I wish they hadn't used "physics-defying" in their press release because I'm certain this is an important discovery for water condensers, but claiming it doesn't need an external energy source is massively negligent.
I'm fairly certain they've created some form of a Brownian Ratchet: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brownian_ratchet
People love to claim there's no external energy source, but then when you look closely, you'll find a hot-cold differential, and then you need external energy to maintain that differential. I'd put a large sum of money that either the material is colder than the ambient environment or the incoming moisture is warmer than the ambient environment. It might even be a differential within their material, and the lab lights are warming one side! There's a lot of passive devices that rely on the hot-cold cycle of day and night, that still counts as energy input from the sun.
The article even mentions they tried to rule out a thermal gradient by increasing the thickness of the material, I'm not sure I understand why that would rule it out... the gradient would still exist.
I hate this, because if they aren't intentionally supplying energy, it's probably really efficient (assuming they aren't taking samples out of the freezer or something) so it's still a big deal and important but apparently we have to claim something is a perpetual motion machine to get attention among the public.
I'm fairly certain they've created some form of a Brownian Ratchet: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brownian_ratchet
People love to claim there's no external energy source, but then when you look closely, you'll find a hot-cold differential, and then you need external energy to maintain that differential. I'd put a large sum of money that either the material is colder than the ambient environment or the incoming moisture is warmer than the ambient environment. It might even be a differential within their material, and the lab lights are warming one side! There's a lot of passive devices that rely on the hot-cold cycle of day and night, that still counts as energy input from the sun.
The article even mentions they tried to rule out a thermal gradient by increasing the thickness of the material, I'm not sure I understand why that would rule it out... the gradient would still exist.
I hate this, because if they aren't intentionally supplying energy, it's probably really efficient (assuming they aren't taking samples out of the freezer or something) so it's still a big deal and important but apparently we have to claim something is a perpetual motion machine to get attention among the public.