Scientists Have Invented Paper That You Can Print With Light, Erase With Heat, and Reuse 80 Times (qz.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Quartz: Nearly 1% of carbon emissions annually can be attributed to paper production, even though we recycle much of the paper we produce. Yadong Yin has a solution. He and his colleagues at the University of California at Riverside have invented a type of paper that can be printed on using just light, erased by heating, and reused up to 80 times. Yin created nanoparticles, which are a million times smaller than the thickness of human hair, with the dye Prussian blue, or its chemical analogues, and titanium oxide, which is commonly used in white wall paint. This mixture is then applied to normal paper. When the coating is exposed to ultraviolet light, electrons from titanium oxide move to the dye in the nanoparticle. This addition of electrons makes the blue dye turn white. Focusing the ultraviolet light into shapes, you can print white words on a blue background -- or blue words on a white background, which are easier to read. If left alone, the paper reverts to its original state in five days. That process can be accelerated by heating the paper to 120 C (250 F) for 10 minutes.

Comments

Useful

[Dunbal]

That process can be accelerated by heating the paper to 120 C (250 F) for 10 minutes.

Or, just forget your documents in the car in summer one day and have them all erased.

Paper is permanent

[Anonymous Coward]

The point of paper is that it's semi-permanent. That's why it's used so much. This does absolutely nothing to reduce the need for traditional paper. You could do the same thing with a decent tablet already, and for most things you just don't.

Re:Homophobic Nazis?

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

Like the sort of people who would fly into a rage and violently protest the speech of a gay Jew? Like in Berkeley last week?

I can't stand Milo, but he has the right to speak his mind just like anyone else. Shutting him down was a shameful example of muzzling free speech. Left unchecked, "social justice" seems to morph into the "tyranny of the politically correct" every goddamn time.

Supporting "free speech" means supporting the kind of speech we disagree with or even hate, it doesn't mean allowing only the kind of speech we happen to agree with or find acceptable.

So to all of you self-righteous silencers out there, if you don't support the kind of speech you detest, you're not supporting free speech. It's a shame that so many people just don't get this.

Most recently the suppression of opposing opinions as been rebranded as the "no platforming", which is just suppression of free speech under a new, trendy term.

Again, I can't stand Milo Yiannopoulos- he's a self-loathing toady, but even he gets things right once in a while. While I disagree with 95% of the shit that comes out of his mouth, he should have the right to spew his nonsense just like anyone else.