Glowing trees to replace street lamps

The golden glow of street lights could soon be replaced by the green fluorescence of tree leaves, according to a story from MSNBC and Discovery News. Scientists from the Academia Sinica and the National Cheng Kung University in Taipei and Tainan have implanted glowing, sea urchin shaped gold nanoparticles, known as bio light emitting diodes, or bio LEDs, inside the leaves of a plant.

 

The new nanoparticles could replace the electricity powered street light with biologically powered light that removes CO2 from the atmosphere 24 hours a days.

 

"In the future, bio-LED could be used to make roadside trees luminescent at night," said Yen-Hsun Su in an interview with Chemistry World. "This will save energy and absorb CO2 as the bio-LED luminescence will cause the chloroplast to conduct photosynthesis."

 

The gold, sea urchin shaped nanoparticles are the key to turning a material that normal absorbs light into one that emits it.