Normally when we think of abundant energy or getting off of fossil fuels we don’t think about lasers.  Here are more of the details from their exciting findings:

“We were able to determine how light rearranges the outermost electrons of the compound on timescales down to a few hundred femtoseconds, or quadrillionths of a second,” said Philippe Wernet, a scientist at Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin for Materials and Energy who led the experiment.

Researchers hope that learning these details will allow them to develop rules for predicting and controlling the short-lived early steps in important reactions, including the ones plants use to turn sunlight and water into fuel during photosynthesis. Scientists are seeking to replicate these natural processes to produce hydrogen fuel from sunlight and water, for example, and to master the chemistry required to produce other renewable fuels.

Could you imagine the benefits to society if this gets further along?  No more oil spills, inexpensive energy, reduction of coal and other products that harm the environment.  This could be awesome.

And check out this related video on a cool efficient energy invention.

thank you to phys.org for the great write-up