Turning CO2 Back into Fuel

What to do with all that CO2?" It's a question that's always vexed me, especially when I'm stuck in traffic behind five semis, two SUVs, and we're all doing 85MPH while passing a plant like the one pictured here. Ugh. Seriously...what to do with the CO2? Well, some scientists in Britain have a cunning plan. They're working on research into using some serious chemistry and nanoscience to capture CO2 from the air, and transform it into something useful, like maybe plastics, or even ethanol.

Yep, from your gas tank, to your car exhaust, through the electro-chemical ringer, and then back to your tank.

Now, there are already other efforts to do this, but those methods rely on separate technologies to capture and then convert the CO2. The British team (researchers from the University of Bristol, the University of Bath, and the University of West England) want to combine it all into one, more efficient process.

Imagine if those chimneys above were lined with a special polymer that would not only scrub out the CO2, but actually turn it into something else.

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Nanotube Propels Atoms Into Black-Hole Spiral

Physicists have created something akin to a black hole in their labs.

It's on the atomic scale, that is, very, very small. But it's the first time anything like this has ever been done and the experiment could prompt innovations in nano-sized devices.

Lene Vestergaard Hau, a physicist at Harvard University, and her colleagues cooled atoms to just a fraction of a degree above absolute zero. Next, they shot the cooled atoms toward a suspended single-walled carbon nanotube they named "Lucy." The nanotube had 300 volts of charge surging through it.

Atoms that came within a micron of the charged nanotube became attracted to it, spiraling around it at faster and faster speeds, maxing out at more than 2,700 miles per hour.

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