By running carbon dioxide and seawater through common rocks such as limestone and dolomite, they created a laboratory system that locks the gas in dissolved form before it can escape into the atmosphere—a breakthrough that could help power plants and industrial facilities reduce their emissions.

“What if it were possible to take a very slow geological process and compress it into hours?” asks Noga Moran of Hebrew University, one of the study’s lead researchers. “That is exactly what we set out to do.”

In nature, carbon dioxide from the atmosphere dissolves in rainwater, forming a slightly acidic solution. This solution seeps through carbonate rocks like limestone and dolomite, reacting to form bicarbonate ions, a dissolved form of carbon that rivers eventually carry to the ocean. This process, called carbonate weathering, is one of Earth’s main ways of removing CO₂, but it occurs far too slowly to significantly counteract modern climate change.