{"id":14315,"date":"2025-05-12T22:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-05-12T22:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/modernsciences.org\/staging\/4414\/?p=14315"},"modified":"2025-05-02T05:45:19","modified_gmt":"2025-05-02T05:45:19","slug":"real-star-wars-tech-moisture-farming-space-junk-mitochondria-science-may-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/modernsciences.org\/staging\/4414\/real-star-wars-tech-moisture-farming-space-junk-mitochondria-science-may-2025\/","title":{"rendered":"Some \u2018Star Wars\u2019 stories have already become\u00a0reality"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n
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\n Tatooine\u2019s moisture farming equipment stands in the desert of Tunisia, where parts of the \u2018Star Wars\u2019 movie series were filmed.\n V\u00e9ronique Debord-Lazaro via Flickr<\/a>, CC BY-SA<\/a><\/span>\n <\/figcaption>\n <\/figure>\n\n Daniel B. Oerther<\/a>, Missouri University of Science and Technology<\/a><\/em> and William Schonberg<\/a>, Missouri University of Science and Technology<\/a><\/em><\/span>\n\n

Just 48 short years ago, movie director George Lucas used the phrase \u201cA long time ago in a galaxy far, far away\u201d as the opening to the first \u201cStar Wars\u201d movie, later labeled \u201cEpisode IV: A New Hope<\/a>.\u201d But at least four important aspects of the \u201cStar Wars\u201d saga are much closer \u2013 both in time and space \u2013 than Lucas was letting on. <\/p>\n\n

One, the ability to add blue food coloring to milk<\/a>, was possible even at the time the first film came out. But in 2024, \u201cStar Wars\u201d-themed blue milk became periodically available in grocery stores<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n

And we, an environmental health engineer<\/a> and a civil engineer<\/a>, know there are at least three more elements of these ancient, distant Lucas stories that might seem like science fiction but are, in fact, science reality.<\/p>\n\n

Moisture farming<\/h2>\n\n

In that first movie, \u201cEpisode IV,\u201d Luke Skywalker\u2019s Uncle Owen was a farmer on the planet of Tatooine. He farmed water from air<\/a> in the middle of a desert. <\/p>\n\n

It might sound impossible, but it\u2019s exactly what experts discussed at the second International Atmospheric Water Harvesting Summit<\/a> hosted by Arizona State University in March 2025.<\/p>\n\n

Each day, a human needs to consume about the equivalent of 0.8 gallons of water<\/a> (3 liters). With more than 8 billion people living on the planet, that means engineers need to produce nearly 2.6 trillion gallons (10 trillion liters) of clean drinking water every year. Taken globally, rainfall would be enough<\/a>, but it\u2019s distributed very unevenly<\/a> \u2013 including landing in the oceans, where it immediately becomes too salty to drink safely.<\/p>\n\n

Deserts, which cover about one-fifth of the Earth\u2019s land area, are home to about 1 billion people<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n

Researchers at places such as Berkeley have developed solar-powered systems that can produce clean drinking water from thin air<\/a>. In general, they use a material that traps water molecules from the air within its structure and then use sunlight to condense that water out of the material and into drinkable liquid. But there is still a ways to go before they are ready for commercial distribution and available to help large numbers of people.<\/p>\n\n

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