Since humans discovered fire attempting to imitate the Sun, the urgence of light up the world has become more and more widespread. Christmas is coming and our streets, houses, trees are sparkling and coloured.
Here a short image overview of many beautiful expressions of light, both from humans and, in general, from nature.
Let’s start from the real evolution of lighting: the quantum dots have received the 2023 Nobel Prize in Chemistry as an application of the quantum mechanics. Quantum dots of different sizes emit light of different wavelength, and therefore color, due to quantum confinement. The will probably “illuminate” the future of the quantum computing and of the nanomedicine.
And in biology…bioluminescence! Unfortunately, glimpsing fireflies is very uncommon, but they are the most famous expression of light in biology. But they aren’t the only organisms that illuminate our magic nature: jellyfishes, anemones, plankton, mushrooms are only few examples of how biomolecules can emit energy in form of light. This is a mechanism involved in finding prey or partners.
Then what about our glowing sky? From the magic of the sunset where white sun’s rays are reflected and dispersed in atmosphere creating a mix of colors, from orange to pink, to the charming northern lights, from green to purple, another expression of our connection with our star.
Obviously, comets complete this brief excursus. They fascinated humans since the dawn of time, we don’t really know if a comet guided the wise men to Bethlehem, but it is true that many comets visit our atmosphere, and their bright tails always carry legends and superstitions. The truth is that they are a simple explanation that everything moving closer to Sun sooner or later will burn.
