Scientists are working on taking advantage of the motion of bacteria to power micro micro machines .. an they call this a gren technology ??
but the energy produced is in minute quantities and will that make an effect??
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http://www.environmentteam.com/2010...-machines/

cheers

That's pretty cool. I see what you are getting at that it doesn't produce much energy, but the real question that they don't answer is what the ratio to power input versus power output is. That is what I want to know. If the ratio leans toward the power output, then this is a great step forward, but if like certain energy producing technologies like "clean" coal or corn ethanol, you have to put far more energy into the system than you get out, then I don't know what good this will do.

I do think that the future of energy lies in organic and natural systems, if not through tapping them directly, then through bio-mimicry.

I agree. That sounds pretty cool. I wonder how it scales up though. With such small outputs it really doesn't have the large scale applicability that we need right now, but if it could be scale up, then maybe it could provide some good energy for small applications. Every little bit helps.

I think this is pretty cool. Think about putting millions of these little guys to work and the amount of free energy that it can produce. I say free understanding that the research and microgears probably cost far too much for this source to be viable, but with all that research and development completed, I think this could be an idea to explore and develop further.