Hydrogen

The hydrogen car may have legions of fervent fans, but Energy Secretary Steven Chu apparently is not among them. Earlier this year, the Nobel Prize-winning scientist essentially zeroed government funding for the vehicles and came close to mocking their potential, saying the technology needs four "miracles" before it can become widely adopted. "Saints only need three," he said in a magazine interview. But the hydrogen car is back. On Thursday, the Senate agreed to restore nearly all the money for research that the Obama administration had proposed to cut. This year's revival of government funding is unlikely to end the dispute over the vehicles, however.

NASA's lunar-mapping satellite has just begun its four-year mission searching for water on the moon, but it has already turned up a discovery that has scientists scratching their heads. The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter's seven scientific instruments have indeed confirmed the presence of large amounts of hydrogen -- a marker for water -- in permanently shadowed south pole craters, where scientists had known there were deposits of hydrogen. But the instruments have also found the element in regions where the sun shines.

I've driven lots of cars. I've wallowed like a Russian oligarch pig in the gorgeous mud of a $1.6-million Bugatti Veyron. I've spit tailpipe fire across the midnight Mojave at the wheel of a Lamborghini. I've brushed gape-mouthed peasants aside with the chrome cowcatcher grille of a Rolls Royce Phantom. Yet I have never driven a car half as advanced, as futuristic, as blind-with-science as the Honda FCX Clarity hydrogen fuel-cell vehicle. Nor one so expensive. More on that in a moment.

MIT researchers have developed an inexpensive technique to split water into hydrogen and oxygen, a feat that would allow energy produced by sun-powered photovoltaic cells to be stored for future use. Daniel Nocera and Matthew Kanan reported Friday in the journal Science that they had created an unusual catalyst for the reaction by dissolving cobalt and phosphate in water containing conductive glass electrodes. When a current was applied, the catalyst plated onto the surface of the electrodes, and hydrogen began forming at one and oxygen at the other.

The Shell station looks typical, with recognizable yellow and red signs plastered on the islands and gasoline pumps. But one pump sticks out. It sports a bright blue "Hydrogen" label above a video screen. On its side is a metal lockbox and a new kind of dispenser -- new at least to the everyday gas station visitor.

Oscar-winning writer and director Paul Haggis owns four Toyota Priuses and is high on the waiting list to buy a $100,000 Tesla electric roadster. But when he heard about the new Honda FCX Clarity, a hydrogen-powered car that gets 270 miles on a tank and emits nothing but water, he was desperate to drive it. "I want one. I want one," he said of the Clarity, later dispatching his agent to hunt for the not-yet-available vehicle.

Willis e. lamb jr., whose elegant demonstration of a small energy difference between two excited states of the hydrogen atom laid the foundation for the application of quantum theory to electromagnetism, producing the modern field of quantum electrodynamics, has died. He was 94. Lamb, who was awarded the 1955 Nobel Prize in physics for his work, died May 15 of a gallstone disorder at University Medical Center in Tucson. "He was a real giant in the field," said James C. Wyant, dean of the College of Optical Sciences at the University of Arizona, where Lamb spent the last years of his career.

Interstate 84 was shut in both directions near Waterbury after a tanker carrying hydrogen overturned, forcing the evacuation of homes along the highway. The truck, containing 380 pounds of compressed hydrogen gas, overturned early in the morning on the westbound side of the highway. About 60 people were evacuated as a precaution. The truck was on its way to make deliveries to customers in New York.

Cadillac unveiled a concept car this week that runs partially on hydrogen, adding to the ranks of futuristic vehicles powered by the universe's most common element. Yet even if you could drive it -- there's only one now -- you couldn't get from L.A. to San Francisco, because there aren't enough fueling stations. The state, through its Hydrogen Highway program, has been pushing to create a network of 100 hydrogen fueling stations by 2010.