even if you’re not a fan of Highmark’s marketing campaign or of the TV show Firefly.
The human body literally glimmers. The intensity of the light emitted by the body is 1000 times lower than the sensitivity of our naked eyes. Ultraweak photon emission is known as the energy released as light through the changes in energy metabolism. We successfully imaged the diurnal change of this ultraweak photon emission with an improved highly sensitive imaging system using cryogenic charge-coupled device (CCD) camera. We found that the human body directly and rhythmically emits light. The diurnal changes in photon emission might be linked to changes in energy metabolism.
“Imaging of Ultraweak Spontaneous Photon Emission from Human Body Displaying Diurnal Rhythm” abstract, Kobayashi et al., 7-16-09
via Reality Sandwich
Also glowing are sunspots,
The halos, which glow intensely blue under ultraviolet light, may mark the beginnings of cell death and may signal to animals such as apes that the bananas are ready for eating.
Bernhard Krautler of the University of Innsbruck in Austria and his colleagues had already found that yellow bananas have a blue hue under UV light. Green bananas, on the other hand, don’t. The blue, the researchers knew, comes from a class of fluorescent chemicals that are produced and build up when chlorophyll breaks down.
In the new study, reported online Sept. 7 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the team determined what happens under UV light when the bananas become overripe. Though the brown spots themselves are dull, the team found that a ring of flesh surrounding the spots glows with an intensity three times that of the yellow peel. By analyzing the light, the researchers found that the chlorophyll-breakdown chemicals were more abundant in the rings than elsewhere in the banana.
“Glowing Rings in Bananas Signal Overly Ripe” by Jenny Lauren Lee, Discovery News 9-8-09
rather, bananas, various animals that didn’t glow previously,
The scientists weren’t the first to clone a cat–they weren’t even the first to clone a fluorescent cat. But they were the first to clone a cat that fluoresces red.
It’s hoped that the red glow, which appears in every organ of the cats, will improve the study of genetic diseases.
“Glowing Animals: Pictures of Beasts Shining for Science” by Chris Combs, National Geographic News 5-14-09
some that did, we just didn’t know about it,
This creature is one of at least five new “green bombers”–deep-sea, swimming worm species armed with “bombs” (indicated by arrow) that glow a brilliant green when dropped.
The glowing bombs are thought to distract predators such as fish, allowing the worms to escape.
“There are no other annelids that have structures like this,” said Karen Osborn, a marine biologist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in California.
“New ‘Green Bomber’ Sea Worms Fire Glowing Blobs” by John Roach, National Geographic News 8-20-09
increasingly common noctilucent clouds,
Photographers and other sky watchers in Omaha, Paris, Seattle, and other locations have run outside to capture images of what scientists call noctilucent (”night shining”) clouds. Formed by ice literally at the boundary where the earth’s atmosphere meets space 50 miles up, they shine because they are so high that they remain lit by the sun even after our star is below the horizon.
The clouds might be beautiful, but they could portend global changes caused by global warming. Noctilucent clouds are a fundamentally new phenomenon in the temperate mid-latitude sky, and it’s not clear why they’ve migrated down from the poles. Or why, over the last 25 years, more of them are appearing in the polar regions, too, and shining more brightly.
“Mysterious, Glowing Clouds Appear Across America’s Night Skies” by Alexis Madrigal, Wired 7-16-09
and rectangles.
A new report published this week by researchers at Stanford University suggests that Americans spend the vast majority of each day staring at, interacting with, and deriving satisfaction from glowing rectangles.
“From the moment they wake up in the morning, to the moment they lose consciousness at night, Americans are in near-constant visual contact with bright, pulsating rectangles,” said Dr. Richard Menken, lead author of the report, looking up briefly from the gleaming quadrangle that sits on his desk. “In fact, it’s hard to find a single minute during which the American public is not completely captivated by these shining…these dazzling….”
“I’m sorry,” Menken continued. “What were we discussing again?”
“Report: 90% Of Waking Hours Spent Staring at Glowing Rectangles“, The Onion 6-15-09
Glow and cuídate.