James Bligh: Just in time for Christmas! The article doesn’t have too many details, but the speculative impacts of this research could be massive.
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A group of scientists in Taiwan discovered that placing gold nanoparticles within the leaves oftrees 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.
While I applaud the idea I don’t think people will accept a soft glow in place of bright street lighting. So we’ll have lit trees in addition to electric lights.
As for light pollution (light aimed at the sky rather than the ground) the trees will direct half their light at the sky. I can’t help but think it will increase light pollution.
Curious to know if this could be applied to evergreen tree needles as well as it might to deciduous trees. As the need for street lighting is most acute in the winter months for cities north of the tropic of cancer. There is a lot of room for innovation around lighting of public ways in cities.