[ExI] bees again

[John Clark]

On Tue, May 21, 2013 a spike <spike at rainier66.com> wrote:

>> You're right! I got that .02 percent figure from a New Scientist article
>> but, as you point out, if you think about it a little it's obvious that it
>> can't be even close to being correct. Sorry. Street lights are out, maybe
>> decorative mood lighting?
>>
>  > Sure, but the idea isn’t totally busted.
>
Hmm, now that I think about it maybe not.  It occurs to me that a 18 watt
streetlamp does not produce anywhere near 18 watts of light, at best a
incandescent light bulb is only about 10% efficient in converting
electrical energy to visible light and even a LED is only about 20%, but a
protein like Luciferase is about 85% efficient in converting chemical
energy into visible light.  Also the human eye is much more sensitive to
green photons than other colors, if a bio-luminescent tree restricted its
light output to just the green it would look at least 5 times as bright as
a red or blue or white tree with equal light energy output.

  John K Clark
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