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I would instead take advantages of photoautrophic organisms that already are bioluminescent like Dinoflagellate.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinoflagellate
They can have a startling effect in large numbers and feed themselves with daylight.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioluminescence#mediaviewer/Fi...
Some video of their effect
Why not leave the night sky dark? It's like we have this 30,000 year old phobia that we can't ditch... there are no more tigers lurking in the darkness.
...perhaps not.
The processes involved are orders of magnitude below the scale needed to produce usable light. And in the plants it's been tested in, it's also fatal after a short time. These aren't trivial problems, and they're not going to be solved by a designer photoshopping a concept.
Exactly, I once did the calculation, they use the protein luciferase, which requires 1 molecule of Lucferin and 1 molecule of ATP per photon produced! That means if you were to produce say 200 lm (about the output of a 40W incandescent light bulb) you'd need kilo's of ATP and Luciferin a week. Don't expect useful light.
Let's say that we want to have a glowing forest. The glowing trees will absorb sunlight from a certain area and emit it over the same area with a certain efficiency.
Photosynthesis has an efficiency of between 0.1% and 1%. I don't know what the efficiency of glowing is, so let's assume it's 10%. So your plants will illuminate the area with about 0.01%-0.1% of the intensity of the light which they absorb.
Full daylight is about 100,000 lux, so your forest will be illuminated to somewhere around 10-100 lux, which is somewhere between "twilight" and "a poorly lit room".
It gets even worse if you want your plants to illuminate a larger area than they themselves cover: if you have a plant illuminating (say) 10x more area than it covers (a tree in the middle of an open field, or next to a road), you're down to 1-10 lux, optimistically.
The processes involved are orders of magnitude below the scale needed to produce usable light. And in the plants it's been tested in, it's also fatal after a short time. These aren't trivial problems, and they're not going to be solved by a designer photoshopping a concept.
They don't need energy, they just generate it autonomously. Why didn't we think of this earlier? The logic is flawless!
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Actually quite a few scientists tried to stop that kickstarter because of the dangers it could prove to the ecosystem: http://www.theguardian.com/environment/true-north/2013/jun/0...
That article seems mostly seems worried about future projects. And I'm not sure what scientists you're talking about. Is it this line: > 116 organizations have called for a moratorium on any release of synthetic organisms. The UN convention on Biological Diversity has urged countries to exercise precaution in any release of synthetic organisms to the environment. Well if I click on the link I find a very interesting…
The processes involved are orders of magnitude below the scale needed to produce usable light. And in the plants it's been tested in, it's also fatal after a short time. These aren't trivial problems, and they're not going to be solved by a designer photoshopping a concept.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Actually quite a few scientists tried to stop that kickstarter because of the dangers it could prove to the ecosystem: http://www.theguardian.com/environment/true-north/2013/jun/0...
That article seems mostly seems worried about future projects. And I'm not sure what scientists you're talking about. Is it this line: > 116 organizations have called for a moratorium on any release of synthetic organisms. The UN convention on Biological Diversity has urged countries to exercise precaution in any release of synthetic organisms to the environment. Well if I click on the link I find a very interesting…
Source: I work in a molecular biology lab.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That article seems mostly seems worried about future projects. And I'm not sure what scientists you're talking about. Is it this line: > 116 organizations have called for a moratorium on any release of synthetic organisms. The UN convention on Biological Diversity has urged countries to exercise precaution in any release of synthetic organisms to the environment. Well if I click on the link I find a very interesting…
"Synthetic biology" in technical usage refers to custom sequences which are written on a computer then chemically assembled ex vivo . This is a widely used technique. It is distinct from the technique of extracting and amplifying a sequence from one organism and inserting it into another, although the results produced can be similar. Source: I work in a molecular biology lab.
The processes involved are orders of magnitude below the scale needed to produce usable light. And in the plants it's been tested in, it's also fatal after a short time. These aren't trivial problems, and they're not going to be solved by a designer photoshopping a concept.
Exactly, I once did the calculation, they use the protein luciferase, which requires 1 molecule of Lucferin and 1 molecule of ATP per photon produced! That means if you were to produce say 200 lm (about the output of a 40W incandescent light bulb) you'd need kilo's of ATP and Luciferin a week. Don't expect useful light.
