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The Philips company introduces lights that run without electricity or solar power. Instead, they harness the bioluminescence of bacteria. You have to feed them fuel, namely methane and compost. The lights developed so far aren’t bright enough to read by, but they may have other uses, like illuminating dark roads and exit signs. Link -via Buzzfeed
In the deep, dark ocean, many sea creatures make their own light for hunting, mating and self-defense. Bioluminescence expert Edith Widder was one of the first to film this glimmering world. At TED2011, she brings some of her glowing friends onstage, and shows more astonishing footage of glowing undersea life.
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The Gippsland Lakes are a chain of lakes in eastern Victoria, Australia. A combination of fire and floods changed the conditions of the water and led to the proliferation of Synechococcus, a photosynthetic cyanobacteria. But that wasn’t what knocked everyone’s socks off.
As summer took hold at the end of 2008, what happened surprised everyone – a new species called Noctiluca Scintillans began to prosper, by feeding on the Synechococcus.
In contrast to the widespread bright green of the Synechococcus, Noctiluca Scintillans was visible during the day as localised murky red patches, often building up on sections of shoreline facing the wind during the day. At night though, Noctiluca Scintillans produced a remarkable form of bioluminescence (popularly referred to as ‘phosphorescence’) – the water glowing brightly wherever there was movement – in the waves breaking on the shore, in ripples in the water and wherever people played in the water.
See more pictures of this phenomena at Phil’s Blog. Link -via Monkeyfilter
Image: Peter Shearer/National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research
I don’t know about you, but I’m utterly fascinated with weird and scary creatures that troll the deep ocean. Dark Roasted Blend has a fantastic post (as usual) filled with images of such creatures.
This one above is the Dragon Fish:
Light is so rare down there that its uniqueness is an allure, for mating, as well as a lure, for eating. Grammatostomias flagellibarba, ‘dragon fish’ to you and I, uses bioluminescence – biological light – mainly for the latter: EATING. Any deep, deep, deep swimmer that notices and becomes interested in a certain tiny flickering light will end up becoming caught by the dragon fish’s monstrously huge and needle-sharp toothed mouth. The light being a glowing lure at the end of a long, thin filament connected to the underside of the fish’s jaw.
A creature with a musical name presents a spectacular light show to the cameras of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute‘s remotely operated vehicle. This ctenophore seems to be exhibiting bioluminescence, but what the “lights” actually represent is reflection or refraction of the photoflood lights from rhythmically beating cilia. The deep red color is a survival adaptation, helping to mask the bioluminescence of creatures it ingests, so that it does not itself become visible to other predators.
It has been suggested that comb jellies such as the ctenophores are ancestors of all life on earth.
YouTube link, via The Daily Dish and Nerdcore.
