Scientists have found a way to extract energy from photosynthesis | DW News 

Here is a (chat GPT 3.5) summary of the article: The article explores the dynamics of energy transfer in photosynthesis on a very short timescale (picoseconds). The researchers used advanced techniques such as two-dimensional electronic spectroscopy (2DES) and ultrafast transient absorption spectroscopy to investigate the energy transfer pathways between different pigments in photosynthetic complexes. The research found that the energy transfer dynamics in photosynthesis are more complex than previously thought, with multiple competing pathways and intermediate states. In particular, the researchers observed that the energy transfer between pigments can be rewired on a picosecond timescale in response to changes in environmental conditions such as temperature and light intensity. The study also found that certain pigments play a key role in regulating the flow of energy through the photosynthetic complexes. In particular, carotenoids were found to act as a "safety valve" by dissipating excess energy and protecting the plant from oxidative damage.

​@@caspar9794 while hold on!! Even I didn't understand how this works. What are the watts of energy produced for a day, how efficient it is, no data available. Plus many unscientific terms in the above video, which I have rarely seen in DW news

The tech is in the beginnings.

I was also quite confused, but I found an article titled "Photosynthesis 'hack' could lead to new ways of generating renewable energy" in Science Daily that I think explains this much better. The way I now understand it, thanks to this very advanced imaging of the photosynthetic process the researchers figured out that some electrons are escaping the reaction, making it "leaky" and, at least in theory, something you could capture electricity (i.e. the electrons) from. It sounds very cool, although a long way away from practical applications. Also I have no idea why they had to make it so vague in the video, it's a relatively straight-forward concept

ok mr SWEDE MCNEBULOUS wheres your great idea then, show us your invention, whats your plan for clean energy, go on im listening

They got at least one thing wrong. Plants do not absorb 100% of sunlight, the reason they are green is that they absorb the red and blue parts of the spectrum and reflect the green part.

Indeed, I too had that question in mind as a young lad many decades ago. In my research I only got as far as the drinking beer stage this chap started from!

But we can replicate photosynthesis. You have to be more specific on what you want to achieve. If you want to get electricity out of it, then it's not really an issue of replication but rather transmission of energy.

The problem isn't that you could not. It is just easier to break water or carbon dioxide into what you want with electricity. If you take a battery and put to wires on it then place the other end of the wires in a glass of water. You will see bubbles coming off the wires. One side is making oxygen the other hydrogen.

@@joshuaa9513 Brilliant. Yes we all did that simple experiment in school. At least when I was there 50 years ago. Please tell me how that is anything to do with generating electricity from sunlight via photosynthesis.

@@heater5979 I thought the message was about artificial photosynthesis. In regards to oxygen production. I suppose you could take a green colored photosynthetic tripolymer and trap it between layers of some transparent transdermal material and ground it. Than expose it to EMF fields (visible light) while running electricity from positive to negative and alternating back and forth between polarities through small closed locked circuits in order to break the molecular bonds of carbon dioxide. For the purpose of producing a sugar you store someplace.

Wikipedia, Photosynthetic Efficiency: "100% sunlight → non-bioavailable photons waste is 47%, leaving 53% (in the 400-700 nm range) → 30% of photons are lost due to incomplete absorption, leaving 37% (absorbed photon energy) → 24% is lost due to wavelength-mismatch degradation to 700 nm energy, leaving 28.2% (sunlight energy collected by chlorophyll) → 68% is lost in conversion of ATP and NADPH to d-glucose, leaving 9% (collected as sugar) → 35-40% of sugar is recycled/consumed by the leaf in dark and photo-respiration, leaving 5.4% net leaf efficiency."

GAS OIL COAL - ITS A BILANCE OF THE PLANET ....(USED THIS ....FOR THIS ORBIT OF EARTH CHANGE

A think drink.

Then they went back to the bar again, this time with a TV journalist in tow.🎉

more like they walk into a garden

​@@raclark2730 better than food for thought, no?? 😅

Two scientists walked into a bar and an idea came out.

I expect ExxonMobil will purchase this patent and suppress the idea from going further. The oil company has to keep the investors happy.

The researcher was sincere enough to admit that their electricity harvesting method will never even reach the efficiency of silicone photovoltaic tech; and those are already inefficient enough that they have to use up enormous areas to deliver a decent power output. This might power a smart weather station somewhere far away from civilization, but I really doubt it'll power anyone's home any time soon.

