How did the Romans build the Pantheon? Made of non-reinforced concrete – it remains standing after 2000 years, in a seismic zone – while our concrete with steel rebar struggles to last a century. No one has been able to figure it out for two millennia, but this team at MIT just solved the mystery and recently published about it in Science.
The implications are staggering. They can make stronger, self healing concrete. It can be lower cost and is a very easy change to existing production operations, this is not true for any other significant advancement we’ve seen in cement. Even more exciting, this radically reduces the carbon emissions from making cement, which is the largest offender of all construction materials, almost 9% of global CO2 emissions and growing.
We are their first investors.