Dubai opened the doors Friday to an architecturally stunning building housing the new Museum of the Future, a seven-story structure that envisions a dreamlike world powered by solar energy and the Gulf Arab state's frenetic quest to develop.

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The torus-shaped museum is a design marvel that forgoes support columns, relying instead on a network of diagonal beams. It is enveloped in windows carved by Arabic calligraphy, adding another eye-popping design element to Dubai's piercingly modern skyline that shimmers with the world's tallest tower, the Burj Khalifa.

The Museum of the Future projects Dubai's ambitions and its desire to be seen as a modern, inclusive city even as its political system remains rooted in hereditary rule and hard limits exist on the types of expression permitted. It is the latest in a stream of feats for Dubai, which is the first country in the Middle East to host the World's Fair.

The museum envisions what the world could look like 50 years from today. It's a vision that crystalizes the United Arab Emirates' own 50-year transformation from a pearl-diving backwater to a global interconnected hub fueled by oil and gas wealth.

"It was an imperative requirement to develop so fast because we needed to catch up with the rest of the world," said Sarah Al-Amiri, UAE minister of state for advanced technology and chair of the UAE Space Agency. "Prior to 1971, [we had] no basic road networks, no basic education, electricity network and so on."

The UAE last year announced it would join a growing list of nations cutting greenhouse gas emissions, shifting away at least domestically from the fossil fuels that still drive the Arabian Peninsula's growth, clout and influence.

However, the museum's focus on a sustainable future brings to the forefront the inherent tension between the push by Gulf Arab states to keep pumping oil and gas and global pledges to cut down on carbon emissions, including the UAE's 2050 net-zero pledge.

Moreover, the museum invites visitors to reconnect with their senses and disconnect from their phones, but digital screens and experiences flow throughout its installations. The museum also encourages visitors to think about the planet's health and biodiversity in a city that celebrates consumption, luxury and consumerism.

Al-Amiri said the museum's ethos is that the drive toward a sustainable future and healthy planet should not prohibit progress and economic growth.

"It needs to not be prohibitive, but rather an opportunity to create new opportunities out of this challenge that we're all facing," she said.

The museum's creative director, Brendan McGetrick, said addressing climate change "doesn't mean that you have to return to like some hunter gatherer lifestyle."

"You can actually mobilize and continue progressing and continue innovating, but it should be done with an awareness of our relationship to the planet and that we have a lot of work to do," he said.

The museum's goal is to inspire people to think about what is possible and to channel that into real world action, he added.

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Visitors to the Museum of the Future are ushered by an artificial intelligence guide named "Aya." She beckons people to experience a future with flying taxis, windfarms and a world powered by a massive structure orbiting Earth that harnesses the sun's energy and beams it to the moon. The so-called "Sol Project" imagines the moon covered by countless solar panels that direct that energy toward nodes on Earth, where humanity thrives and the planet's biodiversity includes innovative plant species resistant to fire.

"What we tried to do is create a sort of compelling vision of what would happen if we imagine space as a shared resource," McGetrick said.

The museum envisions that humanity's collective energy project is directed by a space station called the OSS Hope, the same word in Arabic the UAE named its real-life mission gathering data from Mars' atmosphere. Last year, the UAE became the first Arab country to launch a functioning interplanetary mission.

The museum's imagined future also draws from Islam's past with a mesmerizing display of the planets in our solar system mapped by astrolabes, the complex devices refined by Muslims during the Golden Age of Islam to aid in navigation, time and celestial mapping.

The museum's Arab thumbprint flows throughout, including in a meditation space that is part of a larger sensory experience guided by vibration, light and water. These three elements underpinned life for tribes in the Arabian Peninsula.

The oil-fueled cities of the Gulf that have emerged from the desert over the past few decades unearthed seismic changes in the ways people in the region live, interact and connect with nature.

"It's always important to continue to evolve and develop and understand what parts of the culture actually push development forward," said Al-Amiri. "Creating new norms and new ways of living and new ways of coexisting is OK."

A stunning centerpiece of the museum is a darkened mirrored space illuminated by columns of tiny glass cylinders with the illusory DNA of animals and species that have gone extinct, including the polar bear whose Arctic habitat is currently threatened by warming temperatures. In this dreamscape future, the health of the planet is monitored like a person's pulse, temperature and vitals are.

The Museum of the Future opens to the public Friday with tickets costing the equivalent of $40 a person. An official launch ceremony Monday evening took place in the presence of Dubai ruler, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, whose poetry wraps the building in Arabic calligraphy.

The building was conceptualized by Killa Design, a UAE-based architecture firm. Killa Design says the building, which overlooks Dubai's main thoroughfare, has achieved LEED Platinum status, a worldwide rating reserved for the world's most energy-efficient and environmental designs.

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A coalition of more than 20 environmental and climate groups launched a campaign Monday calling for a ban on fossil fuel advertising and sponsorship across the European Union, similar to bans on tobacco advertising.

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More than 80 Greenpeace activists blocked the entrance to Shell's oil refinery in the Dutch port of Rotterdam to draw attention to the launch of the European Citizens' Initiative calling for the advertising ban.

The action comes less than a month before the start of the United Nations climate summit, COP26, in Glasgow. The 12-day summit aims to secure more ambitious commitments to limit global warming to well below 2 degrees Celsius, with a goal of keeping it to 1.5 degrees Celsius compared to pre-industrial levels.

