The arid desert landscape of Death Valley is not the obvious place to find water. Yet it’s here, in one of the planet’s hottest and driest places , that Massachusetts Institute of Technology engineers decided to test new technology to pull drinking water from an unconventional source: the air.

Their water harvesting device is a window-sized panel made with absorbent material called “hydrogel,” which has been infused with salt, folded up like origami and enclosed in glass.

The material, which looks like black bubble wrap, absorbs water vapor directly from the air, swelling up as it does so, then shrinking again as the water evaporates. The water condenses on the glass and flows down a tube to emerge as fresh, drinkable water. No power is needed, just heat from the sun.

The device doe

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