Witnessing death of a red supergiant for the first time

running for up to 100km, impressive considering how new the technology is. The applications for hydrogen are endless and there is no doubt that it will soon become a large part of the energy industry. Given its potential, how soon will we see hydrogen used on a larger scale? The National Grid is taking steps to test and incorporate hydrogen into its network due to their pledge to go net-zero by 2050. Its engineers are building a testing facility called FutureGrid to understand how hydrogen will work with their current system, and it has already been confirmed that it can be transported through their pipelines, reducing the time and money required to reconstruct a compatible system. Furthermore, Linde Engineering in Germany has developed technology which allows them to separate hydrogen from natural gas and they even built the world’s first full scale power plant for hydrogen extraction. President Biden’s infrastructure bill also dedicates $9.5 billion to clean hydrogen research and a large section of it will also go to carbon capture and building power systems. The concept of hydrogen energy is quickly gaining traction and developments are happening all over the world to speed up the process of incorporating it into our infrastructure. Despite consisting of only a proton and an electron, hydrogen provides hope for the world and a way of fixing the most pressing dilemma that our planet has been presented with yet. It is an opportunity that couldn’t come too soon and is one of many methods to help make up for the decades of neglect of Earth. Once the production process is finetuned and the necessary tests have been carried out, hydrogen will be able to spread through the energy system and allow us to consume power with less fear of the environmental impact and less dependence on the non-renewable fuels which helped cause this problem.

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● nationalgrid.com. (n.d.). What is hydrogen? |

National Grid Group. [online] Available at: nationalgrid.com/stories/energy-explained/wha t-is-hydrogen. ● pv magazine International. (n.d.). The

Hydrogen Stream: World’s first full-scale pilot plant for extracting hydrogen from natural gas pipelines. [online] Available at: pvmagazine.com/2022/ 01/21/the-hydrogen-stream-worlds-first-fullscale-pilot-plant-for-extracting-hydrogen-fromnatural-gas-pipeline/ [Accessed 10 Feb. 2022]. ● ENERGY.GOV (2019). Hydrogen Production:

Electrolysis. [online] Energy.gov. Available at: energy.gov/eere/fuelcells/hydrogen-productionelectrolysis. ● Pillsbury Law. (n.d.). Hydrogen Highlights in the

Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill. [online] Available at: pillsburylaw.com/en/news-and-insights/hydroge n-highlights-bipartisan-infrastructure-bill.html. ● Alverà, M. (2021). The Hydrogen revolution : a blueprint for the future of clean energy.

London Hodder Studio.

By Maya Murfin Year 9 For the first time in history, over the course of 130 days, scientists observed the collapse of a red supergiant star in real time. The star was a part of the galaxy NGC 5731, which is around 120 million light years away from Earth. Most stars of this size end their lives in a massive supernova. Stars burn huge amounts of nuclear fuel at their cores, producing mass amounts of energy, heating up the core of the star. This heat creates pressure that stops the star from collapsing in on itself. Gravity is constantly battling to