Boffins build buggy battery
MAD SCIENTISTS AT MIT reckon that the batteries of the future will come with bugs built in.
The boffins have developed a new technology which uses a genetically-engineered bacteriophage (a virus that attacks bacteria rather than humans) to create the power cell's anode and cathode.
The bugs apparently coat themselves in cobalt oxide and gold, and then arrange themsleves into a neat line to create the battery's anode. The cathode is made by a different virus which coats itself in iron phosphate and carbon nanotubes.
The research could lead to inexpensive, non-polluting, lightweight powerful batteries, according to a podcast released by Scientific American.
Alternatively it could lead to the creation of a flesh-eating mutant super virus which burrows into your brain by jumping from your mobile phone into you lughole. µ
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This will happen!
err.. Virus's aren't bugs, i think you are getting confused with bacteria.
I think the writer got confused when performing their in depth background research on wikipedia.
At least you managed to work the speller checker for a change!
These don't sound like they'll be rechargeable. Wouldn't that make them more expensive in the long run?
...but it's kind of complicated to create phages in quantity (which is why we in the west haven't caught on to use them to treat disease), so it's hard to say how practical this itself could be at industrial scales.
Still, it could lead the way to a "bug-free" process that accomplishes the same thing.