@@Nyocurio I agree. Photovoltaic Solar Panels have reached their maximum. We need a new architecture for Solar Panels. It will take some time to further develop this technology.

That's not real. It feels like other imventions haven't been used because these science media stories are always overly simplified and sound way too positive when this is just very, very, very early research that may or may not pan out.

When you study political science instead of science

Leaves are slightly transparent, so maybe the greens you see are actually green wavelengths passing through the leaf instead of being reflected back?

@@DarkAngelEU No, and also that would basically be the same thing, still light not being absorbed.

Lol wa thinking the same thing

@@jacquescousteau4592 Then I guess what they meant, was that 100% of the absorbed light results in electricity with plants, while solar panels only produce electricity with 67% of light that they absorb? In physics this is called efficiency, right? So the efficiency rate of leaves would be 1 and that of solar panels would be 0.67

100% absorption doesn't mean that a big amount of that photon energy will be used for photosynthesis. Some will be converted to heat or send back out as new light.

Bless you, there wise those plants.

No you just want to be pessimistic as a hobby. Everything has to start from some were.

It's a very interesting concept and beginning. Everything starts from somewhere and its necessary to talk and share ideas.

@@1ACL Absolutely people have been pummeled with so much doom and gloom they cannot see a good thing when it starts.

@@raclark2730 You’re probably right. I don’t want to be pessimistic but after researching energy studies for nearly 5 years I have become cynical. There are new technologies that are farther ahead that don’t get this sort of publicity.

@@raclark2730 I’m an actual researcher though. To the layman this sounds great but to the initiated it’s just another flavor of the week. I’ll wait until it’s farther along to get excited.

Absolutely, efficiency is computed from a fraction which denominator is often manipulated to "look good." The idea of tapping into the electron transfer chain has been around for a very long time, nothing new.

That is the problem with media: they just fudge it....

I heard they use mostly infrared light and that's why are all of them mostly green

@@kevinmithnick9993 Different plants have different absorption spectra in the visible light frequencies. Many plants have pigments which absorb the photon frequencies towards the reddish end of the spectrum as well as those towards the bluish end of the spectrum. Human eyes have pigments excitable by principally red, green, and blue frequencies photons so after the reddish and bluish ones have been absorbed, humans see green. Colors *differ* from photon frequencies which are directly proportional to photon energies via E=hf where E=photon energy, h=Planck's Constant, and f=photon frequency. The color purple thus differs from violet light. Colors are produced by our *minds* depending upon the mixture of the photonic detectors excited by the electromagnetic radiation. Colors are thus "in the eyes and minds of the beholder." Photon frequencies are a very physical property, instead of an emergent sensation. Some other animals probably see a lot more colors than humans do because we had probably lost photon detectors of a certain type during evolution. Bees, for example, retained their ability to see ultraviolet light frequencies for a good reason because they can't be as color blind as humans since their myopic compound eyes have to stare up close at the centerfolds of 🌺 plants' Playboy(R) magazines before deciding to suck nectar or move on. Birds can also see ultraviolet photon frequencies so teaching adolescents about the "birds and bees" has a very sound biophysical basis. There is an unseen-to-human-eyes world in ultraviolet light out there but humans may mistaken it as the purple 💜 world.

Is this not biofuel with extra steps? Biofuel isn't carbon negative when you factor in all the processing.

Photosynthesis is truly a marvel of creation. It’s sad that so many people take it for granted and don’t give credit to our Creator for this amazing process. Humans are very quick to take the credit for their “discoveries”, especially if they can design something by imitating what they find. All they’re really doing is copying what our Creator originally designed and made. I find it totally illogical that it takes intelligent humans to design and make a copy, but they say the original, incredible design just evolved instead of acknowledging that a superior, intelligent Being created it. Wherever you look in the universe and on our earth, there is irrefutable evidence of a Creator. As Revelation 4:11 says: “You are worthy, our God, to receive the glory and the honor and the power, because you created all things, and because of your will they came into existence and were created.”

Wikipedia, Photosynthetic efficiency: "100% sunlight → non-bioavailable photons waste is 47%, leaving 53% (in the 400-700 nm range) → 30% of photons are lost due to incomplete absorption, leaving 37% (absorbed photon energy) → 24% is lost due to wavelength-mismatch degradation to 700 nm energy, leaving 28.2% (sunlight energy collected by chlorophyll) → 68% is lost in conversion of ATP and NADPH to d-glucose, leaving 9% (collected as sugar) → 35-40% of sugar is recycled/consumed by the leaf in dark and photo-respiration, leaving 5.4% net leaf efficiency."

