When my kids were little, we had glow in the dark pacifiers that lasted ALL NIGHT. I still don't know what sorcery was used to accomplish that, but if any of you have little ones, the MAM brand is what we used. Being able to spot the pacifier in the crib at 5am was a huge help some nights.
And now my kids each have an extra eyeball, which has proven very useful indeed.
This is outright not true, and I’m not sure where this rumor came from.
Source: I have firefly petunias, I have seeds from hand pollenating them, and I have volunteer plants growing in the pot from seed I didn’t collect.
They are simply not guaranteed to glow because they don’t breed true. 3 out of my 5 volunteer plants glow.
Light Bio is actually pleasantly realistic in how amenable they are to non-commercial breeding. I may have even seen pollination instructions on their instagram (normally certain moths pollenate petunias, and without those you need to do so by hand yo be sure seeds take)
Exactly. When’s the last time you’ve seen normal petunias being invasive.
Firefly petunias need a lot of light. The entire plant (roots too) are literally burning precious energy 24/7 for the glowing. There seems to be a direct correlation between the light they receive and how long the internodes are from what I’ve seen putting them under grow lights. More light, shorter internodes.
Here in the Pacific Northwest various worm (caterpillar) larvae also love shredding them and eating through seed pods, and they are susceptible to downy mildew complexes which seem to become persistent within the plant.
They also are finicky about warmth, water and fertilizer.
They are a princess of a plant, not the next kochia or pigweed.
Honestly it would be more viable to take invasive weeds and hamper them by introducing glow genes.
A bit of a tangent, one thing I observed is that petunias are fairly sticky to the touch, even if it's not really visible. While larger insect like loopers and cutworms are fine, small weak flying insects can get caught. Both harmful fungus gnats and helpful parasitic wasps (which would normally attack worm larvae) can get caught on the leaves.
Pretty interesting. I knew someone years ago who made batches of borosilicate glass with this stuff. It’s difficult to work, unfortunately. The glow effect fades if you work it too much. I still have a bunch of his glow glass.
Huh, it very well might. 90Sr is a beta emitter, which should excite phosphorescent materials nicely. Even better, it decays into Yttrium 90, and Yttrium Aluminate is also phosphorescent (it's also the YA in YAG lasers). Anyone have some spare 90Sr we can test this with?
Well, with a 28.8 years half life it should glow a while. BUT, the largest license exempt quantity one can get iirc is 0.1 uCi. Plus it’s a fission product so good luck making it yourself. :) I don’t recommend the radioactive Boy Scout approach.
And now my kids each have an extra eyeball, which has proven very useful indeed.