It seems to me the need to get to the root of the mechanism behind this behavior is of paramount importance.

This discovery tells us we've missed missing something fundamental and we don't have a clear understanding what's happening at the quantum/molecular level. And it almost goes without saying this has to have major implications in related areas of physics. If we don't fully understand how photons and molecules interact it has to be a bigger deal than just having a better understanding of clouds and improving climate science.

It will be interesting to see if they're on the right track about the underlying mechanism. No doubt this will spur on a flurry of other research.

> This discovery tells us we've missed missing something fundamental

Yes, like the fact that light and heat are both made of photons, although of different energies. /s

Heat is made of phonons, essentially dispersed noise inside material. Energy can be transmitted using photons (you are thinking of infra red, but very hot objects also emit higher frequencies, in visible spectrum and sometimes even into xrays), but this time it's about vaporisation not from infra-red, but from visible light (green has strongest effect) without any actual heating of molecules.

No mention of energy efficiency alas, so cannot judge the claims of the effects usefulness. Drying maybe, where the lack of heat will have applications, but competing with existing desalination methods? Perhaps drying brine into powder?

Efficiency no, but:

"The effect can be substantial. Under the optimum conditions of color, angle, and polarization, Lv says, “the evaporation rate is four times the thermal limit.”"

So, up to 400% efficiency compared to temperature. Drying brine would probably be best usage.

I wonder if this is also true for solid forms of water, or other high vapor pressure solids.

This could lead to some interesting new techniques for doing materials processing.