Cracking the Energy Code

"The best scientist is open to experience and begins with romance - the idea that anything is possible."
-Ray Bradbury

(I still have my autographed copy of Bradbury’s One More for the Road as I reminisce about sitting ringside for Frank Sinatra’s last SF Bay area performance.)

Muscle power! Thrilling news from a team of nanotechnology researchers at Georgia Tech have deployed hamsters wearing chic nanogenerator jackets that are designed to harvest biomechanical energy while running in exercise wheels! The nocturnal night-workers (who refuse to work before 11:00 pm) are working to trump the powers of wave, sunlight and wind energy by harnessing biochemical energy.

Now, for the first time, researchers have demonstrated that a nanogenerator can be driven by biomotion, including the tapping of a human finger and a hamster's “erratic running and scratching.” By using live animals to produce current with nanogenerators, Professor Zhong Lin Wang summarized “This study shows that we really can harness human or animal motion to generate current."

After the first energy crisis in 1973, the Italian comedy "Conviene far bene l'amore" or "The Sex Machine" directed by Pasquale Campanile was released in 1976. The film featured a wacky scientist who invents a device to harness the energy spent by humans engaged in sexual activity, with the expressed purpose of solving the energy shortage.

The report holds great promise for a host of nanotechnology investors.

If furries can “muscle up” to produce electricity, imagine what a bevy of floofy Greymuzzlers sporting tight bicycle shorts could do to crack the energy code and shape the future? As writer Peter Robinson says, “A politically correct culture is an imitation fur coat – inhabited by real fleas.” What does this have to do with new scientific breakthroughs to harness energy? The Union of Concerned Scientists reports that press releases are often “controlled for political and not scientific importance.” Let’s hope that the Georgia Tech research and others receive government support for scientists to feel free to speak out about all aspects of research findings that impact our lives.

-2Truthy