothbrush, or phone, has another coil inside it that catches this energy and turns it back into electricity to charge the battery.
01:28This is called electromagnetic induction.
01:31But this method only works for short distances and wouldn't be useful for powering your entire house.
01:37Some companies are already working to make this technology perfect and accessible.
01:42One company has invented their method to send power through the air, called AirCord.
01:48They use it in real-life products.
01:51One cool example is tiny video screens placed next to products in supermarkets with changing images.
01:57These screens don't need batteries or power cords.
02:01Another gadget that's running on this tech is a smart lock designed by the same company.
02:06Normally, smart electronic locks need powerful batteries, but this one stays powered without a battery and gets energy from a wide-charged transmitter in the ceiling.
02:17That transmitter is like an invisible power outlet.
02:20It works similarly to a TV remote, where you use an infrared beam to control the gadget from a distance.
02:27In this case, the transmitter takes electricity and sends it to all gadgets that need power as an infrared beam.
02:34The transmitter analyzes each device to see how much power it needs, just like a Wi-Fi router manages the Internet for different devices.
02:44If no devices need power, the transmitter goes to sleep, but it wakes up now and then to check if anything needs charging.
02:53Nikola Tesla, a brilliant inventor and electrical engineer who made significant contributions to the development of electricity,
03:00would be really happy to see all this come true.
03:04He believed he could build a system that would transmit electricity and communication signals through the Earth's ionosphere all over the world.
03:13To prove his idea, he built a special Wardenclyffe tower in New York.
03:18His plan was to use the Earth itself like a giant electrical circuit.
03:23In 1899, Tesla traveled to Colorado Springs, known for its big thunderstorms.
03:29He built a lab there to test his wireless electricity ideas.
03:34The high altitude and frequent lightning storms made it the perfect place for his experiments.
03:39Then he returned to New York, and with money from a wealthy investor, he started building the Wardenclyffe tower.
03:47Tesla placed iron rods and copper plates under the tower to help send power through the Earth.
03:53There would be a huge metal dome on top of the tower.
03:56By 1902, the tower and lab were mostly built, but Tesla ran into funding problems.
04:03The Wardenclyffe tower never worked as Tesla had hoped, and in 1917, it was torn down and sold for scrap.
04:12In any case, Tesla's idea only worked for short distances.
04:16The farther the electricity had to travel, the weaker it became.
04:20Scientists needed a way to send energy over long distances, and they found two viable solutions in the middle of the 20th century—microwaves and lasers.
04:31In 1964, engineer William C. Brown flew a tiny helicopter for 10 hours using only microwave power.
04:40Then, in 1975, Brown and a NASA scientist, Richard Dickinson, sent 30,000 watts of power over a mile, using a research station called Venus.
04:52But there was still a problem.
04:54Half of the power was lost before it reached its destination.
04:58Over the years, technology kept improving.
05:01Computers, lasers, solar panels, and transistors became more advanced and opened new horizons for wireless electricity.
05:09It could eventually help us switch to cleaner energy from fossil fuels like coal and gas.
05:16New Zealand-based company M-Rod uses power beaming technology that starts with electricity from the power grid and turns it into microwaves.
05:26These microwaves travel through the air from a sending antenna to a receiving antenna, which turns them back into electricity that we can use.
05:34But there's a problem.
05:36Various kinds of waves work in different ways.
05:39Microwaves can travel long distances without losing much power, which makes them great for sending energy to remote islands or factories.
05:47But if you try to send microwaves all the way from space, you'd need a receiver the size of a city.
05:54Lasers can make the energy beam smaller and more focused, which means the receiver can also be tiny.
06:00But lasers can be blocked by things like clouds, fog, or dust.
06:06Right now, power beaming won't replace power lines over huge distances.
06:10But it could be used for smaller projects like charging flying taxis and delivery drones in the sky,
06:17powering robots in cities and factories, and replacing backup generators during emergencies.
06:23Countries all over the world are investing in power beaming.
06:27Europe is focused on clean energy.
06:29The Japanese space agency hopes to have a giant solar power station orbiting Earth,
06:35collecting sunlight and beaming electricity down to us by the 2030s.
06:40The space station could send one gigawatt of energy, as much as a big nuclear power plant produces in a year.
06:47The space power station is still a work in progress, but the technology is getting better and cheaper.
06:53So, in the future, we might have a world where there are no more tangled wires,
06:59no more ugly power lines, and even free electricity for everyone.
07:04Japanese scientists are now working on another groundbreaking tech,
07:08a special machine that can turn sunlight and water into hydrogen fuel.
