Environmental Research: Climate was launched in 2022, with the aim of uniting multidisciplinary communities. With a scope that is intentionally broad, the mission of the journal is to publish innovative research examining the causes, consequences, and solutions of climate variability and change. Since our launch, we have published more than 270 articles covering physical and biogeochemical processes that shape Earth’s climate across spatial and temporal scales; the human and ecological dimensions that shape climate-related risks and impacts; and the design, analysis and evaluation of climate mitigation, adaptation, and risk-management strategies and solutions. This webinar will explore the current state of climate research, including changes in the field over the last five years since the launch of the journal, and direct us toward the future.

Moderator: Noah Diffenbaugh, Stanford University
Noah Diffenbaugh is the William Wrigley Professor and Kimmelman Family Senior Fellow in Stanford’s Doerr School of Sustainability, and the Olivier Nomellini Family University Fellow in Undergraduate Education. His research is focused on understanding what aspects of the climate system most directly and acutely impact people and ecosystems. Noah has served as a Lead Author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and as editor-in-chief of the peer-review journals Geophysical Research Letters and Environmental Research: Climate. He has provided testimony and scientific expertise to federal, state and local officials. Noah is an elected Fellow of the American Geophysical Union (AGU), a recipient of the James R. Holton Award and William Kaula Award from the AGU, and has been recognized as a Kavli Fellow by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences.

Katharine Mach, University of Miami
Katharine Mach is professor and chair of the Department of Environmental Science and Policy at the University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric, & Earth Science. During spring 2025, she was the Coleman P. Burke Distinguished Visiting Professor at the Yale School of Environment. Her research assesses climate-related risks and response options to address increased flooding, extreme heat, wildfire and other hazards. Through innovative approaches to integrating evidence, she informs effective adaptations to the risks.

Katharine was the 2020 recipient of the Piers Sellers Prize for world-leading contribution to solution-focused climate research. She has served as a chapter author or lead in the Fourth through Sixth US National Climate Assessments and the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report and as a member of the National Academies Climate Security Roundtable. She serves as co-editor-in-chief for Climate Risk Management, an editorial board member for Oxford Open Climate Change and Environmental Research: Climate, and an advisory committee member for the Aspen Global Change Institute. Across all of her research projects, she engages in relevant policy processes and explores and discusses climate risk and adaptation with the media, the private sector, nongovernmental organizations and communities.

Andrew Pershing, Climate Central
As chief programme officer, Andrew Pershing, PhD, leads Climate Central’s climate science activity. His role includes bridging primary research and media analysis to amplify critical work on climate change and climate impacts and make it accessible to audiences around the world. As the director of attribution science and climate fingerprinting, Andrew is developing tools like the Climate Shift Index to quantify how climate change has increased the likelihood or severity of conditions in the atmosphere and ocean. He works closely with communications experts at Climate Central and our partners to help the media and others to incorporate this information into their content.

Andrew has led interdisciplinary research teams to study the impact of global warming on marine ecosystems in the northwest Atlantic. More recently, his work has focused on how climate trends interact with decisions that people make and on how marine ecosystems store and process carbon. As a communicator, Andrew has deep experience working with journalists to present climate science on air and in print.

Inês Azevedo, Stanford University
Inês M Lima Azevedo is a professor in the Energy Science & Engineering department at Stanford University. She is a senior fellow at both Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment and for Precourt Institute for Energy. She has a BSc in environmental engineering (2004) and a MSc in engineering policy and management of technology from IST-Portugal, and a PhD in engineering and public policy from Carnegie Mellon University (2009). Inês is passionate about solving problems that include environmental, technical, economic and policy issues, where traditional engineering approaches play an important role but cannot provide a complete answer. In particular, she is interested in assessing how energy systems are likely to evolve, which requires comprehensive knowledge of the technologies that can address future energy needs and the decision-making process followed by various agents in the economy.

About this journal

Environmental Research: Climate explores the causes, consequences, and solutions of climate variability and change, by uniting research communities across the entire spectrum of the climate system.

Editor-in-chief: Noah Diffenbaugh Stanford University, USA

The post Environmental Research: Climate, fireside chat appeared first on Physics World.

The Bullet Cluster of galaxies might only have half as much dark matter than scientists thought, or perhaps even none at all, according to a new look at observations of this immense collision of galaxies from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).

“Our results indicate that the required amount of additional unseen mass – dark matter – is reduced,” astrophysicist Dong Zhang of the University of Bonn, who led the study, tells Physics World.

The Bullet Cluster is a central battleground for proponents of alternative models of gravity seeking to usurp dark-matter theory. The cluster itself is actually two clusters of hundreds of galaxies that have collided head-on. In 2006 the Hubble Space Telescope mapped how the Bullet Cluster’s mass was warping space and creating gravitational lensing, and from this it was possible to infer where the dark matter in the cluster was relative to the galaxies themselves and the hot, X-ray emitting gas. While the galaxies and hot gas remained in the middle, the dark matter from both colliding clusters had passed through unhindered and is now on opposite sides – exactly as dark-matter theory predicted.

In 2025 the JWST observed the Bullet Cluster and the initial analysis, led by Sangjun Cha of Yonsei University, found that while the distribution of mass in the cluster is more complex than expected, it still supports the dark-matter model.

“Those JWST observations of the Bullet Cluster have sparked a lot of interest,” says astrophysicist Richard Massey of Durham University, who was not involved in the new study.

Counting stellar remnants

Astrophysicists led by Zhang have now made their own analysis of the JWST data and arrived at a very different conclusion, as they report in Physical Review D.

Zhang’s team aimed to precisely measure the total mass of not just the stars, but also of dark stellar remnants – white dwarfs, neutron stars and black holes formed when stars die – to see if these objects could account for the extra gravity attributed to dark matter. They found that there would be enough stellar remnants to reduce the amount of dark matter required by half, at least. Furthermore, applying MOND (modified Newtonian dynamics) to the cluster potentially removes the need for dark matter entirely.

They utilized a model called the integrated galaxy-wide initial mass function (IGIMF), which is a variation on the standard IMF that describes how a collapsing molecular cloud fragments into clumps that produce stars. The standard IMF favours low-mass over high-mass stars.

However, variations in chemical compositions, stellar radiation fields and the rate at which gas cools in a given environment mean that the IMF varies from galaxy to galaxy. The IGIMF is designed to get around this by integrating over the full stellar population of a galaxy, or in this case, an entire cluster of galaxies.

