Wednesday, November 17, 2010

Nanoparticles can illuminate certain trees

 
 

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via Coolest Gadgets by Mark R on 11/16/10

And in other news, NASA has finally found life on other planets. Judging from our high-resolution photos, we can see that they have similar buildings and automobiles, but their trees glow red at night.

Seriously, this is Earth. Specifically, it is Taiwan's National Cheng Kung University, and it was recently discovered that adding gold nanoparticles to the leaves of this tree, known as Bacopa caroliniana, will cause the chlorophyll to glow red.

Dr. Ye-Hsun Su believes that his recent discovery could do a lot to help the environment. After all, a lot of streetlights at night lead to a huge electricity bill. If it is cheaper to coat some trees with a substance to make them glow at night, then we can reduce our nightly illumination bill by a substantial fraction.

Of course, I'm not certain how well this will work. I don't know anything about Bacopa caroliniana, but unless it is able to grow quickly and on any terrain, the "tree streetlight" plan would take years to develop.

If nothing else, you got a way to make certain that trees are prepared for the holidays. Other than that season, there really isn't a way to avoid their weird eerie glow.

Source


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[ Nanoparticles can illuminate certain trees copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]

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