Skip to main content

Scientists Discover Way to Send Information into Black Holes Without Using Energy

3 comments

Scientists Discover a Hydrogen-Powered Droplet That Can Move Like a Tiny Elevator!

Imagine a tiny liquid droplet that can rise and sink repeatedly inside a liquid without being pushed by an external force. Even more surprisingly, it can move at speeds of up to 25 millimetres per second and continue this unusual motion for as long as 25 minutes. This may sound like something from science fiction, but scientists have demonstrated exactly this behaviour using a hydrogen-powered mechanism called the hydrogen microbubble elevator.

In a fascinating development, researchers led by Fattahi Kobra have discovered a new way to make liquid droplets move autonomously. Their approach uses chemical reactions occurring inside specially designed droplets to generate tiny hydrogen bubbles. These bubbles continuously change the droplet's density, allowing it to rise and sink like a miniature elevator.

The discovery could open new possibilities in active soft matter, microscopic transport systems and chemical-powered machines.

What Is Active Soft Matter?

Active soft matter refers to materials or systems that can convert chemical or other forms of energy into mechanical movement. Unlike ordinary materials, which generally need an external force to move, active systems can generate their own motion.

Examples include swimming microorganisms, moving biological cells and artificial microscopic motors.

Scientists are particularly interested in droplets because they are flexible, can change their shape and provide a confined environment where chemical reactions can directly produce movement.

In earlier research, scientists developed droplets that could move using differences in temperature or chemical concentration around them. These differences create forces known as Marangoni stresses, which push droplets through surrounding liquids.

However, these systems have an important limitation. Their movement depends on chemical or thermal gradients. As the surrounding liquid mixes and these gradients gradually disappear, the driving force becomes weaker. Eventually, the droplets slow down or stop moving.

Researchers wanted to find a more reliable way to keep these tiny liquid systems moving without depending on gradients that quickly disappear.

Introducing the Hydrogen Microbubble Elevator

To overcome this challenge, the research team developed a mechanism based on hydrogen-producing chemical reactions.

The key component is a special type of liquid known as a liquid organic hydrogen carrier, or LOHC. These liquids are mainly designed to store hydrogen safely and release it when needed.

In this experiment, the LOHC droplets act as tiny chemical reactors. When placed in a suitable alkaline liquid environment, chemical reactions at the interface between the droplet and surrounding liquid produce hydrogen gas.

As the reaction continues, hydrogen begins accumulating inside the droplet, forming a tiny gas bubble.

This bubble plays a crucial role in the droplet's movement.

When the hydrogen bubble grows, it changes the droplet's overall effective density. As its density becomes lower than that of the surrounding liquid, the droplet experiences an upward buoyant force and starts rising.

As the droplet moves upward, the hydrogen bubble eventually separates from it. This process is known as bubble pinch-off.

Once the bubble detaches, the droplet loses part of its accumulated gas volume. Its effective density increases again, allowing it to sink.

When it reaches a lower position, the chemical reaction continues producing more hydrogen. Another bubble develops, the droplet becomes lighter, and the upward journey begins again.

This repeating process creates continuous rising and sinking movements, similar to a tiny underwater elevator.

How Fast Can These Tiny Droplets Move?

One of the most impressive aspects of this discovery is the speed of the droplets.

According to the researchers, the hydrogen-powered droplets can reach peak upward velocities of approximately 25 millimetres per second.

They can travel along vertical paths of around 2.5 centimetres while maintaining their repeated oscillatory movement.

This is particularly impressive when compared with traditional Marangoni-driven droplet motion. The new mechanism can produce speeds approximately 1,000 times faster than typical Marangoni-driven bouncing.

Even more importantly, the droplets do not stop after just a few movements.

The researchers demonstrated that the droplets could maintain their oscillations for up to 25 minutes, completing as many as 130 cycles.

This shows that chemical reactions can provide a sustained source of energy for autonomous movement at the microscopic scale.

Scientists Can Control the Droplets' Movement

Another exciting feature of this technology is that the movement can be controlled.

The researchers discovered that the speed of the chemical reaction plays an important role in determining how the droplets behave.

By changing the reaction rate, they can adjust the frequency and amplitude of the oscillations.

In simple terms, the reaction rate determines how quickly hydrogen bubbles form and detach. Faster or slower bubble production changes how frequently the droplet rises and sinks, as well as the distance it travels during each cycle.

However, the researchers also identified an important limitation.

The oscillations remain stable only while the hydrogen bubble stays below a critical size relative to the droplet.

If the bubble becomes too large, the balance between buoyancy and the forces controlling the droplet's movement changes. Beyond this critical threshold, the droplet can no longer maintain its repeated rising and sinking motion.

Instead, it rises continuously until it reaches the liquid's upper surface.

This finding helps explain the conditions required to maintain stable oscillations.

How Did Scientists Explain This Behaviour?

