In the Future, You may Generate Power inside your Blood Vessels

Imagine a hydroelectric power plant inside your blood vessels

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Hydropower has been used for thousands of years. But in the future, you may be able to use it generate power inside your body too. Recently, researchers published a paper about the results of an experiment in which power was generated using a nano generator inside a saline solution.

How It Works

Those who know about carbon nanotubes are always awed by their thinness and their strength. But they are also great conductors, and that is crucial for the working of this generator.

The generator is basically a carbon nanotube wrapped around a core. The generator will be placed inside the bloodstream. When the blood passes over the generator,it changes the charge in the outer layer of the nanotube. The difference in charge between the outer and inner layers is what produces power.The first test carried out was in a frog, and it was successful in producing power.

So in essence, this will be a tiny, nano-scale power generator embedded right inside your body.Thousands of these could be installed in blood vessels.If you could find a way to bring that power out of the body, or even to a different place in the body, you could do a lot of things with this power.

How the Power could be Used

It could be used for powering devices inside the body

Today, people have to replace their pacemakers when the power runs out. May be we could use this power source to run pacemakers, and other such devices.

This becomes even more useful with the advent of cybernetics. In the future,we will likely have robots inside our bodies. And of course, those robots need power, and this could be the best power. It would be right inside the body, and it would probably be enough for most nanobots and other small things that travel in the bloodstream.

It could be used outside the body

If we figure out a way to generate a meaningful amount of power, and also figure out a way to get that power outside the body, we could for example, charge our phones with it.

As you can imagine, this is pretty impractical, and there are much easier methods to charge phones. But still, it would be cool if we could keep our phones charged forever.

Another, even more far-fetched idea would be to take the power generated by your blood vessels, and sell it on a "power network". I don't think this is really feasible, because i don't think this thing is going to generate a decent amount of power, but still, if possible, this would be cool.

It could be used to power our bodies

I think this is the coolest possibility. Imagine if we managed to take that power and turn it into ATP? This would mean that you are extracting more power out of the body, with the ability to use that power to do real-world, practical things. That ATP could be used for anything, from running, to powering the brain.

This might be even better for athletes, since they will have that extra source of energy. May be soldiers will use it to survive on lower food intake on the battlefield? That could make armies more efficient, because a lot of military logistics revolves around delivering those calories to the soldiers.

This could even be used to lose weight. Because instead of putting on fat, you get your daily energy from the generator, only in the quantities you need for whatever activity you want to do. Obviously, that would require finer control of the generator system, and also require better predictions of energy demand.

So what are your thoughts on putting hydroelectric power plants inside your arteries?

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harshallele

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Sources

• Header image from pixabay.

• http://bigthink.com/philip-perry/scientists-built-a-power-generator-for-use-inside-the-human-body