“The IGIMF framework was developed independently of MOND and is motivated by observational constraints related to star formation and stellar populations,” says Zhang.

One of the quirks of the IGIMF is that it predicts that in the early universe, more massive stars formed in giant elliptical galaxies than form in galaxies today, consequently producing more stellar remnants than what the standard IMF predicts. Such giant galaxies exist in the core of clusters such as the Bullet. Since massive stars leave behind massive remnants when they go supernova, the gravity of these remnants could account for a large amount of the dark matter. This is supported, says Zhang, by the abundance of heavy elements in some galaxies that’s hard to explain without invoking an early population of very massive stars.

When the quantity of stellar remnants predicted by the IGIMF is applied to the standard model of cosmology “it does not appear sufficient to account for the strong lensing mass in the central regions of the Bullet Cluster,” says Zhang. It is only when applying MOND that things begin to align, he adds.

Questioning the mass function

However, not everyone is convinced by the choice to use the IGIMF over the standard IMF.

“It’s kind of a neat theoretical framework, in which aspects that could produce a total IMF are broken down into separate mathematical terms that can be modelled individually,” says Massey. “But it’s also kind of irrelevant for this sort of empirical analysis, since mainstream analyses already assume that the IMF varies between galaxies, and even in different regions of a galaxy.”

Traditionally, estimating the total stellar mass of a galaxy is accomplished by taking spectra or multi-band photometry and employing a technique called “stellar population synthesis” that best-fits a galaxy’s light to a particular distribution of stellar masses, Massey explains.

“However, the emitted light can be dominated by the brightest, most massive stars,” he says, meaning that the far greater number of less massive stars has to be extrapolated from a galaxy’s stellar mass function, which is derived from the IMF while factoring in the galaxy’s age.

Stellar remnants are even more difficult to detect directly, hence the dependency on the IMF or IGIMF.

“Stellar remnants cannot generally be detected in external galaxies beyond the Milky Way and its satellites,” says Kathy Romer, an astrophysicist at the University of Sussex who studies galaxy clusters. “Exceptions would be via gravitational-wave events or ultra-luminous X-ray binaries, but those are only the tip of the iceberg, so estimates of the total contribution of stellar remnants will always be an extrapolation of what we measure in the Milky Way and Magellanic Clouds.”

Like Massey, who describes IGIMF as being “less mainstream”, Romer is also sceptical about the new results, but acknowledges that “there are some strong aspects to their paper” and that “bringing fresh perspectives and challenging the orthodoxy is essential to keep science moving forward”.

Massey also highlights recent work from a team led by Gregor Rihtarŝiĉ and including Douglas Clowe of Ohio University who led the original Hubble observations of the Bullet Cluster, and who are running simulations to try and refine their maps of dark matter in the cluster.

The post Does the Bullet Cluster contain a lot less dark matter than we thought? appeared first on Physics World.

To play, click or drag one or more tiles to move them into the empty space. Repeat until you have reconstructed the image.

Image courtesy: iStock/Galeanu Mihai

Fancy some more? Check out our puzzles page.

The post Physics and the green economy: a slide puzzle appeared first on Physics World.

The fast-charging performance of lithium-ion batteries is strongly influenced by the structure of porous electrodes and its evolution during battery operation. In such electrodes, ionic transport is governed by the electrolyte conductivity as well as by the porosity, tortuosity and thickness of the electrode. The latter parameters undergo both reversible and irreversible changes, induced by the lithiation and delithiation of graphite particles and by the formation of the solid–electrolyte interphase (SEI).

We will discuss how SEI formation alters electrode thickness, porosity and tortuosity. Particular emphasis will be placed on how these structural changes depend on the initial electrode porosity and how SEI formation can be quantitatively linked to the evolution of transport properties.

Second, we will address state-of-charge–dependent effects. Graphite particle expansion during lithiation changes the pore structure, influencing electrode porosity, thickness and pore volume. It will be shown how these changes affect ionic resistance and electrolyte transport, and how they connect to macroscopic effects such as the recently described electrolyte-motion–induced salt inhomogeneity (EMSI).

Together, these insights provide a coherent picture of how SEI formation and state-of-charge-dependent expansion alter ionic transport in porous graphite anodes, offering guidance for electrode design and improved methodologies for realistic parameter determination used in battery modelling and fast-charging optimisation.

Lennart Reuter received his PhD from the Technical University of Munich (TUM) in June 2025 under the supervision of Hubert Gasteiger and is now a postdoctoral researcher at Uppsala University. His research centres on identifying and quantifying material and electrolyte decomposition processes in lithium-ion batteries. He implemented OEMS for gas analysis in the presence of volatile commercial electrolytes and developed a novel three-electrode cell for the operando detection of parasitic side reactions. In addition, he investigated structural and transport changes in porous electrodes during operation, including the characterisation of porous transport properties by electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS).

Jonas Dickmanns is a PhD candidate at the Chair of Technical Electrochemistry, supervised by Hubert Gasteiger at the Technical University of Munich (TUM), focusing on advanced lithium-ion battery cell chemistry and anode materials. He received his MSc in chemistry from TUM, where he worked on the electrochemical characterisation of graphite. He later expanded his research to other anode materials, including microscale silicon and silicon/carbon composites. His work investigates key electrode processes such as solid–electrolyte interphase (SEI) formation, structural evolution of anodes, and electrolyte interactions. The goal of his research is to enhance the performance, stability and lifetime of next-generation lithium-ion batteries.

The post Changes in structure and ionic resistance of lithium-ion battery graphite electrodes appeared first on Physics World.

“The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious,” wrote Albert Einstein. “It is the source of all true art and science.” It is a reminder that wonder – particularly in the natural world – lies at the heart of both disciplines. When it comes to an issue as multifaceted and emotive as climate change, it feels only natural to turn to art as well as science to make sense of what is happening around us.

The latest episode of Physics World Stories brings together two artists doing exactly that. Host Andrew Glester speaks first with Tom Bailey, a performance and environmental artist from Bristol-based creative company Mechanimal. Bailey has recently returned from an extraordinary 600 kilometre journey through the Arctic borderlands — spanning Norway, Finland and Sweden — travelling by ski, sledge, foot and boat, and occasionally dressed as a reindeer.

