Living things produce “biophotons”
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This year, scientists observed eerie glow emanating from mice, disappearing after death, reminiscent of paranormal ideas about the body aura. This discovery sparked a surge of interest in the science behind biophotons.
Biophotons are ultra-weak particles of light that are produced by the structures of living cells, including mitochondria, which generate energy. Researchers have long been searching for these moving, weak signals, and the field is often controversial, in part because of the extreme difficulty of separating biophotons from other light sources such as infrared radiation and proving they are real.
Experimental obstacles have meant that previous biophoton research has tended to focus on smaller, specific parts of the body. But in May Daniel Oblak from the University of Calgary in Canada and colleagues discovered biophotons emanating from the entire body in four hairless mice. After the mice died, these biophotons quickly disappeared.
They also discovered biophotons emitted by the leaves of the umbrella tree (Heptaplerum arborescens). Thanks to more comprehensive and thorough research, it has become more difficult to deny their existence.
A few weeks after New scientist As the study was reported, a number of other media outlets contacted Oblak and his team for additional interviews. Similarity of the phenomenon with psychic “aura”“The glow, which psychics say can indicate a person's physical and spiritual health, may partly explain people's interest in this work,” says Oblak. “There was a man from Argentina who insisted that we study what his hand emitted when he touched people or healed them.”
But the underlying science of biophotons is real, and many scientists have approached his team about collaborating on further research, Oblak says. One proposal involves searching for possible mechanisms for the production of biophotons in plants. An expert in genetically modifying seeds suggested that they could study this by turning off certain genes and observing how the amount of biophotons produced changes.
Studying how biophotons correlate with seed germination could also have applications in agriculture, Cloud said. “You can look at a sample of the seeds and just know if the germination process actually happened for each of the seeds without touching them.”
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