Recently I posted an idea called "Ultrablack" and received this comment. [UV dyes work because it is easy to step down the energy of light from UV to visible. To go from IR to visible, you're stepping up the energy, which is trickier.

However, there is a bigger problem with this. UV enhanced whites reflect more light than falls on them (because the UV is converted to visible light), and thus appear whiter than white. ]

Thus spake [Dr Curry]. It got me thinking. UV reflecting dyes reflect more visible light than falls on them, because invisible UV is "stepped down" to visible. But what about all the other energetic radiation of even shorter wavelength than UV? Gamma rays and their ilk are flying thru the walls all the time and burrowing into the earth, their energy wasted. Why not put all this energy to good use.

I propose that walls be painted with reflective surfaces that "step down" the energy of this short wavelength radiation. By converting these invisible rays to visible light, the walls should have a permanent glow - more in the daytime, when the sun bathes us in such rays. Such illumination would be very useful for dank, dark basements, like the one I am sitting in.

It might be necessary to have some sort of focusing device, in case the glow produced is too diffuse to be useful. The focuser would collect glow from an entire wall and re-emit it from a small area, mimicking a light bulb.
-- bungston, Mar 05 2004

Primer on EM radiation http://imagine.gsfc..._l1/emspectrum.html
[bungston, Oct 04 2004, last modified Oct 06 2004]

Sheesh - never trust what someone tells you on the halfbakery. Especially me.

While you might think there is all that invisible radiation lying around just waiting to be used, there really isn't. First off, the Sun's outpout peaks somewhere near the visible light range, and falls off either side, so there's less of that stuff coming at us in the first place.

Second, the atmosphere is conveniently transparent in the visible light range, whereas it isn't at higher energies. This is why we don't all get sunburn every time we go outside, or mutate on a daily basis - the air above us is filtering all that nasty stuff out.

But overall, you'll be going to an awful lot of effort to light up your life, when you could put a solar panel on your roof and a regular lightbulb in your basement.
-- DrCurry, Mar 05 2004


At least I didnt get another "bad science" MFD from you. I would have taught you all the meaning of [outpout].
-- bungston, Mar 05 2004



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