Scientists Made a Virus That Can Charge Your Batteries
Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have found a way to exploit the harmless kind of organisms that usually make you sick to charge your gadgets.
The researchers said they have successfully engineered viruses that create electricity in response to mechanical stress. In an experiment, they coated a stamp-sized electrode with the virus, which then generated electricity as soon as the scientists tapped the surface of the stamp. This current design, the first product that uses the piezoelectric properties of a biological material, produces enough energy to power a small LCD. Future designs could be integrated, for example, in shoes or clothing - or common movable objects such as doors or wheels - to create much more energy, power gadgets or charge their batteries.
"More research is needed, but our work is a promising first step toward the development of personal power generators, actuators for use in nano-devices, and other devices based on viral electronics," says Seung-Wuk Lee, a faculty scientist in Berkeley Lab's Physical Biosciences Division and a UC Berkeley associate professor of bioengineering.
The initial results of the research is published in the a May 13 advance online publication of the journal Nature Nanotechnology. The research is quite apparently in its very nascent stages, but creating electricity from kinetic energy is a wildly popular research topic these days and this one clearly shows promise, as long as the viruses are as harmless as the researchers say.
"the harmless kind of organisms that usually make you sick"
?
If it usually makes you sick, it's not harmless is it?
"the harmless kind of organisms that usually make you sick"
?
If it usually makes you sick, it's not harmless is it?
I saw that too, LOL. You're not the only one, you're just the one out of the 8 people that commented. Wow you're so rare. /sarcasm
Electrical charge keeps them alive, but fries their brain tissue, which is why they have to replenish it :-)
There are harmless kinds of viruses.
You do realize that viruses mutate rather quickly, right? So if it's not compatible with human cell/tissue right now, what makes you think that putting in our day to day devices (so constantly having it around us) wouldn't cause it to mutate?
This has global catastrophe written all over it. I don't know how our best and brightest come up with some of the stupidest ideas.