Activists used floating cubes emblazoned with fossil fuel-linked advertisements to block the entrance, along with the protest ship Beluga II, with the words "Ban Fossil Fuel Advertising" strung between its two masts. Activists also climbed a 15-meter (yard) oil tank and attached advertisement posters next to Shell's logo.

"I grew up reading signs about how cigarettes kill you, but never saw similar warnings in petrol stations or fuel tanks. It's frightening that my favorite sports and museums are sponsored by airlines and car companies," Chaja Merk, an activist on board the Greenpeace ship, said in a statement released by the group. "Fossil fuel adverts belong in a museum – not sponsoring them."

Shell said the company is investing billions of dollars in "lower-carbon energy. To help alter the mix of energy Shell sells, we need to grow these new businesses rapidly. That means letting our customers know through advertising or social media what lower-carbon solutions we offer now or are developing, so they can switch when the time is right for them."

Police moved in to break up the demonstration, boarding the Beluga II and detaining activists. More were detained at the oil tank. In total, 22 activists were arrested and a further 32 issued with fines, police said.

Shell said it respects the right to peaceful protest, "if it is done safely. That is not the case now. The demonstrators are illegally on our property, where strict safety protocols apply," the company said.

Calls for fossil fuel advertising bans are gaining traction. Earlier this year, Amsterdam imposed a ban in the city's metro network on ads linked to what it called "fossil products" such as gas-powered cars and cheap airline tickets. The municipality called the move a first step in a wider move to remove such ads from the Dutch capital's streets.

The campaign for a law banning ads linked to fossil fuels across the EU needs to gather 1 million verified signatures in a year. If it succeeds, the EU's executive Commission has to look at the request, but is not obliged to take action.

"This legislation would increase public awareness of products and technologies that are responsible for climate change and other environmental and health harms," the environmental coalition said on its website.

Coinciding with the launch, Greenpeace's Dutch branch published a report accusing major energy companies of large scale "greenwashing" in their advertising campaigns – defining  the term as "as a combination of both fossil fuel companies' advertisements promoting genuinely climate friendly initiatives, as well as their advertisements that promote false climate solutions as 'green.'"

The study analyzed more than 3,000 ads on social media by six energy companies and concluded that 63% amounted to greenwashing.

"We can confidently say that all the companies in the dataset are greenwashing, as their advertisements do not accurately reflect their business activities – either through an over-emphasis on their 'green' activities, or an under-emphasis on their fossil fuel activities," the report said.

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Solar energy plays an enormous role in our lives. If we can harness it, we can eliminate the need for polluting fossil fuels like petroleum and gas. But the main challenge in switching to solar energy lies in the varying availability of sunlight as the day progresses and seasons change.

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Since the electrical grid needs stable power at all hours of the day and night, use of solar energy depends on our ability to store it. But the current technology for storing solar energy, batteries, is inapplicable to solar energy storage in the amounts need to supply a manufacturing site, a neighborhood, or an entire city.

Researchers from the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology have made a scientific breakthrough on the storage of solar energy, as reported by Energy & Environmental Science. A project led by Professor Avner Rothschild of the Technion's Faculty of Materials Science doctoral student Yifat Piekner from the Nancy and Stephen Grand Technion Energy Program (GTEP  has shown that hematite can serve as a promising material in converting solar energy into hydrogen.

The process entails the use of photoelectrochemical solar cells, which are similar to photovoltaic cells, but instead of producing electricity, they produce hydrogen using the electric power (current × voltage) generated in them. The power then uses sunlight energy to dissociate water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen.

Hydrogen is easy to store and when used as fuel, does not involve greenhouse gas or carbon emissions.

One of the main challenges of photoelectrochemical cells is the development of efficient and stable photoelectrodes in a base or acid electrolyte, which is the chemical environment in which water can be efficiently split into hydrogen and oxygen. This is where hematite-based photoelectrochemical cells come into play. Hematite is an iron oxide that has a similar chemical composition to rust. Hematite is inexpensive, stable and nontoxic, and has properties that are suitable for water splitting.

However, hematite also has its disadvantages. For reasons that are still unclear, the photon-to-hydrogen conversion efficiency in hematite-based devices is not even half of the theoretical limit for this material. The new Technion research builds on findings recently published in Nature Materials and proposes an explanation. It transpires that the photons absorbed by hematite produce localized electronic transitions that are "chained" to a specific atomic location in the hematite crystal, rendering them incapable of generating the electric current used for water splitting.

But a new analysis method developed by Piekner and her research colleagues, Dr. David Ellis of the Technion and Dr. Daniel Grave of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, the following data were measured for the first time: Quantum efficiency in the generation of mobile (productive) and localized (nonproductive) electronic transitions in a material as a result of photon absorption at different wavelengths, and electron-hole separation efficiency.

This is the first time that these two properties (the first, optical in nature and the second, electrical) have been measured separately, allowing for deeper understanding of the factors that influence the energy efficiency of materials for converting solar energy into hydrogen or electricity.

The research study was sponsored by the Israel Science Foundation's research center for photocatalysts and photoelectrodes for hydrogen production in the Petroleum Alternatives for Transportation Program, the Grand Technion Energy Program (GTEP) and the Russell Berrie Nanotechnology Institute (RBNI) at the Technion.

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