Travelling between festival performances, Bailey immersed himself in a region undergoing dramatic change: shifting weather patterns, transforming landscapes, and growing international interest in its mineral resources, raising urgent questions about governance and access. Central to his vision is a “more-than-human” perspective, advocating for nature to have formal representation in international decision-making, not merely as a resource to be managed, but as a presence with its own legitimate interests.

A climate video game with beautiful music

Composer Naomi Hart approaches the crisis from a different angle. After a conversation with her daughter about fears for the future left her saddened but resolute, she channelled that emotion into Save Progress – a short video game exploring how human connection can help us to think about the world and the choices ahead. In the podcast, Hart talks about her creative choices; the game combines an intentionally old-school design with specially composed synthesizer music. Save Progress takes around 10 minutes to play: give it a try.

• To keep track of how physicists are investigating climate change and developing solutions, visit the Environment and Energy section of the Physics World website.

The post Beyond the data: art meets climate at the edge of the world appeared first on Physics World.

Through fresh analysis of supernovae data, a team of astronomers has discredited a recent study that suggested that dark energy has weakened since the early universe.

Led by Phil Wiseman at the UK’s University of Southampton, the team showed that the apparent weakening almost disappears after accounting for a known correlation between supernova brightness and galaxy mass. This latest work confirms that the universe’s expansion is accelerating – a discovery that bagged three astronomers the 2011 Nobel Prize for Physics.

Type 1a supernovae occur when a white dwarf accretes mass from a binary companion star. Eventually, it reaches a critical mass where the crushing weight of its gravity can no longer be supported by electron degeneracy pressure, triggering an explosion that can briefly outshine entire galaxies.

These events are especially valuable to cosmologists because white dwarfs always explode at the same critical mass – meaning type 1a supernovae always reach around the same peak brightness. As a result they are “standard candles”, whereby their distances from Earth is inferred by their apparently brightness. The rate at which a type 1A is moving away from us is given by the redshift of its light. By measuring the distance and motion of these objects, the rate of the universe’s expansion can be determined as a function of time.

Driving acceleration

Since the 1990s, researchers have observed thousands of type 1a supernovae. Contrary to expectations for a matter-dominated universe, these measurements revealed that the universe’s expansion is speeding up. This lead to the concept of dark energy – a hypothetical entity that is driving this acceleration.

But in 2025, a team of astronomers in South Korea, led by Junhyuk Son at Yonsei University, Seoul, made an observation that appeared to turn this long-standing picture on its head. “They claimed that a subtle correlation between the brightness of the supernova and the age of the galaxy it exploded in could, if left uncorrected, means that the overall measurements actually now indicate that the expansion is now slowing,” Wiseman explains. “In other words, that dark energy was strong billions of years in the past, but has subsequently weakened.”

In their study, Wiseman and his colleagues revisited the data used by Son’s team – accounting for a correction that the previous astronomers hadn’t applied. Regardless of redshift, the peak brightness of type 1a supernovae in lower-mass galaxies is known to be slightly fainter than those in higher-mass galaxies. Although the reasons for this correlation remain unclear, astronomers have routinely been correcting for it over the past 15 years.

Wiseman’s team applied the same correction – ensuring their calculated distances were unaffected by differences in galaxy mass. “We also used simulations, where we traced how the age of the exploding stars and the galaxies they explode in evolve with cosmic time,” Wiseman says.

Similar ages

With this correction applied, the claimed correlation between supernova brightness and host galaxy age became almost undetectable. “Even if we account for the prediction that the relationship between the supernova and the galaxy should change as we look further back in time, we end up with almost identical measurements of dark energy,” Wiseman continues. Their simulations also showed that supernova progenitor stars have exploded at consistently similar ages throughout cosmic history.

The results will likely come as a relief to many cosmologists, averting the dark energy crisis some had feared. All the same, the team says Son’s study provides a valuable test of existing approaches to measuring the universe’s expansion rate, given the limitations of current observational capabilities.

“In an ideal world, we think a correction based on the age of the galaxy would be slightly more accurate than using the galaxy mass, but these measurements are currently not available for more than a handful of supernova host galaxies in the distant universe,” Wiseman says. “Until then, a mass correction is adequate and the implication is that the universe is still accelerating due to dark energy.”

The research is described in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

The post Cosmic crisis averted as supernovae put dark energy back on track appeared first on Physics World.

Data centres that house AI infrastructure are on track by the end of the decade to consume nearly three times as much electricity annually as Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nigeria combined. That is according to a report published by the United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health (UNU-INWEH), which also discovers that the water footprint of such centres could match the annual domestic needs of all 1.3 billion people in Sub-Saharan Africa by 2030.

For hundreds of millions of people, generative AI is now woven into their daily lives. ChatGPT processes 2.5 billion prompts each day and, by integrating AI into its search engine, Google processes billions of AI-assisted interactions.

Behind every virtual compute, however, stands sprawling data centres that operate thousands of high-performance processors. Data centres consume vast amounts of electricity and water to operate, cool servers and transmit data.

Day-to-day search queries account for 80-90% of data centres’ energy costs. An average text-based prompt consumes about 0.42 Watt-hours (Wh) of electricity. ChatGPT interactions alone result in 383 GWh per year — enough to cover the domestic electricity needs of nearly three million people in Sub-Saharan Africa.

As of late 2025, only 32 countries had AI-specialized data centres, with nearly half of global data centres located in the US. More than 150 countries, including most of Africa and South America, lack infrastructure to participate in the AI economy.

Those who benefit least from AI, however, often bear a disproportionate share of its cost. Vulnerable communities near data centres face air pollution, drought conditions, and land shortage.

Even regions in the Global South that are devoid of data centres are impacted by mineral extractions to build AI hardware. Such extractions are energy-intensive, deplete water, and pollute the environment.

A responsible ecosystem

The report finds that the land footprint of data centres could span an area roughly 10 times the size of Mexico City by the end of the decade. Additionally, it projects that 2.5 million metric tonnes of e-waste could be produced annually from AI hardware — equivalent to scrapping 250 Eiffel Towers each year.

 UNU-INWEH director Kaveh Madani says that the report is not “a case against artificial intelligence” adding that the technology is improving the lives of billions of people worldwide. “[The report] is a call for using it responsibly and addressing its unintended impacts proactively to make it sustainable and equitable,” adds Madani.

