In the vast emptiness of space, Voyager 1 has been faithfully whispering its secrets back to Earth since 1977. But in a little over two decades, its nuclear-powered heart is expected to go dark. What if, instead, it could keep humming for thousands of years?
A team of British scientists and engineers have crafted a battery that could make such a thing possible. Their device — a carbon-14 diamond battery — is a strange fusion of radioactive decay, synthetic diamonds, and plasma chemistry. The result is a power source that could outlive generations of human civilization.
At its core, the diamond battery thrives on decay — specifically, the decay of the carbon-14 isotope. Carbon-14 is best known for its role in radiocarbon dating, but now, it’s poised to enter the energy storage game.
Encased within a synthetic diamond, carbon-14 undergoes beta decay, releasing electrons that the diamond then converts into electricity. The entire process is surprisingly similar to how solar panels convert sunlight into power, but with a crucial difference. Instead of capturing photons from the sun, the diamond captures electrons emitted from within.
With a half-life of 5,700 years, carbon-14 can last longer than our oldest pyramids. That means a diamond battery could, theoretically, keep providing power for thousands of years — many times over the lifecycle of any engineering project. There’s a catch, though. It’s not designed for high-drain devices like smartphones or laptops. But for low-power applications — think medical implants, sensors, and satellites — the possibilities are staggering.
If they could safely scale the output power up from microwatts, this would be a major game changer.
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