We just love a happy accident, and many of them have gone down in history as major scientific breakthroughs. Past happy accidents include Alexander Fleming’s creation of penicillin, Alfred Nobel’s discovery of dynamite, and the Kellogg brothers, who accidentally invented cornflakes. Now, a new and massive energy source has been discovered by accident, and it’s floating in the air around us.
A new, massive energy source was discovered by accident
Nikola Tesla, the famous Serbian inventor, believed the surrounding air had limitless free energy, but could not prove it at the time. Fast forward to May this year, researchers from the University of Massachusetts (UMass) Amherst announced in a newly published study that they produced a small, continuous electric current from the air’s humidity. And the best part is, when they made the discovery that led to the research, it was by accident.
“To be frank, it was an accident. We were actually interested in making a simple sensor for humidity in the air. But for whatever reason, the student who was working on that forgot to plug in the power.” – Professor Jun Yao, electrical engineer at UMass Amherst and study lead author
The device in question was generating an electrical signal regardless of the absence of an obvious power source. It turns out the answer appeared from out of thin air, literally. Numerous scientists besides Tesla have been trying to harness the power from Earth’s atmosphere for centuries, and now we are closer than ever before.
Power is floating in every city’s air
According to Professor Jun Yao, the air consists of lots of electricity. So much so, that the atmosphere could meet mankind’s energy demands many times over. If the research team’s device can be magnified, it could have the potential to convert air into clean power 24/7, regardless of weather influence.
Take thunderstorms into consideration. A cloud is packed with water molecules, and each carries a small electric charge. When a storm breaks out, water molecules move within the cloud, creating kinetic energy. As a result, the top of the cloud becomes positively charged and the bottom becomes negatively charged. Once the difference in charge is high enough, a small electric current, known as lightning, breaks through from the negatively charged bottom toward the ground.
Professor Jun Yao confirmed that their device functions in a similar way to a cloud by harnessing the air’s humidity. The device then becomes charged on the top and the bottom, just like a cloud. Once the difference in charge is high enough, a small flow of electrons, or electricity, can be harnessed from those water molecules. Creating power from the air is much simpler than one would think, thanks to the happy accidental discovery.
This happy accident could change everything
Since that accidental moment five years ago, the research team has harvested power from the air. They stumbled upon bacteria with the ability to continuously produce power from humidity and decided to utilize their proteins to invent a system. Professor Jun Yao, however, was concerned about the limit on widespread use, which is why they started testing five other materials, including silk and tiny wood fibers.
All five materials have small pores, no wider than 100 billionths of a meter. Each material had promising results, as they produced small electric currents. This study proves that any material with the correct properties can harness the air’s power. According to Svitlana Lyubchik, a chemical engineer at Lusófona University in Lisbon, Portugal, the team’s device is worthy of praise, but further research on other materials will be required to harvest a large amount of power from the air. Thanks to innovative engineering, we can produce water from humidity, and soon we can power the Earth with humidity.
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