Following on from yesterday’s post about soil and transplanting micro-organisms, here is another thing I have found recently that is on the tiny side – bacteria powered ‘wind’ farms.

I don’t object to wind turbines on aesthetic grounds. If anything, they are one of the more attractive parts of our energy infrastructure. However, they are large and expensive to build and probably have some impact on wildlife (although given how birds soar round obstacles I can’t see how the large and relatively slow turbines pose a real threat).

However, there might be a way to generate power on a much smaller scale. Scientists seem to have found a way to arrange tiny rotors to generate a measurable current from activity at a microbial level. If they can generate enough to, for example keep a phone or tablet running, that could be very significant.