To build a responsible AI ecosystem, the report calls for a multilateral approach. AI developers should improve efficiency of design and transparently report their environmental footprint. International and national governance should engage local communities in siting decisions and enforce standardized environmental disclosure while investors should consider environmental impact in their due diligence.

For individuals, the report encourages users to avoid unnecessary use, choose the smallest model capable of the task and write concise prompts.

The post AI data centres’ electricity use nears country-scale levels, finds report appeared first on Physics World.

Physicists have developed a model that predicts how gravitational-wave emission changes when a binary black hole system moves through dark matter. Gravitational waves are ripples in spacetime generated by compact objects spiralling together in a cosmic dance that ends in a violent collision. In the presence of dark matter, these waves may carry an imprint of the surrounding environment. Despite making up over 80% of all matter, dark matter does not interact with the electromagnetic force, and its existence has been surmised only by its gravitational interactions, leaving its precise nature a mystery. Gravitational waves may provide a new way to probe the characteristics of dark matter.

One proposed dark-matter candidate is the light scalar boson, an extremely small particle orders of magnitude lighter than an electron, that can exhibit coherent wave-like behaviour. In the presence of spinning black holes, a process called superradiance can transfer rotational energy into the surrounding field of ultralight boson particles, amplifying the dark matter into a dense cloud around the black hole. These clouds can modify the dynamics of black hole binaries, encoding observable signatures into the gravitational-wave signals that they emit.

To understand what these signatures may look like, an international team of researchers developed a model for gravitational-wave emission from a binary black hole system moving through dark matter. Developing their model required meticulous numerical relativity simulations, but ensuring their results were accurate and reliable proved to be a challenge.

“The hardest part was making sure we truly understood what the simulations were telling us. The danger in numerics is fooling yourself,” explains Josu Aurrekoetxea of Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “You run a simulation, you see an effect, and you have to ask – is that dark matter, or is that my code?”

Working with Katy Clough of Queen Mary University of London and Pedro Ferreira of the University of Oxford, Aurrekoetxea spent several years developing these simulations, before joining forces with Soumen Roy of Université Catholique de Louvain and Rodrigo Vicente of the University of Amsterdam, whose expertise in analytical modelling and data analysis helped the team construct and validate the novel waveform model.

Most work in the field of gravitational waves and dark matter focuses on observations with future space-based detectors such as the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna. “Our motivation was to ask what could already be learned about specific dark-matter models using the LVK [LIGO–Virgo–KAGRA] gravitational-wave data available today,” says Vicente. “We were surprised to find that some of the more extreme models can already begin to be tested with signals observed by current experiments.”

Searching for these dark-matter imprints, they applied their model to 28 publicly available signals observed by the LVK collaboration, a global gravitational-wave detector network that has observed signals from hundreds of mergers. For each event, the team compared the signal to their predictive dark matter-modulated waveform and the standard waveform for black holes merging in a vacuum.

After rigorous testing, the researchers found that 27 of the 28 events were consistent with gravitational-wave signals expected from binary black holes evolving in empty space. One event, GW190728, showed a slight preference for the dark-matter model, indicating that its signal contains properties consistent with modulations from the presence of dark matter. However, the statistical evidence is not strong enough to claim a confident detection of a dark-matter imprint.

Although only one event demonstrated a preference for the predictive dark-matter model and no definitive claim of a dark-matter signature could be made, the researchers have demonstrated a novel method to probe and characterize dark matter through signatures encoded in gravitational-wave signals.

“Our findings from GW190728 suggest that, if this interpretation is correct and we are seeing a genuine environmental signature, similar effects may appear in future LVK events,” says Roy. Therefore, the next step for the researchers is to extend their analysis to LVK’s fourth observing run. Roy also says that if they can estimate the number and types of events that should carry dark-matter imprints, they can combine multiple signals to test their hypothesis more robustly.

“It has become clear that gravitational waves have tremendous potential to help us understand how matter behaves in the extreme gravitational fields surrounding black holes. This is particularly relevant for dark matter, which may interact only through gravity,” says Vicente. And as more gravitational-wave signals are observed, they provide a promising channel to uncover the elusive nature of dark matter.

The research is described in Physical Review Letters.

The post Novel gravitational-wave model sheds light on dark matter appeared first on Physics World.

In 2020, Toyota Motor Corporation launched the FC-EV of MIRAI-II adopting mesoporous carbon of nano-dendrite (MCND) support for the PtCo alloy catalyst NPs to suppress ionomer poisoning.  Concurrently, we began using the CNovel^® MH-18 mesoporous carbon (MPC) support mass-produced by TOYO TANSO, Osaka, Japan.  The characteristics of the MPC support were entirely different from those of the conventional Ketjen Black EC-600JD (KB-600JD) porous carbon support.

The MPC support has a primary particle size of approximately 2 μm (KB-600JD: 40–50 nm) and consists of isolated particles lacking the chain-like structure seen in KB-600JD.  Thanks to very unique porosity of the MPC support, that is, the coexistence of highly interconnected mesopores (2–6 nm) and macropores, allows oxygen molecules to access the Pt catalyst NPs from all directions within the MPC support, resulting in higher cell voltages compared to the Pt/KB-600JD catalyst at high current density regions.

The MPC support was ground to approximately 800 nm using a bead mill.  Since the grinding generates new surfaces on the MPC support, the ground MPC support was heat treated in an Ar atmosphere at temperatures ranging from 1800°C to 2400°C to improve the durability of the MPC support.  The durability of the Pt/MPC (800 nm) catalyst was evaluated using a triangular-wave potential cycle of 1.0–1.5 V vs RHE in MEAs.  The Pt/MPC (800 nm) catalyst using the freshly milled MPC support exhibited higher durability than the Pt/KB-600JD catalyst.  This is because although new surfaces were formed by bead milling, the purchased MPC (2 µm) was heat treated at 1800°C under an Ar atmosphere during TOYO TANSO’s final manufacturing process.

The durability of the Pt/MPC (800 nm) catalyst increased with rising the heat-treatment temperature, and the catalyst using MPC support (800 nm) heat-treated at 2400°C exhibited the highest durability under a triangular-wave potential cycle of 1.0–1.5 V vs RHE.

