Creatures glow - the magic of nature

On the night before landing on the Americas, Christopher Columbus saw "candles dancing on the sea." It was the light emitted from the fire worms calling their mates.

Historically, biological self-luminousness has caused many confusion for people. The old story also recorded: When the American ship glided past a small flock of jellyfish, they emitted millions of blue light rays. Inside the cockpit, Edith Widder, of the Oceanographic Institute Harbor Branch, panicked when he saw the glowing glow around the ship so strong that he could read the numbers on the control panel without turning on the lights.

Thousands of years ago, Chinese and Vietnamese people . had once blurted out when they saw small animals flying over and over again glimmering: 'Fireflies fly over / you think it's ghost .'.

Explorer Christopher Columbus said that the night before landing on the Americas, he saw 'candles dancing on the sea'. That is the light emitted from the fire worms that are calling their mates. In 1634, the British ships approaching Cuba had to temporarily stop landing because of the strange light on the coast, and thought the island was well protected. But there's no such protection, that strange light is caused by thousands of glowing bugs called Cucujos.

In the state of New Jersey, police received a phone call informing the bizarre green light at the Arthur Kill Canal, they suspected that something terrible had happened. Immediately local and federal emergency teams arrived. But in fact, it was just a green light emanating from many glowing squid flocks blown by the wind and water flows into this canal.

Many organisms can luminescent

While most marine organisms emit green light far away in seawater, terrestrial animals have a wider color gamut. The larvae of a ' rail ' worm in Central America and South America have a red glowing head and 11 pairs of yellowish green glowing on the flanks, like a tiny train transporting passengers in the night.

A glowing bug in the Caribbean Sea has an orange heart-shaped light emitted from the abdomen, and two 'yellow-green' lights lie on the shoulders, bright enough to let native women use it. points for hair. But one kind of bacterium has only very weak blue light, it must be 1,000 billion to produce light with the same intensity as a 60 watt round bulb.

Some carnivorous insects also have the ability to luminescent: The female shines so that the male can find the couple, and is eaten by the female. In New Zealand in the cave, Watomo has a worm that glows prey by: Each deep flock clinging to an underground cave roof, glowing like a starry sky, the insects in the cave actually find their way straight up. above, it is caught in the sticky silk that has been prepared, and is eaten by worms.

Some species are incapable of glowing, but symbiotic with glowing species for profit. Anglerfish have a wrap of the frontal fluorescent bacteria to attract prey to their sharp teeth.

People also cleared

In 1934, a phenomenon spread throughout Italy under the name ' The luminescent woman in Pirano '.

Pirano Hospital Doctor Sambo is sleeping, suddenly woke up because of the sound of a call of peace: 'The doctor came immediately, Anna Monaro just slept and emitted light' . The doctor came to see that it was true. In the morning the hospital was buzzing, and every night Monaro's bed was bright. Mrs. Monaro (mother of 6 children) said: 'I don't understand anything, because I'm sleeping.'

The hospital record clearly states: 'Monaro's patient is not a witch or a psychic. But at night, from the patient's chest, there was a strong light still emitting the whole face in the dark room. Meanwhile, she moaned softly. When he woke up, Monaro's heart rate increased but his body temperature remained stable. '

Pastor Michel Garicoits in France (born in 1797) also once lit up his face on Christmas Eve in 1830. After that, he had many confusing convulsions. Michel died almost 3 years later.

In Vietnam, teacher Tran Thi Loc (Binh An village, Tien Ky town, Tien Phuoc district, Quang Nam province) also glowed. One evening in early 1993, when she finished cleaning the kitchen, she wiped her hands when she saw the hand emitting blue light. Dazed, she repeated the old gesture and found her hands emitting light with greater intensity. Too panic, she called her husband and children to see. And everyone sees this phenomenon clearly.

Because she did not know why, Ms. Loc and her family were worried and hidden. But on the occasion of Tet Hoi Hoi (1995), when she and her colleagues visited her friend's house, her body glowed so everyone knew. Since the discovery of the strange, teacher Loc (over 40 years old) is still healthy normally.

Ms. Nguyen Thi Nga (in An Thuong village, An Thanh commune, Hoai An district, Binh Dinh province) also found on her body emitted streaks of light flashing on a night when she was 21 years old. This phenomenon continued for a few more nights, then ended, until the Lunar New Year (1996), the recurrence, persistence and more than before. The more she moved, the more light the light emitted, along with a loud bang.

Explanation of science

So far, scientists have identified 130 separate " glowing laws ", used by nearly 2,000 types of fireflies. In Southeast Asia, male fireflies gather on a tree and call their partners by glowing at the same time, turning off to make the tree look like a Christmas tree. But they are still not as prominent as the images in some parts of Thailand, and a row of roadside trees light up because fireflies flash in the same light as advertising lights.

Studies have illuminated the origin of the glow of organisms. It is the reaction of two chemicals that can be produced by living organisms : Luciferin (luminous effect) and luciferase (enzyme that catalyzes the oxidation of luciferin). There are different types of luciferin and luciferase in nature, so glowing colors are also different.

The luminous intensity of organisms is also different. There is an external glow type and glowing inside the cell. In the first case, the animal has two types of cells: a large yellow corpus luteum of luciferin, another of which contains smaller luciferase enzymes. When the animal needs to glow, its muscles contract and squeeze luciferin into the middle of the cells, or out. Here, under the influence of the enzyme luciferase, luciferin is oxidized and emitted.

In the case of inner glowing cells, luciferin and luciferase are in the same cell. Now science still does not know how to light up. Could it be that the intensified animal suddenly provided oxygen to the cell?

In recent years, thanks to machines that can detect weak glows from plant cells, scientists have known that photochemistry (turning energy into light energy) is a very common phenomenon. Many substances, including lipids, can oxidize when oxidized. It turns out that plants and animals often glow, especially when they work. The heart surface of the frog is contracting, for example, glowing constantly.

Applications for life

Since ancient times, people have learned how to take advantage of the glow of creatures that serve them. In Vietnam, the story is circulated: A poor young man at night had time to read books but did not have money to buy lighted oil, so he took many fireflies and put them into eggshell for studying light.

In the 17th century, Swedish farmers knew how to use wood to infect noctilucent fungi to illuminate tents containing combustible hay. During the Second World War, Japanese soldiers smashed the glowing crustacean Cypridine and rubbed them into the palm of their hands to get light in the night, reading the map without fear of being detected by the enemy.

The light of a luminescent bacterium is negligible. In order for the ' lamp ' to be as bright as a candle, there must be over 500 trillion bacteria in the flask. It is possible to assemble an extremely large population of microbes in small containers to produce relatively bright lamps. In 1935, during an international conference, such lamps were used to illuminate the hall of the Paris Institute of Oceanography.

Scientists in Canada have developed a bacterium that can glow when exposed to aluminum, mercury and other metals, opening up prospects for applications in mining exploration.

At the University of Alberta Institute in Canada, the gene for luminescent bacteria was implanted in the bacteria to create nodules in soybean roots, making the roots glow when the plants lack protein. Based on this research, people can make plants glow when they need water or fertilizer, or when many insects attack.

And Clarence Kado, a plant pathologist from the University of California (USA), has a more romantic look: He believes that science could someday create Christmas trees without lights. artificial.

Many scientists believe that, under certain conditions, it is possible to directly convert energy into photovoltaic energy. The lights that work on that principle will be far more economical than today's incandescent lamps. Because all of the energy used in the bioluminescence process is completely transformed into light, while in incandescent lamps, only 12% of the energy used is turned into solar energy.