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Fireflies Bring Us Brighter LEDs

Posted by samzenpus on from the bright-bugs dept.

Zothecula writes "Fireflies have helped an international team of scientists get over 50 percent more light out of existing LED bulbs. It was discovered that in the Photuris genus of firefly, scales in the insect's exoskeleton possess optical qualities that boost the amount of bioluminescence that can shine through. Those same qualities were found to dramatically increase the light output of an LED bulb."

5 of 111 comments (clear)

  1. direct link by Trepidity · · Score: 5, Informative

    The linked article is just a paraphrase of this press release, which has more details.

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    1. Re:direct link by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      The paper itself has even more details, and is publicly accessible: http://www.opticsinfobase.org/oe/abstract.cfm?uri=oe-21-S1-A179

  2. Re:Anybody have more details? by afidel · · Score: 3, Informative

    Difficult to focus would actually be an advantage for most LED lighting applications (as opposed to LED lasers) since one of the biggest disadvantages of LED's versus other bulb sources is that they are too unidirectional and so dump a large amount of light into a small area and so they create a relatively large lux value without necessarily creating a high lumen value.

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    There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
  3. Korean anti-reflective LED lens by ModelX · · Score: 3, Informative

    About two months ago Koreans published a similar success plus they found out the surface trick also worked as a good anti-reflective coating:

    http://phys.org/news/2012-11-fireflies-korean-team-bright-idea.html

  4. Re:intelligent design? by Cruciform · · Score: 3, Informative

    And that's if you conceniently forget that Jewish religion was previously polytheistic, and Yhwh was just but one of several annoying traits personified. In his case, war.