Gold Nanoparticles Turn Trees Into Streetlights 348
An anonymous reader writes "Street lights are an important part of our urban infrastructure — they light our way home and make the roads safe at night. But what if we could create natural street lights that don't need electricity to power them? A group of scientists in Taiwan recently discovered that placing gold nanoparticles within the leaves of trees causes them to give off a luminous reddish glow. The idea of using trees to replace street lights is an ingenious one — not only would it save on electricity costs and cut CO2 emissions, but it could also greatly reduce light pollution in major cities."
Ha! (Score:4, Funny)
I welcome our reddish glowing leafy overlords.
Even better (Score:5, Funny)
A group of scientists in Taiwan recently discovered that placing gold nanoparticles within the leaves of trees, causes them to give off a luminous reddish glow.
Even better, a group of US capitalists has discovered that setting fire to the trees produces an even more luminous glow, at no cost to the company, keeping the gold available for executive bonuses.
Re:Save electricity, sure (Score:3, Funny)
They can probably just harvest the gold they need from all of our e-waste since that proecess is so cheap and good for the environment. It's a win-win.
Re:Deforest the roadways... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Deforest the roadways... (Score:3, Funny)
2. ????
3. Profit!
Gold Trees: Oppulence...I has it (Score:3, Funny)
But, I also likes savings the electricity
Laurelin Technologies Inc. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Now... (Score:5, Funny)
Look pal, I saw that movie. I'm willing to invite reddish glowing leafy overlords, but I put my foot down at glowing leafy fungal overlords.
Re:Autumn (Score:4, Funny)
Maybe not where YOU live.
Re:Now... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Now... (Score:4, Funny)
All I know is that my corn muffins now come pre-jellied, which saves me precious time.
Re:Now... (Score:5, Funny)
I think you are missing that half the posts are talking about splicing, as in grafting one part of a plant on to another plant, and the other half are talking about gene splicing.
Several posters have confused the two on purpose.
Now, I need to go finish my recording project where I'm splicing Silver Maple cuttings onto 1/4" CrO2 2-track.
Re:Rube Goldberg Machine (Score:3, Funny)
To generate the extra CO2 we could always burn some trees.
Maybe we could use these super-bright trees with some magnifying glasses to start the fires. Then not only does it save billions of dollars per second in electricity costs, but it is also self-sustaining.
Wait a minute. We could use the light from the super-bright trees to grow more trees! Then we'll have so much extra energy... Maybe we could use it to power fusion devices that turn lead into gold. My god... I think we have the makings of a perpetual motion machine here, one that for once doesn't break any laws of thermodynamics.
Everything about this story makes sense!
Re:Save electricity, sure (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Now... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Ha! (Score:5, Funny)
So our options for carbon-neutral illumination are:
A - Implant expensive-to-produce gold nano-particles in the leaves of trees
B - Light them on fire
Wow.
Re:Unless (Score:3, Funny)
This is usually where my head starts to wobble, but if you can have two unequal infinities, doesn't that mean that they have different values?
See? Right there. Now there's blood coming out of my left ear. This abstract thought stuff is dangerous for me.