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Thursday, September 13, 2007

Burning Salt Water

ERIE, Pa. (AP) — An Erie cancer researcher has found a way to burn salt water, a novel invention that is being touted by one chemist as the "most remarkable" water science discovery in a century.

John Kanzius happened upon the discovery accidentally when he tried to desalinate seawater with a radio-frequency generator he developed to treat cancer. He discovered that as long as the salt water was exposed to the radio frequencies, it would burn.

The discovery has scientists excited by the prospect of using salt water, the most abundant resource on earth, as a fuel.

Wow. Sounds crazy, but if it really works, this is HUGE. A cheap and easy source of hydrogen...wow.

Note: I should emphasize that this is not a fuel, but a dang cool way of making hydrogen gas.

7 comments:

  1. So...alright. I guess this means we'll have pumps at the stations for Plus, Special, Regular, Ethanol, and Salt Water. Pick your poison.

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  2. Nick-that's cool.

    Bry&Ash-what do you mean?

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  3. If this isn't the pudding proof that science is romantic, I'm not sure what is. Harnessing the energy of the sea, that most ancient creature, to ... watch TV. Ok, the last part sucks, but that's culture, not science.

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  4. Nick,

    If you refer to this as "Harnessing the energy of the sea, etc.", you've clearly been reading too much GKC. If there is such a thing.

    Ben

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  5. Ben, if I were reading enough Chesterton (as if it were possible to read too much of the man; you might as well try to experience too much of the world), I undoubtedly would have gone into much more depth, naming the ancient pagan gods of the sea, and their imminent fall to the powerful common sense of Christendom.

    However, since we're on the topic, what other authors should I be reading?

    Peace...Nick

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  6. What they really should be investigating, rather than whether the idea can power a car or not, is whether the energy captured from the burning water can sufficiently offset the energy required to transmit the radio waves necessary to make the water flammable.

    Ha. I just wrote "burning water".
    That's incredible.

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  7. Isn't it terribly romantic (in the sheer Chestertonian sense) to type out the words "burning water". I love it.

    On the other front, it definitely does not offset it at the moment (and according to Philip Ball over at Nature, it could not, as this would create a perpetual motion machine. I just thought it was a cool idea.

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