XRD and HR-TEM analyses revealed that the carbon (002) plane grew further upon the heat treatment.  The N₂ gas adsorption/desorption isotherms measured at 77 K for the MPC supports indicated that porosity of the MPC support decreased with increasing the heat-treatment temperature, and the surface area of the freshly milled MPC support, 1338 m²/g, decreased to 351 m²/g after the heat treatment at 2400°C.  Considering the durability and the porosity retention of the MPC support (800 nm), a heat-treatment temperature in the range of 2000°C–2200°C is considered suitable.

Hideo Daimon completed his MSc in chemistry at the Faculty of Science, Kwansei Gakuin University, in 1984, he joined the research and development department at Hitachi Maxell, Ltd.  At Hitachi Maxell, he conducted research on magnetic materials prepared via chemical routes; friction and wear of thin-film magnetic recording media, protective coatings and lubricants for the thin-film media, and electrodeposition and electroless plating of Ni and Ni-P films.

In 2000, he began synthesizing PtFe, PtRu and Pt nanoparticles for use in fuel cells. Daimon moved to Doshisha University in 2010, where he has been researching Pt and Pt-based catalysts used in cathodes for PEFCs, including Au@Pt- and Pd@Pt core-shell structured catalysts, as well as PtCo alloy catalysts.  Currently, he is engaged in research on mesoporous carbon supports to enhance the cell performance and durability of PEFCs applied to FCEVs.

The post The discovery of mesoporous carbon support with characteristic porosity and the art of mastering its use appeared first on Physics World.

From heatwaves to extreme rainfall, the impact of climate change is rapidly becoming a reality in our daily lives and a danger to our planet. But physicists are in a great position to help, with physics-based research bringing about practical, real-world solutions, whether it’s more efficient solar cells, better climate models, or novel materials for capturing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

There are huge economic and commercial benefits from such work too. A 2023 report from the Institute of Physics (IOP), entitled Physics Powering the Green Economy, estimates there are almost 1800 companies in the UK and Ireland taking green technologies to market with a combined turnover of £750bn.

Last year a follow-up IOP Impact report entitled Unleashing Physics to Power the UK Energy Sector identified the most promising physics technologies for transforming the UK’s energy system. These fall into three main areas: energy generation (nuclear power, photovoltaics), storage (batteries) and transmission (high-temperature superconductors).

The clean-energy revolution will not be easy, however. As the IOP report points out, the UK has a strong research base, good international collaborations, and a growing pipeline of spin-out and early-stage companies. But the country doesn’t invest enough in technology scale-up facilities, faces critical skill shortages, and isn’t great at recycling either.

To discuss how physicists are supporting the green economy – and what more they can do – a panel debate was recently held at the IOP in central London. Attended by Prince Edward, the Duke of Edinburgh, as well as about 100 business leaders, policy chiefs, senior physicists, and IOP and IOP Publishing staff, it was chaired by Tara Shears, the IOP’s vice-president for science and innovation.

The panel featured ex-BP boss John Browne, who now works in green energy, Emily Nurse from the UK’s Climate Change Committee, former Sizewell C energy-strategy director David Cole, solar-cell physicist Jenny Nelson from Imperial College, and Nellie Technologies founder Stephen Milburn. The following is an edited extract of the discussion.

Physicists for a greener future

John Browne is chair of BeyondNetZero, a climate-growth equity venture firm. He was group chief executive of energy giant BP from 1995–2007, having joined the firm in 1966 after studying natural sciences.

Emily Nurse, who was originally an experimental particle physicist, is the director of net zero at the UK’s Climate Change Committee, which advises the UK government on reducing emissions and adapting to the impacts of climate change.

David Cole, an engineer by training, was at the time of the discussion director of energy strategy at the Sizewell C nuclear-power plant, which is being built in Suffolk in the UK. When complete, it is expected to meet up to 7% of the UK’s total electricity demand. He is now executive president, consulting, at energy firm Wood.

Jenny Nelson is a physicist at Imperial College London, where she has spent almost 30 years developing advanced materials for photovoltaic solar cells. She is also mitigation programme lead at the Grantham Institute of Climate Change and the Environment.

Stephen Milburn is a physicist who is founder and chief executive of the firm Nellie Technologies in South Wales. It removes carbon dioxide form the atmosphere using biomass, which can then be used as animal feed or construction material.

What role are physicists currently playing in our quest for a greener economy?

John Browne: I made a wonderful decision 60 years ago, when I was 18, which was to read physics. After graduating, I became an engineer, but over the last 30 years physics has come back in to my life as I’ve found myself doing something very important – trying to get to net zero. Physics, you see, touches absolutely everything.

All that I’ve ever done – whether it’s renewable energy or “old energy” [fossil fuels] in my old life – starts with physics. Whether you’re involved in chemistry, biology, electronics or engineering, it could not exist without a much deeper understanding of physics. We have to make sure everybody knows that – but I don’t think people currently do. They tend to think engineering is the only enabler for commercialization, but physics is there.

Emily Nurse: I started out as a particle physicist working at CERN on the Large Hadron Collider but for the last four years, I’ve been involved in climate policy and now work with the UK’s Climate Change Committee. We are the UK government’s official advisers on its climate targets – and assessing progress towards meeting those targets. As we celebrate global decarbonization to date, we need to remember it’s all underpinned by physics.

Take the rise of solar power for example, which has been the fastest growing source of global electricity generation for the last 20 years in a row. Solar installations in 2024 were double those in 2022. Along with wind, solar has led to a reduction in electricity from fossil fuels. We’re seeing the costs of solar plummeting and they just keep falling further.

In the UK, solar power has been growing more slowly, but it’s starting to pick up and is going to be a really important part of the electricity mix. We’ve also got a lot of wind here in the UK – it’s a very windy island after all. I would also like to give a shout out to heat pumps: as a physicist, how can you not love their efficiency?

David Cole: I am an engineer, not a physicist, but I’ve spent my career in lots of different sectors and been fascinated with the role that energy plays in creating a better society. What’s really interesting at Sizewell C is the ownership structure, which involves both state and private investment. It’s the first time private investment has been used for a new nuclear build in the UK.

I hope it leads to a virtuous circle, in which the more plants we build, the more we can reap from that investment

David Cole

Getting this hybrid financial structure over the line was not trivial – it took a lot of effort – but I think it will drive great performance. We’re also trying to use as much UK content in the plants as possible, whether that’s materials, skills or technology. I hope it leads to a virtuous circle, in which the more plants we build, the more we can reap from that investment. Sizewell C will, in other words, bring down energy costs, which is fundamental to economic growth.