07:12This clean energy source could one day power cars, homes, and even entire cities.
07:19The current reactor is as big as a small house.
07:22It works by using photocatalytic sheets, which act like tiny solar panels that absorb sunlight and trigger a chemical reaction.
07:31This process splits water molecules into oxygen and hydrogen.
07:36It allows the hydrogen to be collected and used as fuel.
07:40Right now, the process isn't efficient enough to produce hydrogen on a large scale.
07:46Most existing methods of making hydrogen still rely on fossil fuels.
07:50But the scientists behind this new reactor found a better way.
07:55Instead of breaking water apart all at once, which wastes energy, their machine does it in two steps.
08:02First, it separates oxygen, then it collects hydrogen to make the process smoother and more effective.
08:08The team used a special photocatalyst that responds to UV light.
08:13And they found that under natural sunlight, the solar energy conversion efficiency was one and a half times higher than in the lab.
08:22In some places, with stronger sunlight, the efficiency could be even greater.
08:27But still, at its current stage, the reactor only reaches about 1% efficiency, which is far too low for commercial use.
08:35Scientists believe that for this technology to become practical, they need to increase efficiency to at least 5%.
08:42To make this happen, they need better photocatalysts and larger reactors.
08:47And they would also need to find safe ways to handle a tricky byproduct, which is a highly flammable gas created during the process.
08:56But if they can boost efficiency, many scientists and companies will start mass-producing this technology,
09:03leading to clean, renewable hydrogen energy on a large scale.
09:07Recently, Chinese scientists discovered something interesting on the Moon, an unusual crystal.
09:15Moreover, they found out that this crystal contains an element that can literally replace nuclear fuel.
09:21Let's find out more.
09:22The composition of the Moon has long remained a mystery to us.
09:28Half a century has already passed since the Apollo mission.
09:31Unfortunately, we haven't traveled to the Moon much since then.
09:34So, it's not surprising that it's not so easy for us to study it.
09:39But, recently, we've made a breakthrough in this area.
09:42In December 2020, Chinese scientists sent the Chang'a 5 probe to the Moon.
09:48The mission was named after the ancient Chinese deity of the Moon, Chang'a.
09:52Quite poetic, isn't it?
09:54Anyway, after the probe went to the nearest side of the Moon,
09:58it spent several days digging through the surface and rocks, and then returned to Earth.
10:02In total, it collected about 4 pounds of various lunar rocks, like basalt, solidified lava, and so on.
10:11And yeah, maybe it doesn't sound too impressive, but it's actually a mini-breakthrough.
10:16After all, we hadn't received any lunar samples since 1976.
10:21And these samples are very important for learning the history of our world.
10:26We've been struggling for many years to find out, for example, how the Moon was born at all.
10:31Yes, there were a lot of theories, but we still couldn't find any proper evidence for any of them.
10:38But thanks to the latest missions and some computer simulations, scientists finally found out the truth.
10:45The Moon was born when some random dwarf planet crashed into our Earth many millions of years ago.
10:51This dwarf planet was slightly smaller than Mars.
10:54The fragments of the Earth went into space, but some of them stayed in our orbit.
10:59Then they stuck together and formed the Moon.
11:03It sounds horrifying, but in reality, the birth of the Moon was the best thing to ever happen to our planet.
11:09If it weren't for this beautiful satellite, all our oceans would be small puddles.
11:14Life wouldn't have appeared on Earth at all.
11:17So this is already an amazing discovery.
11:20But that's still not all.
11:21Studying the collected rocks, scientists from the Beijing Research Institute discovered something unusual.
11:28A rare lunar crystal.
11:31Looks pretty boring, doesn't it?
11:33Just some tiny transparent monocrystal about the thickness of a human hair.
11:37We've already found such things on the Moon before.
11:40These crystals were formed as a result of volcanic activity, just like some garnets on the Earth.
11:46And yep, the place where they discovered these crystals also suffered from volcanoes, 1.2 billion years ago.
11:53That means that this tiny baby is over a billion years old.
11:59But that's not the most important thing.
12:01It's the fact that this crystal is made of a unique material, the one that we've never seen before.
12:07Researchers from the International Mineralogical Association have confirmed that such a composition can't be found anywhere on Earth.
12:16The crystal was named Chongacite, again after the same Moon deity.
12:22And this is another achievement.
12:24This is the sixth previously unknown mineral that we've found on the Moon, and the first one found by China.
12:31Now, it has become the third country in the world to make such a lunar discovery.
