Washington, June 16 -- : Humans can do lots of things that plants can't do. We can walk around, we can talk, we can hear and see and touch. But plants have one major advantage over humans: They can make energy directly from the sun.
A study published in the journal Chem Catalysis: Cell Press shows that the process of turning sunlight directly into usable energy -- called photosynthesis -- may soon be a feat humans are able to mimic to harness the sun's energy for clean, storable, efficient fuel.
If so, it could open a whole new frontier of clean energy. Enough energy hits the earth in the form of sunlight in one hour to meet all human civilization's energy needs for an entire year.
Yulia Pushkar, a biophysicist and professor of physics i...