MIT researchers discovered that light can cause evaporation of water from a surface without the need for heat. This “photomolecular effect” could be important for understanding climate change and for improving some industrial processes.
  • Optional@lemmy.world
    0·
    23 days ago

    Evaporation is all around us, and humans have been observing it and making use of it for as long as we have existed.

    And yet, it turns out, we’ve been missing a major part of the picture all along.

    In a series of painstakingly precise experiments, a team of researchers at MIT has demonstrated that heat isn’t alone in causing water to evaporate. Light, striking the water’s surface where air and water meet, can break water molecules away and float them into the air, causing evaporation in the absence of any source of heat.

    Cool. Remember when they discovered a lymph node in the brain - in, like, 2014?

    Srs, what are you poindexters even doing all day? Discovering body parts? Learning about evaporation?

    You’re supposed to be much, much further along than this.