consider this: what if the trees can actually be turned into “street
lights” themselves? And no, we’re not talking about setting up street
lights to act as fake trees.
This new concept works on a molecular level. Post-doctor Yen-Hsun Su
of Research Center for Applied Science (RCAS), Academia Sinica, Taiwan,
found that when gold nanoparticles are implanted into Bacopa caroliniana
plants, the gold nanoparticles produce a blue-violet fluorescence,
which then triggers a red emmission of the chlorophyll surrounding it.
Assistant Prof. Shih-Hui Chang said: “Light emitting diode (LED) has
replaced traditional light source in many display panels and street
lights on the road. A lot of light emitting diode, especially white
light emitting diode, uses phosphor powder to stimulate light of
different wavelengths. However, phosphor powder is highly toxic and its
price is expensive. As a result, Dr. Yen-Hsun Wu had the idea to
discover a method which is less toxic to replace phosphor powder which
can harm human bodies and cause environmental pollution. This is a major
motivation for him to engage in the research at the first place.”
The research into ths new type of light-emitting trees still needs
quite a bit of work for it work on a mass scale, but it seems the
experiment has indeed opened up the possibility for this to explored
even further.
“In the future, bio-LED could be used to make roadside trees
luminescent at night. This will save energy and absorb CO2 as the
bio-LED luminescence will cause the chloroplast to conduct
photosynthesis,” said Dr. Yen-Hsun Su
It may be a little naive to imagine that we as humans may eventually
find a way for nature and technology to not only co-exist but, as in
this example maybe even exist almost ‘as one’. Although in my opinion I
don’t think that nature and technology could ever really be merged into
one single concept, but we sure do live in some interesting times, and
it seems we may only be scratching the surface of the endless
possibilities there may exist in the way technology is evolving.
Still, I wouldn’t want to mess too much with nature. With all of it’s
chaotic occurences at times, nature as a whole still exists as a
perfect entity in my opinion. However, trees glowing the dark does seem
like quite an interesting concept