Jenny Nelson: I have been active in research into solar photovoltaic (PV) materials and devices for over 30 years and we should celebrate how much has happened in the field during that time. In the last 10 years, we have seen capacity increase globally by more than a factor of 10, we’ve seen the efficiency of solar cells increase, and we’ve seen the cost come down almost by a factor of eight, all of which is remarkable.

Those innovations are firmly rooted in physics – whether it’s changes in device structure… or of the optical properties of materials

Jenny Nelson

The cheapest form of electricity globally, in other words, is now from solar PV, which was not the case 30 years ago. These developments have come partly from economies of scale and partly from technological innovations that have now fed through into production. Those innovations are firmly rooted in physics – whether it’s changes in device structure due to our understanding of semiconductor physics or new developments in the optical properties of materials.

The next generation of PV cells, which are likely to be silicon-based tandem devices, will also depend on scientific breakthroughs and innovations.

Stephen Milburn: I’m chief executive of Nellie Technologies, which is based in South Wales on the site of a former chemical-weapons storage facility. We’re using biomass waste for removing atmospheric carbon dioxide, and if you visit us, you’ll see all kinds of activity: in one corner there’s chemistry, in another engineering and in the next there’s biology and biochemistry. But physics is at the heart of the technology. Physicists are a bit arrogant when we say we think we can do everything, but the fact is we probably can.

But we should also celebrate the work that has gone on to create a market in which carbon-emission credits can be bought and sold. Trading carbon credits has been a bit of a dark activity over the last 10 years, with double counting and bad things happening purely by firms wishing to make a profit. However, the market does have the power to regulate itself – in fact the alignment we’re starting to see between the UK and the EU will help greatly.

What are the biggest growth opportunities for the green-economy sector?

John Browne: First, we can do much more with what we’ve already got – for example we could increase our offshore wind or rethink whether we should go back into onshore wind. Second, we can improve what we’re doing – for instance, by increasing the efficiency of solar panels to their theoretical maximum, which would make rooftop solar economically attractive. Third, there are new opportunities, such as metallic organic frameworks and nuclear fusion.

What we do here in the UK needs to move the needle globally, which means thinking about how to scale and finance it properly

John Browne

However, the UK needs to avoid doing things that others are doing much better. The race for the best battery in the world is, for example, probably going to be won elsewhere. What we do here in the UK needs to move the needle globally, which means thinking about how to scale and finance it properly. The UK shouldn’t end up as a secondary player.

Emily Nurse: The UK has made a lot of progress in our quest to reach net zero by 2050. Since 1990, for example, we’ve halved our carbon emissions, mainly by decarbonizing electricity – phasing out coal, reducing gas generation, while significantly increasing wind, solar and other renewables. Electricity generation now accounts for only around 7% of UK emissions, which are dominated by transport (cars and vans) and heating (oil and gas boilers).

Reducing emissions still further will predominantly come from moving to electric technologies, including electric vehicles and heat pumps, and by further decarbonizing the electricity supply. There will be a backbone of wind and solar, but to ensure a secure supply, we’ll need nuclear, carbon capture and storage, hydrogen and batteries. We’ll have to reduce emissions from agriculture and land use too.

A report from the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) last year estimated that the net-zero economy grew by 10% in 2024, which is three times faster than the rest of the UK. But we’ll need more innovations to continue to bring costs down – and we’ll also need to provide incentives to boost the take-up of electric technologies. If we do that, there’ll be an overall saving to the UK economy in about 15 years’ time, our analysis suggests. There are huge opportunities for green growth to come from this investment.

David Cole: I agree that for the UK to be competitive, the cost of energy has to come down – not just for domestic customers but businesses too. In fact, there are two main opportunities First, we have to adopt a “whole-systems” approach. If we’re building a power station, for example, can we use every bit to its maximum potential?

Let’s say I’m running a direct air-capture plant operating at 25–30 ºC – can I use the waste flow from my coolant system to encourage new industries? Can it support nearby hydrogen generation plants or companies making, say, synthetic aviation fuel? Those questions involve thinking about physics and engineering as well as materials science, which is also super important.

Whichever way you look at it, we’re talking about building a lot of hardware, which involves materials. How much energy per unit mass are they using? Can we recycle those materials? What can we do with the waste products? Ultimately, what is really important is energy security: where does your energy come from, who made it and what impact does it have on the environment?

Jenny Nelson: The net-zero economy is growing significantly faster than the rest of the economy and I think that will continue. But decarbonizing the power sector only addresses part of the problem and we’re going to see a big transition across the rest of industry, agriculture and elsewhere that will generate a wide range of opportunities and stimulate the economy too. I’m not just talking about rolling out more renewables, but about integration – bringing together the generation and storage of energy, ensuring that we are managing demands and have the right infrastructure.

As for my area of photovoltaics, we’ve seen great ideas and technologies come out of the UK that are very likely going to be developed outside the UK because the manufacturing capacity isn’t here. Nevertheless, those ideas and innovations can still benefit the country through licensing, partial manufacturing and new technology.

One thing to remember about solar power is it’s distributed. You can have solar generation without being connected to the grid. That not only opens some markets for certain applications where you want to generate electricity locally, but it also provides a route to energy security through back-up generation, towards which solar power will be an important part.

Stephen Milburn: Having a strong green-technology manufacturing base is a huge opportunity for the UK. My company is based in South Wales, where we have lots of highly skilled people who used to work in traditional industries but now don’t have many places to go. Yes, there’s a fantastic semiconductor industry here, but when it comes to deploying green technology we cannot outsource that responsibility to other parts of the world.

Green tech needs to be deployed in the UK’s industrial heartlands… if we don’t nurture jobs and skills here there’s a real risk they will be gone forever

Stephen Milburn

Green tech needs to be deployed in the UK’s industrial heartlands to take advantage of the skills we already have, but which we are at risk of losing. In fact, if we don’t nurture those jobs and skills here there’s a real risk they will be gone forever. Having a strong green-technology manufacturing base is a huge opportunity for the UK.

What needs to happen so that these opportunities can be put into practice?

Stephen Milburn: Many science graduates leave university equipped with solid academic rigour and a great scientific understanding, but they often lack practical green-technology skills. This summer my company is therefore hoping to launch a climate apprenticeship programme, which will allow graduates to pick up those skills. We need to build green-tech skills in the real economy, in particular those that will deal with climate change.