Photosynthesis is truly a marvel of creation. It’s sad that so many people take it for granted and don’t give credit to our Creator for this amazing process. Humans are very quick to take the credit for their “discoveries”, especially if they can design something by imitating what they find. All they’re really doing is copying what our Creator originally designed and made. I find it totally illogical that it takes intelligent humans to design and make a copy, but they say the original, incredible design just evolved instead of acknowledging that a superior, intelligent Being created it. Wherever you look in the universe and on our earth, there is irrefutable evidence of a Creator. As Revelation 4:11 says: “You are worthy, our God, to receive the glory and the honor and the power, because you created all things, and because of your will they came into existence and were created.”

Its 20% of 67%. PVs aint all that.

We are talking about how much visible light can we capture. And efficiency of transferting light to el. is around 20 %.

Fraunhofer ISE has developed a solar cell with 47.6 Percent Efficiency, however the mass produced panels in public use are around 20-25% as of 2023.

@@chaossynergy9768 PVs are only a good idea on top of existing infrastructure like rooftops as they're not causing additional damage, and in remote areas, but not as a main supply source. The destruction of habitat is unconscionable. Even if their efficiency in absorbing light was 100%, unless we can "dial up" the sun, the only way to scale power generation is by surface area i.e more land clearings, deforestation and habitat destruction. They are not the solution they're made out to be.

@@AlexanderHL1919 77% of all farmland is used for animal feed, while lifestock products only deliver 18% of total calories humans consume. If you want sustainable land use, we have to half our animal product consumption. PV is the most efficient land use for energy production we have. It produces 40 times more energy per area than growing plants for biofuels/biogas. Monoculture and fertilizers are slowly killing our farmland. Land that gets used for PV for 10 or 20 years, would significantly improve in quality getting the recovery time from farming.

GAS OIL COAL - ITS A BILANCE OF THE PLANET ....(USED THIS ....FOR THIS ORBIT OF EARTH CHANGE

He didnt want to answer and even skipped around it.

The laser was just used to discover the process. Now that they know how it works there is no more need for the laser.

@@2000sborton Yes, exactly. It's irrelevant; it's not the same problem as fusion where you need to repeatedly laser materials.

Yes, but do they come with sharks?

cordage from the leaves? nice.

Not only for humans, there is other life too. Exploit plants and you only want to use it for humans I reckon. *specio-centrism sucks*

Believe it or not, it being privatized makes it cheaper for everyone. Competition is great for the development of products and technologies.

Oh no, life on Earth requires water. Shocking revelation!

It might become possible with some genetic modifications.

Everything requires water you dolt.

🤣 best comment

I thought the same thing... but then again, I would be suspicious if it looked unnaturally healthy. Those little homegrown avocado trees do not fare well here in Europe. Mine looks similar. 😭

Good luck with that during night time ;). If this technique is cheap enough to produce on a large scale then it can be used to generate hydrogen, the problem with it has always been that it takes too much energy to produce it. Planes using Hydrogen would be pretty nice.

😅🤣😂🤣 what a great idea! Maybe put the smoking area up there as well?

@@cheecharron1244 And a wine bar

Photosynthesis is truly a marvel of creation. It’s sad that so many people take it for granted and don’t give credit to our Creator for this amazing process. Humans are very quick to take the credit for their “discoveries”, especially if they can design something by imitating what they find. All they’re really doing is copying what our Creator originally designed and made. I find it totally illogical that it takes intelligent humans to design and make a copy, but they say the original, incredible design just evolved instead of acknowledging that a superior, intelligent Being created it. Wherever you look in the universe and on our earth, there is irrefutable evidence of a Creator. As Revelation 4:11 says: “You are worthy, our God, to receive the glory and the honor and the power, because you created all things, and because of your will they came into existence and were created.”

Knowledge to some, is power. A little more detail would remove April 1st proximity suspicion, or stop people trying wiring light circuits back to high energy cacti.

No, the laser was used to discover the process that happens naturally using molecular transports in the plant cells. Next step would be isolating it and seeing if you could then funnel those electrons to electrodes. You won't need a laser, just sunlight, to get the electron flow started. I think the hard bit is how it'd be implemented, like a bio-sheet for the panel, or just a molecular array (like we do with lithium batteries) that transfers electrons from the surface to the electrodes. Perhaps we could just 'plug into' plants somehow, and put the pots/panels or whatever on roofs etc. But I think that's not likely to be possible. The biggest news with this is that plants are natural carbon sinks. We could counteract climate change using this on a wide enough scale. You wouldn't have the 'rebreather' problem of forests that burn down releasing their carbon or seasonal cycles causing the carbon level to oscillate. You can just sequester carbon on an industrial scale indefinitely.

