In the first Star Wars movie, Luke Skywalker lived with his aunt and uncle on a moisture farm, where fictional Moisture Vaporators were used to harvest water from the air on the hot desert planet of Tatooine.
Now, two scientists and their teams from UC Berkeley and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have teamed up to create a real-life “water harvester” and have a prototype that was able to collect 2.8 liters (about 3/4 gallon) of water in 12 hours. The device uses solar energy and could work in areas with humidity as low as 20%, which could have huge implications for low-water areas such as Africa.
The story of the water harvester device was reported April 13th in Science and described in a South African Times Live article.
