Sounds great - but will it be a viable improvement for batteries?

?!! I'll go and try to find out!!!

The article is a bit excitable but I went hunting for the academic publication - which I didn't read in detail by the way Looks sensible enough though - although this is just something happening in the lab so far, they'd have to scale it up and commercialise it.

Step in the right direction though!!

More or less what I thought - an interesting possibility that needs more research and development. A case of "Watch this space" perhaps. It could take time to turn it into a useful combination, of course. We could all be pushing up the daisies before it is common in all electric cars.

I wouldn't go that far, actually. I don't think its that far away. If it is as interesting as they think, they will get funding from industry to get this confirmed and then the battery producers will jump on it.

Always the optimist, me

You could be right. I hope so.

These dramtaic earth shattering inventions/discoveries revalations that will solve all our energy problems and give us peace on earth forever are churned out at the rate of about one a day.

I will start believing in them when the first commercial plant is up and running.

Like I said - always the optimist, me. The article is all about how it will change the world, but that's the reporter speaking.

Or maybe, always the physicist . That's why I can look at things like this and decide if they are valid or not. Sorry, but there you go.

Having lived off Lithium-ion batteries for 20 years we keep an eye on this technology.
As MOnica says, there have been so many articles written about the next big thing.
It has to happen one day.

Constantly having one's hopes raised and then never hearing about the innovation again. gets exhausting.

I also know how press officers in university and research centre press offices write up these discoveries without any reference to the authors of the research. DS suffers from it and so frequently when you read the article being puffed, it does not say what the press release/article says.

The companies that have tried to commercialize Lithium Sulphur appear to have stopped, among them are Sony and Airbus. As often happens the practical application does not match the research hype, but research does continue.

The previous commercialisation of Li-S batteries stalled because of the battery degradation, as far as I can see. This latest announcement is about the stabilisation of a rare phase of Sulphur that allows the battery to degrade much more slowly. That's the important bit. And its brand new; February this year, it seems.

Without getting at people, that is really not my intention...

Why are new ideas and discoveries always subject to comments along the lines of "oh, it'll never work"? Why no vision? Why no hope?

I have never ever said 'Oh it will never work'. I just want to see how these world savers, when done on a laboratory bench , will transfer to working on a commercial level.

The problem is these wonder discoveries are rolled out at the rate of at least one a day and only about one in a hundred, gets any further. one cannot be reminded of the story of the boy who kept shouting 'wolf' when there was no wolf. When there was really a wolf, nobody took any notice of him.

I understand that scientists have to publish a paper every time they make a minor advance in order to claim ownership of the development to establish it as their intellectual property. Unfortunately too many journalists looking for headlines hype up small developments on a long road as dramatic breakthroughs, when quite simply they aren't.

In the first science class I attended at the age of 11 the teacher Mr Gee instilled one word into us “YET”, science progresses and develops, there is no definitive.

There will be a better technology in the future but it’s not Lithium Sulphur yet, there are probably 20 other technologies, some of which can store more than Lithium Ion but they are not practical for consumer use yet.

I guess that I have a different perspective.

Thanks, both, for your answers.