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Peacock feathers can be lasers (www.science.org)

submitted 4 days ago by kalkulat@lemmy.world to c/science@lemmy.world

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“I always like to think that for many technological achievements that benefit humans,” Dawson says, “some organism somewhere has already developed it through some evolutionary process.”

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[–] Krudler@lemmy.world 7 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (11 children)

Actually a very cool article, thanks for the share

The final quote that you *helpfully added in is great.

I once read an offhand remark online that said effectively "if Dark matter was real and dark energy was real, we could observe that energy being used by life but we don't"

Strikingly astute observation imo.

Edit: they went on to extrapolate that they don't believe it is possible to harvest energy from quantum vacuum fluctuations for the same reason. Something alive would have done it already

[–] kalkulat@lemmy.world 1 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Yeah, I'm not paying a whole lot of credence to the cosmology department these days, they're too busy using Elmer's Glue to keep their whole story from falling apart.

I'm not so sure about the whole 'photon' thing anymore either ... an individual, no-mass, single-point thing that can survive travelling through that universe out there for -billions of years- ? The math works, but does the model, really?

Right on about the life thing too.

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