In the ongoing debate over alternative sources of energy (more oil! less oil! new oil!), there’s one thing that just about everyone can agree on: that battery technology has not come all that far in the last few decades. Sure, we’re now capable of making some very small batteries (to fit in things like your iPod or cell phone), but 15 years ago it was pretty much assumed that cars would be able to run fully on battery power by now. No such luck. We just haven’t come up with the technology to allow batteries to take that next step.

However, a young scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (better known as MIT) has come up with a pretty revolutionary concept. You see, she’s created a battery that is powered by viruses.

That’s right, viruses. The things that are responsible for most of your sick days — the flu, chicken pox, etc. — might one day be used to power all those energy-hungry devices in our lives. Maybe even our cars.

We aren’t there yet, and getting from here to there will take lots of time and money. But the developments of the team at MIT are encouraging, and it goes to show that innovation, by definition, almost always comes from the places we least expect.

This entry was posted on Friday, November 6th, 2009 at 9:36 am and is filed under Notes from Dom. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.