Jenny Nelson: The UK must do more to support its own innovations. We need better regulations to avoid unnecessary bottlenecks. We need to invest in infrastructure like the grid. We should completely avoid subsidizing fossil fuels and instead divert any subsidies into alternative economies. Finally, we need to train and educate people, showing the public the potential of green technology so that they become part of the transition, for example by generating their own electricity.

David Cole: We need to integrate our policies on industry, energy, land use and AI so that we can invest in them all as growth areas. In particular, I’d like to see a long-term nuclear programme in which we build a fleet of new reactors all of the same design, which will drive down costs by letting us replicate a particular technology. It’s also vital that we get a high proportion of UK content and technology into these reactors, which will lead to a virtuous circle, with money coming back into the economy that we can re-invest in industrial and academic partnerships.

Emily Nurse: What’s vital is consistency in policies; we need certainty. In the UK, we are fortunate to have world-leading climate legislation in the form of the 2008 Climate Change Act, which does not just make it a legal requirement to reach net zero by 2050 but also gives us targets along the way. It means we know what we need to do in both the medium- and long-term, which gives certainty to investors, businesses, innovators and consumers.

What’s really important is communication – supporting communities through the transition and making sure they realize the benefits

Emily Nurse

So the first thing we need to do is keep the Climate Change Act. Then, of course, we’ve got to address barriers to delivery, including having the right incentives to electrify the economy. And what’s really important is communication – supporting communities through the transition and making sure they realize the benefits, not just in terms of reducing carbon production but of having cleaner, better and more efficient technologies too.

John Browne: First, we must never stop investing in people who can discover things and translate them into real commercial products. Second, we need to understand how to scale things, which means focusing on the winners and getting rid of things that are “nice to have” but aren’t going anywhere. That’s not easy because you have to push people to say, “You’ve done great work, but you’ll have to stop”.

What’s more, to scale new technology, people have to learn what it takes. When I’m in the US, I often speak to chief executives who can explain their technology to the financier who’s supporting it, whereas here in the UK that often doesn’t happen.

Third, we need to maintain confidence in what we’re doing. I often talk to people who think that it’ll be really expensive to get to net zero, but in fact estimates suggest that each household would only have to spend an average of about £150 a year to get there. So it’ll be less than the cost of a TV licence to get to net zero.

Of course the investment needed will be “lumpy” – it’s not as simple as just levying a fee – but the point about governments is that they can smooth things out. That is what they have done in the past and it’s what they should continue to do.

• For more information about the IOP’s work on the green economy, click here. You can also keep up to date with the all latest research in the field through IOP Publishing’s series of open-access Environmental Research Journals at this link.

The post What physicists can do to support the green economy appeared first on Physics World.

Exclusive: Blunder at Rosebank, UK’s biggest undeveloped oilfield, comes as government considers granting licence

Production at Britain’s biggest undeveloped oil and gasfield could be delayed for months after equipment from a rig was accidentally dropped in the North Sea, the Guardian can reveal.

Andy Burnham’s new government is under pressure from the fossil fuel industry to allow oil to be retrieved from the Rosebank site despite opposition from climate campaigners and some Labour MPs.

American Fusion has officially cleared a major regulatory hurdle, securing research and development certification from the Texas Department of State Health Services (DSHS) for all twelve registered models of its Texatron Fusion Engine platform. 

The development was shared by American Fusion’s Executive Chairman Brent Nelson in an interview, as reported by the company. 

This regulatory clearance applies to system hardware configurations across a wide power capacity spectrum, beginning with 500-kilowatt units and extending to large-scale architectures designed to output up to one gigawatt. With authorization completed, technical teams are preparing to start the next phase of experimental testing at Texas Tech University.

The primary technical objective of the upcoming experimental sequence is to verify nuclear fusion reactions inside the Texatron confinement hardware. Operational research teams plan to gather diagnostic measurements concerning plasma dynamics, specifically tracking core plasma temperatures, particle densities, and magnetic containment behaviors during operational cycles. 

“Nelson stated that the Company’s initial testing objectives include validating fusion reactions within the Texatron platform and collecting performance metrics related to plasma behavior and system operation,” said the company in a press release.

Maintaining conditions for sustained fusion reactions

Evaluating these physical parameters allows engineers to assess how efficiently the system achieves and maintains the conditions required for sustained fusion reactions. Following the initial reaction verification, testing will shift toward evaluating the pulse-generated electrical output produced by the engine, which serves as an intermediate milestone before attempting continuous electricity generation.

“Data generated during testing is expected to be independently documented, with findings potentially available for publication following review,” remarked the company.

Unlike conventional nuclear fission reactors that require steam turbines and produce long-lived radioactive waste, the Texatron system utilizes magnetic-confinement technology to generate electricity from high-energy plasma while significantly reducing radioactive byproducts. 

“Advanced fusion systems can convert energy directly into electricity, reducing reliance on steam turbines and minimizing energy losses,” noted American Fusion. “This enables higher efficiency, simpler infrastructure, and faster, more flexible power generation for modern grids.”

Current engineering efforts are distributed across several intermediate engine sizes, including 5-megawatt, 10-megawatt, and 20-megawatt configurations, along with preliminary engineering planning for a 100-megawatt unit.

Transportable and reduced radiation profile

The physical characteristics and direct electrical output of the engine dictate its target integration environments. Hyperscale artificial intelligence data centers increasingly utilize high-voltage direct current power infrastructure, meaning matching the generator’s direct DC output reduces energy conversion losses compared to traditional steam turbines, though power conditioning is still required to stabilize voltage.

The transportable and reduced radiation profile of the hardware allows smaller units to be deployed on trucks to supply power for defense installations, mining operations, and remote industrial facilities. 

The operational targets for 2026 depend on executing the multi-stage plasma validation tests, establishing performance metrics, expanding patent protections, and negotiating initial power placement agreements with commercial partners.

“American Fusion Energy is moving from proven laboratory breakthroughs toward scalable energy systems by focusing on real-world engineering challenges,” concluded the company.  

“Building on validated progress in high-temperature plasma confinement, the company is translating fusion physics into practical pathways for future commercial power.”

