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Opinion
Mark Buchanan

This Physics Breakthrough Could Help Save the World

Turbulence wastes a lot of energy. New research shows how we might reduce it.
Go with the flow.

Go with the flow.

Photographer: Greg A. Syverson/Getty Images

If humans want to avoid boiling the oceans, we’ll have to find ways to use energy more efficiently. This, in turn, requires solving a problem that people don’t typically connect to climate change: the turbulence created when we pump air, water, oil, gas and other substances through countless miles of ducts and pipes. Thanks to its confounding effects, fully 10 percent of all the electrical energy produced on Earth gets wasted.

Fortunately, some recent breakthroughs in the realm of physics might point the way to a solution.