@@majnuker When I was a grad student in the early 1970s, our lab was looking at the first step in photosynthesis in photosynthetic bacteria using EPR (electron paramagnetic resonance).. What did these Cambridge guys learn that wasn't known 50 years ago?

@@jamesraymond1158 Don't know, but perhaps they didn't have access to the laser tech needed to find the underlying mechanisms for the reaction?

We have those, its up to you to force politicians to use them.

I could be corrected, but all plants are carbon sinks. All life is carbon based, including us.

@@em945 you are correct. Thats the beauty (if scalable) of this tech. It produces energy while capturing carbon rather than the other way around. There's another team working on micro algae that (I'm going to oversimplify it) can be used in a battery. The algae make the media they are in acetic when it photosynthesizes, and the acid neutralizes when the battery is used. They ran a pc for a few months like this. And as it charges it absorbs co2.

Photosynthesis is truly a marvel of creation. It’s sad that so many people take it for granted and don’t give credit to our Creator for this amazing process. Humans are very quick to take the credit for their “discoveries”, especially if they can design something by imitating what they find. All they’re really doing is copying what our Creator originally designed and made. I find it totally illogical that it takes intelligent humans to design and make a copy, but they say the original, incredible design just evolved instead of acknowledging that a superior, intelligent Being created it. Wherever you look in the universe and on our earth, there is irrefutable evidence of a Creator. As Revelation 4:11 says: “You are worthy, our God, to receive the glory and the honor and the power, because you created all things, and because of your will they came into existence and were created.”

In other words, what he said, was misleading or? Genuinely curious because I think he didn't say much more then the good news, and didn't go deeper into the subject.

Yes all of this is true. But scaled to the same as modern solar panels, for a set amount of money which generates more electricity? Depending on how cheap they are to build and maintain, you could have two, five, ten, however many times MORE of them than solar panels, just over a wider area. AND the added bonus of capturing CO2 is phenomenal. We'd have a bigger footprint, but more power, potentially with less maintenance and reliance on things like silicon chips (which may become a geopolitical problem soon). I see it as a definite win for areas with more space that may want to sink carbon. Combine it with things that can clean air, and it'd be a fantastic bandaid for industrial areas.

I'll also add that depending on the method used (full plants vs cells vs molecules) it could also potentially provide habitats for local species, helping with biodiversity. But I have no idea how they plan to actually use the process.

Like it says in the video, plants use that excess energy to grow, move, and transport nutrients among other things. These processes would be slowed down...however, if we use a plant that is much better (say super broad leaves on a small body) and uses less energy, it'd have less impact. I also believe that the application of the technology would be more akin to using the cells themselves in a kind of synthetic design, rather than actual plants. My biggest question is on maintanence and scalability. If you build the panels with these energy gathering bio components, how long are they good for? Years? Decades? Indefinitely if they're sealed and don't develop cancer? Or maybe we just look at the biological process itself and use molecular transport to move the electrons from one place to another; after all, that's what the plant cells are doing: there are molecules that facillitate the transfer and maybe that's all we need. Very interesting tho. Could have some weird applications for sure. But it won't be too groundbreaking; even at 100 percent efficiency you need a certain amount of power to drive a car, for example, and the panel footprint can only be so big. This is a limiting factor to where it could potentially be implemented. For comparison, the charge of a computer for 6 months is neat, but I doubt they were powering a desktop gaming PC at 750 watts. It's more likely something very simple/small with only a dinner plate size panel, such as a calculator or something, that they did in order to get the headline to help chase funding and get some exciting press.

Wikipedia, Photosynthetic Efficiency: "100% sunlight → non-bioavailable photons waste is 47%, leaving 53% (in the 400-700 nm range) → 30% of photons are lost due to incomplete absorption, leaving 37% (absorbed photon energy) → 24% is lost due to wavelength-mismatch degradation to 700 nm energy, leaving 28.2% (sunlight energy collected by chlorophyll) → 68% is lost in conversion of ATP and NADPH to d-glucose, leaving 9% (collected as sugar) → 35-40% of sugar is recycled/consumed by the leaf in dark and photo-respiration, leaving 5.4% net leaf efficiency."

Its cool sounds promising.