Hydrogen peroxide is a common chemical found in hospitals, factories and laboratories around the world. It is used to disinfect medical equipment, make paper, clean semiconductor chips and support many other industrial processes. Although it is widely used, making hydrogen peroxide usually requires large factories, high energy use and complicated manufacturing methods. Now, researchers have […]

The post Scientists find way to produce hydrogen peroxide without electricity appeared first on Knowridge Science Report.

Hanwha Ocean has signed a joint design agreement with a US naval architecture firm to develop the Fast Sealift vessel, expanding its collaboration with the US shipbuilding industry beyond ship construction to design, workforce development and supply chain initiatives.

The company announced on July 24 that it signed one professional services agreement for the joint design of a global strategic sealift vessel and two memoranda of understanding (MOUs) covering shipbuilding workforce development and supply chain cooperation during the opening ceremony of the Korea-US Shipbuilding Cooperation Center in Washington, D.C. on July 23.

Hanwha Ocean signed the professional services agreement with Leidos Gibbs & Cox, a US naval architecture company, to jointly design the strategic sealift vessel. The agreement expands the partnership beyond the memorandum of understanding signed in April, which focused on strengthening shipbuilding capabilities for the US Navy and allied naval forces, into the joint design phase.

A Fast Sealift vessel is a dual-use platform that operates as a commercial cargo ship during peacetime and can rapidly transport military equipment and supplies during emergencies.

The companies plan to combine Hanwha Ocean's naval shipbuilding expertise with the design capabilities of Leidos Gibbs & Cox to pursue opportunities in both the US and global naval vessel markets. Gibbs & Cox has designed more than 70% of the US Navy's surface combatants built since World War II.

Hanwha Ocean also signed an MOU with Hanwha Philly Shipyard and Delaware County Community College to cooperate on shipbuilding education and workforce development. Under the agreement, the partners will develop instructor training programs for US shipbuilding workers and help expand the pool of skilled labor.

"We will expand cooperation in the areas the United States needs most by leveraging our local production base and play a central role in the MASGA project," said Jeong In-seob, president and head of Management Support at Hanwha Ocean.

One task awaiting new energy secretary Miatta Fahnbulleh is devising a plan to avoid a crisis by the end of the decade

Welcome to the energy secretary job, Miatta Fahnbulleh. You have a politically tricky decision to make on whether to approve production at the Jackdaw gasfield and the Rosebank oilfield. But here’s another one that can’t wait much longer: what is the broader plan to ensure Britain avoids a gas supply crisis in 2030?

By way of reminder, one of the more alarming reports published by the energy department under Ed Miliband was the one that warned of “an emerging risk” to gas supplies at the turn of the decade if an important piece of kit – an import terminal, say, or the critical 725-mile Langeled pipeline from Norway – were to be out of the action during a severe cold snap.

Consumers and agricultural workers rejoice: the Trump administration has killed a key regulation meant to keep toxic human and industrial waste sludge from our food supply, because toxic sludge is apparently not a threat to public health.

On Monday, the Guardian reported that the Environmental Protection Agency is tossing out a major body of research that formed the basis for regulations which would have effectively limited the amount of sewage byproduct we’re allowed to spray into the environment.

The research, published not even two years ago, was conducted in order to study the consequences of toxic PFAS “forever chemical” compounds in treated sewer sludge — called “biosolids” in the wastewater treatment industry. The findings showed that any amount of PFAS above 1 part per billion in sewer sludge used as fertilizer represents an increased cancer risk for farmers, as well as consumers.

That’s a problem, because previous EPA tests have found PFAS levels as high as 9.4 parts per billion in sludge used for agricultural purposes.

The Trump administration, however, says that’s not a problem, because it’s not like we’re spraying biosolids on everything — and so what if a few farm workers get cancer? In a nine-page draft memorandum released by the agency’s Office of Water, the EPA justified the decision by blasting previous EPA research, saying that earlier study created a “misconception” that “all biosolids and sewage sludge use and disposal practices will negatively affect the public.”

“Currently data does not indicate that there are widespread impacts to the food supply from biosolids containing PFOA and PFOS at the national level, and the general public is not likely to be exposed to sewage sludge-impacted foods,” the new draft insists. “The EPA estimates that sewage sludge is applied to less than 1 percent of America’s farmland annually.”

As with any data coming out of the Trump administration, these factual claims should be taken with a hefty grain of salt. Even assuming that basic assertion is correct, it still leaves the farmers and agricultural workers laboring on that farmland exposed.

“It’s shocking for the EPA to take a scientific assessment and simply throw it out,” Laura Dumais, an attorney with the non-profit Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility told the Guardian. “Basically, they’re saying: farmers’ lives don’t matter.”

It’s also a particularly grim decision in light of the cyclospora outbreak currently roiling the US. Though cyclospora is a parasite and not a type of PFAS, studies have identified agricultural biosolids as a potential source of the gut-busting organism in the food supply. (Also noteworthy is the fact that the company broadly suspected to be responsible for the outbreak, Taylor Farms, made a substantial donation to Donald Trump’s MAGA Inc just days after the FDA pushed back a major regulation on food traceability.)

And as the Trump administration strips regulations that would clamp down on sewer sludge contamination in industrial agriculture, it acknowledges that “approximately 20 percent of sewage sludge managed each year is sold directly to the public or applied to sites where the public might be exposed.”

Rather than continuing with regulations that would make the public safer, the new EPA memorandum advises Americans to “research the supplier of the sewage sludge” and avoid “application of sewage sludge in locations where children may have access to the soil.”

For public health advocates like Dumais, the move amounts to a complete dereliction of the EPA’s duty to the public.

She told the Guardian that “it’s shocking that the EPA is willing to throw all of these people under the bus and the EPA’s solution here is ‘do your own research — we’re not going to regulate anything, so if you think it’s dangerous then figure it out for yourself.'”

More on Trump: Trump Administration Scrapping Nuclear Energy Rules Requiring Plants to Keep Radiation Levels “As Low as Reasonably Achievable”

The post Trump Administration Declares Toxic Sewer Sludge Not a Threat to Public Health appeared first on Futurism.

A Tesla solar customer went to pull up their lease agreement in their Tesla account this month and found something other than a contract waiting for them: the Book of Enoch, an ancient apocalyptic text about fallen angels.

Not a scanned copy of their agreement. Not an error page. The full text of a roughly 2,000-year-old religious book, sitting exactly where their legally binding solar lease was supposed to be. Electrek confirmed it.