Researchers Use DNA to Coax Quantum Dots Into Self-Assembling into a Light Antenna

this is awesome

Wondering if these "quantum dots" could be arranged in a fashion to Absorb/Block/Redirect Cosmic Radiation..
Any Thoughts

Agreed, this is awesome. One step closer to efficient solar energy!

Now if only we could coax virtual photons to become real photons will less energy than they'll release when absorbed into this "light antennas."

My idea for a zero point module:

A cylinder with the internal wall lined with these light antennae. A tube in the middle of that cylinder somehow (I haven't figured it out yet) coaxes virtual photons to become real photons. As those photons stream outward from the center they get absorbed into the antennae, and fed to a light/electricity converter (we already have these). The light is converted directly to electricity, some of that electricity is fed back into the process (to power the jump of virtual photons and any other equipment that might be involved in the operation of this machine), and what is left over is fed into a grid...

The more photons being output inside the cylinder, the more energy produced. Clean, safe, portable energy that is limitless... with no moving parts the machine might never break either.

Want to stop the process, disconnect the cylinder from the "recharge" wire.

So cool, an excelent first step to harrness the true power or our sun. Collect the solor power and use these to beem the power to an earth staiton and power the grid........wow, so very cool. Keep up the good work fellas.

eat your heart out, photovoltaic cells.

As I read this i keep thinking....lightsabers? 0_o?

Amazing work...

"in this case light rather than electromagnetic wave"
light equals electromagnetic radiation, right?

"Plant leaves already do this and have been doing it for millennia". Strange I thought plants leaves have been doing this a bit longer then thousands of years.

I wonder what the efficiency is in comparison to current techniques.

@lawsonrw -- I'd be interested to see what these light antenna do when exposed to an oscillating electromagnetic field, say, from an inductor... as for maintain the oscillation, maybe an Armstrong oscillator that incorporated the inductor and power from the light antenna would do the trick.

@Kehvan

I had envisioned using the casimir effect to stir up v-photons, but as of yet there is no reliable, low power method to get those v-photons to make the jump into the real world and be consumed as energy in a direct way. But now that I think about it, I wonder if the decay of radioactive particles might do it... imagine casimir plates with the inner facing walls lined with a film of americium or some other radioactive element (even if only weakly so). I wonder if that ionizing radiation would open the flood gates on virtual photons, creating "star in a bottle."

@lawsonrw -- well, I decided to not think too deeply when I bit your hook, so I didn't try to refute or critically analyze your idea too much, but ultimately I see no real need to create virtual photons. What it sounds like you're looking for is a light amplifier with regenerative qualities. None of what you describe though could be thought of as a "zero point module" from Stargate canon. A ZPM uses vacuum energy. What you're describing uses photons, thus EM energy.

Would any of you that are far more familiar with these concepts be able to describe how the DNA is actually bound to the individual quantum dots?

@Swabby -- To quote the article, "The amazing thing is that our antennas built themselves – we coated different classes of nanoparticles with selected sequences of DNA, combined the different families in one beaker, and nature took its course."