Mad Scientist Appreciation Guild

Every time a laptop flares up or an electric vehicle burns on the highway, you are watching chemistry work exactly as designed. Lithium batteries rely on flammable organic electrolytes. Fire is not a design flaw. It is a chemical feature that engineers spend billions trying to contain.

The Chinese Academy of Sciences just broke the cycle. They published findings in Nature Energy detailing a water-based battery that replaces volatile solvents with an aqueous electrolyte. Water cannot undergo thermal runaway. It never burns.

The compromise has always been that safer batteries hold less power. Not anymore. This battery stores 1,200 watt-hours per liter—nearly double the current standard for lithium. It survives 120,000 charge cycles without significant degradation, making it last 30 times longer than standard lithium cells.

Physicists at the University of Texas at Austin have demonstrated a macroscopic optical tractor beam — a structured laser system that uses the photon pressure and intensity gradient forces of a precisely shaped Bessel beam to exert attractive force on objects up to 5 centimeters in diameter at distances up to 2 meters, pulling them toward the beam source without any mechanical contact. Previously, optical trapping (tweezers) worked only on microscopic particles. The Texas system moves objects visible to the naked eye. Star Trek's tractor beam is no longer science fiction. It's laboratory physics.

The physics that makes tractor beams counterintuitive is that light normally pushes — photon momentum transfer produces radiation pressure in the direction of propagation. Pulling requires exploiting scattering asymmetries: if the light scattered backward by an object carries more momentum than the incident beam, the net force on the object is toward the source. UT Austin's Bessel beam geometry — a non-diffracting ring pattern that reconstructs itself after obstacles — creates this scattering asymmetry for objects with specific optical properties, generating a net pulling force at beam powers achievable with commercially available laser systems.

The current pulling force (measured in millinewtons) limits the technology to lightweight objects and micro-assembly applications. But the scaling physics are favorable — doubling laser power doubles force, and beam shaping improvements could extend the operating principle to larger masses. Near-term applications include non-contact manipulation of delicate biological samples, semiconductor wafer alignment in manufacturing, retrieval of small satellite components in orbit, and assembly of structures in environments too hazardous for mechanical contact.

38.2K Followers

Bizarre chaos erupts on Jupiter as scientists say it’s no longer acting like a normal planet.

More about ATLAS

Californian Wild Pigs Found With Bright Blue Flesh, Officials Warn Public To “Be Aware”

Something Strange Is Happening to Tomatoes Growing on the Galápagos Islands

Mysterious 'pyramid' discovered in Antarctica beneath the ice.

Ad from 1941, artist unknown.