12:36However, this tiny crystal still wasn't the only remarkable thing they found.
12:41After studying this gem and about 140,000 other lunar particles, scientists have discovered something else.
12:48They found helium-3.
12:51Why is it so important?
12:53Because this is one of the elements that feed the Sun and other stars in our universe.
12:58We tend to say stuff like, put out the Sun, the Sun is burning, and so on.
13:06And this is one of the reasons why many people actually think that the Sun is a huge fireball.
13:12But it's not.
13:13It's burning is actually a completely different process, which is called nuclear fusion.
13:19The process itself is quite simple.
13:23During this reaction, hydrogen in the star turns into helium.
13:27But this simple process is actually one of the most violent and insane reactions in the universe.
13:33There's a real boiling broth of particles inside the Sun.
13:37The hydrogen nuclei that jump and rush there are constantly repelling each other, since all of them are positively charged.
13:45And so, they could continue to boil and chill around without bothering anyone, if it weren't for the stars.
13:51The stars turned out to be cheaters.
13:54They have such strong gravity that they basically grab billions of these little atoms and squeeze them together.
14:01Combining with each other, these atoms create new heavy elements, like the mentioned helium.
14:07And when this happens, they throw a lot of energy into space.
14:12And that's how the Sun burns.
14:14At the same time, it spreads so much energy that we can't even imagine.
14:19Okay, so what is helium-3?
14:22Well, this is an element to which even the Sun can say,
14:25Whoa, dude, you should calm down.
14:27The fusion of helium-3 atoms releases even more energy than in typical nuclear fusion.
14:33And most importantly, it doesn't pollute the atmosphere with harmful things like radiation.
14:39We have very, very little helium-3 on Earth.
14:44Its prevalence in our atmosphere is about one in a million.
14:48And besides, it's constantly trying to escape from us back into space.
14:52Probably feels some bad vibes from us.
14:54However, scientists have recently found out that there's a place that contains a lot of this element.
15:02Yep, you guessed it.
15:04It's the Moon.
15:05We think that there's more helium-3 on the Moon than on Earth because of the solar winds.
15:11The Sun has been hammering on the Moon with its helium-3 for billions of years.
15:16So now, it's all over the place.
15:19It's still not too much if you compare it, for example, with Jupiter or Saturn.
15:23But don't forget how much energy it can release.
15:27For your information, with only 25 tons of helium-3,
15:31it's possible to provide America with energy for an entire year.
15:36Now, there are 35,000 tons of it here on Earth.
15:39And more than a million tons on the Moon.
15:42Only these sources could feed the entire U.S. for thousands of years.
15:47So basically, in the future, helium-3 may become a new source of fuel.
15:53And it's better than nuclear fuel in basically everything.
15:57Helium-3 won't leave any harmful waste and radiation.
16:00It's more powerful and not that dangerous.
16:03In other words, this environmentally friendly and efficient energy
16:07could be a revolution for our planet.
16:10Sounds cool, huh?
16:12So, what are we waiting for?
16:14Grab the shovels, you might say.
16:16But there's a little problem here.
16:18Unfortunately, we haven't yet come up with anything as wildly strong and hot as the stars.
16:24To use helium-3, we need crazy temperatures and pressure.
16:29We need a thermonuclear reactor, and we have no idea how to build it.
16:33Yet.
16:34And even if we could heat it up to such temperatures and get the needed pressure,
16:39we still don't really know how to handle helium-3 correctly.
16:43Therefore, even if we have an infinite amount of helium-3, we still won't be able to use it.
16:50But still, there's a great power behind helium-3.
16:52So, it's not surprising that different countries have already started a race for nuclear resources.
16:59Now that Chang'a 5 has discovered a new helium-3 deposit on the nearest side of the moon,
17:04this race can become downright global.
17:07For example, China already plans a new lunar mission in 2024, Chang'a 6.
17:13During this mission, they want to collect the first samples from the far side of the moon.
17:20As you can see, finding this lunar crystal was very important for us.
17:24These crystals can help us find new ways to create helium-3.
17:28And if we manage to do that, humankind will enter a new era.
17:33But to do this, we still have to solve a number of problems.
17:37How to deliver a bunch of these lunar crystals to Earth?
17:40How to make them produce energy?
17:42And so on.
17:44Let's hope that in the future, these issues will be resolved.
17:47And we'll find a way to produce clean, safe, unlimited energy.
17:54That's it for today.
17:55So, hey, if you pacified your curiosity, then give the video a like and share it with your friends.
18:00Or if you want more, just click on these videos and stay on the bright side.
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