Graphene is the supermaterial that will push humanity into the future. From being the secret sauce to fast transistors to curing foot odor, it's now heading towards making salt water drinkable.

Converting saltwater to potable water in the most efficient manner possible is just its latest party trick. Developed by MIT researchers, it involves pushing saltwater through a one atom thick graphene filter covered in tiny holes. It's small enough to block out salt molecules, which this process is essentially reverse osmosis.

But the new ingredient to this is the graphene filter. This method is more efficient than conventional methods by two to three orders of magnitude.

[Nano Letters via PhysOrg via Geekosystem]

Image via Cohen-Tanugi and Grossman/American Chemical Society