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Living Battery Discovered in North Sea

posted by n1 on Wednesday April 02 2014, @07:20AM   Printer-friendly
from the wave-power-will-be-jealous dept.

Koen writes:

A team of the Netherlands Institute of Sea Research and the Vrije Universiteit Brussel have discovered a microbial battery in the North Sea off the Coast at Oostende. "By producing electricity, these bacteria extract energy from the sea floor," says prof. Filip Meysman. "It is the first time that such a biological battery has been found in nature. Perhaps, in ten years, a smart phone will be powered by tiny conductive bacterial wires." These bacteria seem to be common all over the world.

 
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  • (Score: 2) by melikamp on Wednesday April 02 2014, @07:37AM

    by melikamp (1886) on Wednesday April 02 2014, @07:37AM (#24700)
    https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/bacterias [wiktionary.org]
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  • (Score: 2) by wonkey_monkey on Wednesday April 02 2014, @08:15AM

    by wonkey_monkey (279) on Wednesday April 02 2014, @08:15AM (#24709)

    1. (US) plural form of bacteria

    Blasted colonials!

    • (Score: 4, Informative) by nightsky30 on Wednesday April 02 2014, @08:33AM

      by nightsky30 (1818) on Wednesday April 02 2014, @08:33AM (#24718)

      First I've heard of this! I thought it was just bacteria. Though perhaps it was like fish(singular), fish(plural), and fishes(multiple types of fish).

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 02 2014, @10:13AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 02 2014, @10:13AM (#24788)

        Looking at the Wiktionary page for "bacteria", I find that in the US this word has two meanings:

        1. Plural (singluar: bacterium), several microbes
        2. Singular (plural: bacterias), meaning a certain type of bacteria.

        So it's obviously similar to "people", which may be plural (the people in this room are waiting, except for one person) or a singular noun (the people of France is only one of several peoples in Europe).

        So from this I conclude that "bacterias are generating electricity" is correct if there are at least two types of bacteria doing this, while "bacteria are generating electricity" is already correct if there are at least two individual bacteria doing that, no matter whether they are of the same type or not.

        Disclaimer: I'm not a native English speaker, the above is all derived from (my understanding of) the Wiktionary article.

        • (Score: 2) by wonkey_monkey on Wednesday April 02 2014, @11:01AM

          by wonkey_monkey (279) on Wednesday April 02 2014, @11:01AM (#24870)

          As a native English speaker I would advise that I've never heard "people is" used in that way. "The people of France is" sounds like an error to my ears. I'd say "The people of France are only one of several peoples in Europe."

          Google offers "my people live in West Virginia" despite listing that sense as singular, so I guess it's one of those exceptions that we all love.