MELBOURNE – World Oceans Day is June eighth, and scientists have unveiled a brand new robot to help fight climate change.
A not-so-secret weapon in the battle towards climate change in hiding in waters around the globe, swimming pools of algae which scientists say can take an enormous chunk out of carbon.
“We’ve got so much of it in the atmosphere, we need to be taking it out of the atmosphere, putting it into products,” says professor Peter Ralph, a marine biologist at University of Technology Sydney.
But not algae is identical. “We’ve got 300,000 species to choose from, we’ve got to start picking the winners very quickly,” says Ralph.
To discover these winners, researchers in Australia designed a robot to detect what’s referred to as “super algae” – a particular species that sucks carbon out of the air 40 instances extra effectively than bushes.
The brainy bot types by way of the algae faster and cheaper than doing it by hand. “It does the work of 20 scientists in a single year,” says Dr. Eddie Custovic, a senior engineer at Photon Systems Instruments.
Plus, it lets specialists concentrate on extra necessary issues like what to do with all of the algae. They’re utilizing bioreactors to develop it on a big scale and lure it inside on a regular basis merchandise.
Professor Ralph says, “We can stick it into wall panels, we can stick it into carpet, we can stick it into all of these different structures that keep the atmospheric CO2 out of the atmosphere for decades.”
All the whereas sticking it to climate change to help cool our planet.
Scientists estimate we’ve got 10 years left to get rid of carbon from all industries in order to fulfill the world’s climate targets and decelerate international warming.