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Professor Ken Durose from Liverpool University鈥檚 Stephenson Institute for Renewable Energy, a leading researcher into solar energy, explains how scientists and engineers are now able to get round the theoretical upper limit on the amount of sunlight which photovoltaic cells can convert into electricity.

Edinburgh Heriot-Watt University鈥檚 PhD. researcher Genevieve Gariepy and colleagues have recorded the first-ever movie of light particles moving directly in air, using a laser and an array of detectors that log the time a photon arrives at them with incredible precision, equivalent to snapping around 15 billion frames a second.

In 鈥楶articulate Matter, his recent photographs and videos from Chinese cities, German photographer Benedikt Partenheimer has managed to capture 鈥榣ight without shadows鈥�, a 鈥榙ifferent kind white鈥�. The white haze which often blankets large Chinese cities is a complex mix of extremely small particles and liquid droplets, giving Benedikt鈥檚 photographs an other-worldly atmosphere.

Genevieve Gariepy wants us to appreciate some really big numbers, such as that there are 7 billion people on this planet. 7 billion is hard to imagine so she suggests we all meet in a space where we can all 铿乼, perhaps a big, 铿俛t desert. We would then take a satellite picture of us all, and seeing the resulting image would help us understand how much space we actually take up when we are together, how many people we really share the planet with.