Artificial Leaf

[myrthman]

www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/6014609/Scientists-make-artificial-leaf-to-generate-clean--power.html

I can see this becoming a --ahem-- seed for a story in the near future where this technology is being used and some big oil company wants to shut it down--by any means necessary. Could be fun. Then again, maybe that's not very fictional. Hmm...

Other thoughts?

[waldenwriter]

As a lover of trees, I find the idea of making an artificial leaf a little disturbing. However, I can understand their idea of reproducing a natural process (photosynthesis) to harness energy from the sun to create sustainable energy. After all, even if our oil was gone, our corn was gone, and all those other random "green energy" sources were gone, we'll always have the sun (that is, until the Earth becomes uninhabitable because of global warming or because entropy just catches up with us...but that's another story).

It could be a good "seed" for a story (nice pun, btw). The idea of an oil company trying to stop it is good. Also, some sort of story where the energy stored from these "leaves" was in short supply and people were fighting over it would be good (although, since it's solar energy, that idea wouldn't be plausible unless we somehow were losing access to sunlight).

[myrthman]

"This one thing we know for sure. It was us who darkened the sky." - Morpheus to Neo, paraphrased