Solar Desalination Yields Fresh Water and Solid Minerals
Researchers at the University of Rochester have demonstrated a solar-powered desalination system that converts seawater to fresh water while depositing nearly all dissolved salts as solids rather than liquid brine. Laser-etched black metal panels create superwicking surfaces that draw thin water films, evaporate them under sunlight, and direct minerals to passive edge regions via the coffee-ring effect. Tests with real Pacific, Atlantic, and Indian Ocean water confirmed self-cleaning operation without efficiency loss or chemical pretreatments. The same platform, modified with hydrogen titanate nanoparticles, recovered about half the lithium from Great Salt Lake salts.
Conventional reverse osmosis and thermal methods consume substantial energy and discharge dense brine that raises local salinity and depletes oxygen. Earlier solar thermal designs often failed on real seawater because mixed magnesium and calcium salts form impermeable scale, unlike porous sodium chloride crystals from lab solutions. The femtosecond-laser surface engineering solves that clogging problem at the microscale while enabling mineral recovery.
Key uncertainties remain around large-scale fabrication costs, long-term durability under continuous marine exposure, and the energy balance of lithium separation relative to conventional mining. Proof-of-concept devices are small; commercial viability depends on whether the panels can be manufactured cheaply enough to compete with existing plants.
Sources: ScienceDaily (University of Rochester), Light: Science & Applications, Journal of Materials Chemistry A.
Youngest Known Exoplanet Confirmed in Forming Disk
Astronomers using archival Keck Observatory data have confirmed Elias 2-24 b as the youngest known planet, less than one million years old and still accreting material inside a gap in its host star’s protoplanetary disk. The Jupiter-mass world orbits roughly 55 AU from a star 450 light-years away. Multi-epoch imaging from 2018 and 2020 showed orbital motion consistent with a planet rather than a background object or artifact, resolving a decade-old debate over a faint point of light first noted by ALMA and VLT.
Planet-formation models struggle to produce a giant planet so quickly and so far out; previous record holders were already more than five million years old. The detection supports core-accretion theory because the planet sits precisely in a cleared gap it appears to be carving while still gathering disk gas and dust. Most of the more than 6,000 known exoplanets are mature and close-in; embedded newborns remain largely invisible behind dust.
Uncertainties include the exact mass-growth rate and whether similar objects are common. Future instruments such as the recently launched Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope’s coronagraph should detect more such systems at smaller separations, testing whether current timelines systematically underestimate formation speeds.
Sources: Phys.org (NASA/Keck), The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
Earth Formed Almost Entirely from Inner Solar System Material
Isotope analysis of ten elemental systems in meteorites indicates Earth accreted almost exclusively from inner Solar System material, with outer-Solar-System contributions below two percent and possibly zero. ETH Zurich researchers compared Earth’s composition with non-carbonaceous meteorites linked to Mars and Vesta, finding a single homogeneous reservoir rather than the previously estimated 6–40 percent outer contribution. Jupiter’s early growth appears to have acted as an effective barrier that limited mixing across the protoplanetary disk.
The result challenges the long-standing explanation that Earth’s water and volatiles arrived mainly via carbonaceous chondrites from beyond Jupiter. Instead, sufficient water must already have been present in the hotter inner disk. The statistical approach using multiple isotope systems strengthens earlier two-isotope studies and predicts similar compositions for Mercury and Venus, though samples from those planets are lacking.
The chief open question is the precise mechanism that retained or delivered water so close to the young Sun. The findings also imply that rocky planets around other stars may form under more isolated inner-disk conditions than previously modeled.
Sources: ScienceDaily (ETH Zurich), Nature Astronomy.