Amazing breakthroughs occur everyday in science and technology, it seems. Of course, we always have to wait before the breakthroughs trickle down into real devices. Sometimes they never do.

This, from the National Science Foundation:

In a step toward making cars that can run on hydrogen rather than gasoline a reality, chemists at UCLA and the University of Michigan have announced a new “crystal sponge” material that can store in its pores nearly three times more hydrogen than any substance known previously. … this is the first material to achieve the kind of storage capacities required to make hydrogen fuel practical. … The payoff could be hydrogen fuel that powers not only cars, but laptop computers, cellular phones, digital cameras and other electronic devices as well.

Neat. But don’t toss out your lithium batteries or park your hybrid car just yet. Hydrogen burns without emissions, and it’s as available as water, but some scientists say the hydrogen economy will never arrive. It takes more fossil fuels to generate and store the hydrogen than it does to just use the other fuels in the first place. So for now, hydrogen is bad for the environment and the economy. Of course, an even more amazing breakthrough might one day change that.