International Year of Light and Light-Based Technologies 2015 is organized by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), together with several scientific organizations. The Founding Scientific Sponsors are: European Physical Society, SPIE (The International Society for Optical Engineering), Optical Society, IEEE Photonics Society, American Physical Society, and The international lightsources.org network.
The aim of the year-long campaign is to highlight (excuse the pun) that light is the key source of life (without sunlight life would not exist.) Light is also essential to most human activities. The campaign also has a developmental scope — technologies that use light have led to significant advances in medicine and have improved communication platforms, as well as helping to advance art and culture. For many parts of the world advances in light-based technologies are key to economic and social advancement.
In addition, light and optics industries assist with generating jobs and economic growth, so prompting these industries can also help address economic inequality.
While much of the program is educational, 2015 has seen some advances with light-based technologies. In one such initiative, UC Berkeley engineers have developed a new approach which uses light to alter mirrors. This process could lead to a new generation of laser technology for applications like self-driving car navigation and three dimensional biomedical imaging.
Technology is called “light detection and ranging” and it functions by shining a beam of light at a target and assessing the time it takes to bounce back. As the speed of light is constant, this system can then be used to calculate distance.
As a second development, the U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory has been looking at how to manipulate photosynthesis for a new generation of solar panels. This is based on storing solar energy in chemical bonds like hydrogen. This, in theory, can provide a robust, non-polluting renewable energy source.
In studies, scientists succeeded in attaching a protein taken from spinach to a light-absorbing molecule (photosensitizer) and also to a hydrogen-producing catalyst. The protein led to the catalyst and photosensitizer being stabilized; this enabled scientists to observe direct electron flow between the two for the first time. This is the first step towards a new type of fuel generation and it is set out in the current edition of Chemical Communications (“Aqueous light driven hydrogen production by a Ru–ferredoxin–Co biohybrid.”)