To understand the physics behind the movement, the research team developed a mathematical model based on the balance of forces acting on the droplet.

The model considers factors such as buoyancy, gravity, fluid resistance, hydrogen production and bubble detachment.

By comparing the theoretical predictions with experimental observations, the researchers could explain how changes in gas production influence the droplet's motion.

Their findings show that the movement is not simply caused by random bubble formation. Instead, it results from a repeating interaction between chemical reactions and hydrodynamic forces.

This interaction allows the droplet to behave like a self-powered mechanical system.

Why Is This Discovery Important?

The hydrogen microbubble elevator represents a new approach to designing autonomous microscopic machines.

Previous droplet-based propulsion systems often depended on external gradients, which gradually weakened as the surrounding liquid mixed. The newly demonstrated mechanism uses chemical reactions to continuously generate gas and regulate buoyancy.

This could inspire future technologies involving self-powered microtransport, active materials, chemical micromotors and advanced fluid-handling systems.

For example, similar mechanisms could eventually help researchers develop tiny machines capable of transporting materials through liquids without requiring conventional motors or external mechanical components.

However, these applications are still possibilities rather than established technologies. Further research will be needed to understand how the mechanism can be controlled, scaled and adapted to more complex environments.

A New Direction for Self-Powered Microscopic Machines

The discovery of the hydrogen microbubble elevator demonstrates how a simple chemical reaction can produce surprisingly complex mechanical behaviour.

By turning hydrogen production into a repeating cycle of bubble growth, detachment and density changes, scientists have created droplets that can move up and down independently for extended periods.

With speeds reaching 25 millimetres per second and oscillations lasting up to 25 minutes, this approach offers a promising new direction for active soft matter research.

What makes the discovery especially exciting is that the droplet does not need a traditional motor, battery or external pushing force. Its own chemical reactions provide the energy required for movement.

It is a remarkable example of how scientists are learning to transform chemistry into motion, bringing us one step closer to creating microscopic machines that can power and control their own movement.

Reference: Kobra F, Sanogo B, Lu Q, Li Y, Xu BB, Lohse D, Deng D, Zhang X. Microbubble elevator induced buoyancy oscillations of reacting droplets. Nat Commun. 2026 Jul 11;17(1):8547. doi: 10.1038/s41467-026-74223-5. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular

Scientists Discover Way to Send Information into Black Holes Without Using Energy

For years, scientists believed that adding even one qubit (a unit of quantum information) to a black hole needed energy. This was based on the idea that a black hole’s entropy must increase with more information, which means it must gain energy. But a new study by Jonah Kudler-Flam and Geoff Penington changes that thinking. They found that quantum information can be teleported into a black hole without adding energy or increasing entropy . This works through a process called black hole decoherence , where “soft” radiation — very low-energy signals — carry information into the black hole. In their method, the qubit enters the black hole while a new pair of entangled particles (like Hawking radiation) is created. This keeps the total information balanced, so there's no violation of the laws of physics. The energy cost only shows up when information is erased from the outside — these are called zerobits . According to Landauer’s principle, erasing information always needs energy. But ...
3 comments
Read more

Black Holes That Never Dies

Black holes are powerful objects in space with gravity so strong that nothing can escape them. In the 1970s, Stephen Hawking showed that black holes can slowly lose energy by giving off tiny particles. This process is called Hawking radiation . Over time, the black hole gets smaller and hotter, and in the end, it disappears completely. But new research by Menezes and his team shows something different. Using a theory called Loop Quantum Gravity (LQG) , they studied black holes with quantum corrections. In their model, the black hole does not vanish completely. Instead, it stops shrinking when it reaches a very small size. This leftover is called a black hole remnant . They also studied something called grey-body factors , which affect how much energy escapes from a black hole. Their findings show that the black hole cools down and stops losing mass once it reaches a minimum mass . This new model removes the idea of a “singularity” at the center of the black hole and gives us a better ...
Post a Comment
Read more

How Planetary Movements Might Explain Sunspot Cycles and Solar Phenomena

Sunspots, dark patches on the Sun's surface, follow a cycle of increasing and decreasing activity every 11 years. For years, scientists have relied on the dynamo model to explain this cycle. According to this model, the Sun's magnetic field is generated by the movement of plasma and the Sun's rotation. However, this model does not fully explain why the sunspot cycle is sometimes unpredictable. Lauri Jetsu, a researcher, has proposed a new approach. Jetsu’s analysis, using a method called the Discrete Chi-square Method (DCM), suggests that planetary movements, especially those of Earth, Jupiter, and Mercury, play a key role in driving the sunspot cycle. His theory focuses on Flux Transfer Events (FTEs), where the magnetic fields of these planets interact with the Sun’s magnetic field. These interactions could create the sunspots and explain other solar phenomena like the Sun’s magnetic polarity reversing every 11 years. The Sun, our closest star, has been a subject of scient...
Post a Comment
Read more