Wearing sunshine on my sleeve

One late night, I was joking with my friends how we should somehow adapt chlorophyll into our bodies so that we could just convert sunlight into energy, thus removing the need to eat. Now that I think about it, it also allows us to walk around naked...(hmm...)

While that's not going to happen anytime soon, something just as good is on its way. I was told earlier in the summer by Rob Harrap, a very smart man in the Queen's GIS lab, that somone in the US was working on a sprayable material for solar panelling. The potential applications seem endless, since it would be possible to add this material to any surface (cars, houses, clothes) and allow it to convert solar energy into electricity. Now I didn't hear about it much since then. Until now.

This is the CBC story. Not only is it flexible (since it's formed from quantum dots and polymer...ahh, nanotechnology at its finest) but it purportedly captures 5 times as much energy as existing technology.

This technology needs to be funded ridiculously. It could be a major answer to the energy question. The quicker this becomes marketable, the quicker we can reduce our reliance on fossil fuels. That is a prospect I'm very excited about.