Friday open thread—A visit to Good News Network

You know, I could write a snarky post about the crackerjack team of Ken Starr and Alan Dershowitz which Donald Trump has assembled to defend him in his upcoming Senate trial.

But you know what? Fuck them. They're barely worth what I just wrote.

It's time to delve back into one of my favorite sites, Good News Network. It highlights, as the title implies, good news from around the world and in several spheres.

To start the weekend, we'll see what's happening in the world of science.

Researchers On Brink of Delivering Energy-Dense Battery That Will Power Your Phone for 5 Days Straight

Imagine having access to a battery, which has the potential to power your phone for five continuous days, or enable an electric vehicle to drive more than 600 miles (1,000 kilometers) without needing to “refuel.”

Monash University researchers are on the brink of commercializing the world’s most efficient lithium-sulphur (Li-S) battery, which could outperform current market leaders by more than four times, and power Australia and other global markets well into the future.

Dr. Mahdokht Shaibani from Monash University’s Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering led an international research team that developed an ultra-high capacity Li-S battery that has better performance and less environmental impact than current lithium-ion products.

As someone who gets irritated at having to recharge my phone and car every day, this will not only decrease irritation, but save on energy usage.

Scientists Develop Exciting New Way to Produce Hydrogen Fuel That’s Safe, Cheap, and Ultra-Efficient

Ultra-efficient hydrogen fueled vehicles may soon be coming to market thanks to this technological breakthrough.

In September, researchers at the Technion-Israel Institute for Technology published a paper in Nature detailing their success in creating a safe, clean, inexpensive, and ultra-efficient new method of splitting water molecules into oxygen and hydrogen fuel.

Removing hydrogen from water is the only environmentally clean way to produce liquid hydrogen—a chemical that is normally expensive and inefficient to produce, but that can create electricity almost as efficiently as gasoline. As of right now, most hydrogen is produced using fossil fuels which produce harmful greenhouse gas emissions.

Yet how useful is hydrogen for a world pledging to reduce carbon emissions? 1 kilogram of hydrogen packs as much energy as 1 gallon (3.8 liter) of gasoline, which can be used as power for either heat (by burning it) or electricity (using a fuel-cell) with pure water as the only waste product.

While electric cars are better than gasoline-powered cars, they still rely on our fossil-fuel-powered electric grid to recharge. Taking automobiles out of the climate change equation will go a long way towards reducing emissions.

In World First, Scientists Reprogram Bacteria to Exist Solely By Consuming CO2 From the Air

Israeli scientists have succeeded in editing the genes of microorganisms so that they stop eating all of their normal solid foods and switch to a strict diet of only eating carbon dioxide (CO2) from their environment.

This means that the bacteria were able to build all of their biomass from air. This feat, which involved nearly a decade of rational design, genetic engineering and a sped-up version of evolution in the lab, point to an exciting new means of developing carbon-neutral fuels.

The research, which was conducted in the laboratory of Professor Ron Milo of the Weizmann Institute of Science, was reported this week in Cell.

Another advance on stemming the tide of climate change. While people like Trump and Australian prime minister Scott Morrison fellate the fossil fuel sector, the rest of the world is busy trying to save itself in spite of their efforts.

That's it for now, folks. Share your own good news in the comments. Happy Friday!