Leave it to nature to make beauty out of human mistakes. This process is not fully understood but is wonderful in it’s own way.
Cystoseira tamariscifolia, or rainbow wrack can be quite beautiful, but it’s colors come from an unexpected source. Dr Martin-Lopez Garcia/University of Bristol A common seaweed has been found to make opals out of oil droplets, even controlling the production so they only appear when needed. Botanists and physicists are still struggling to work out how this is happening, but a solution may help us build better solar cells. Although it is classified as brown algae, residents of Europe’s coastlines have long known it can be far more colorful than that, inspiring its nickname “rainbow wrack”. The blue and green […]
