A new type of light may not sound that exciting, but when you watch the video above, you'll see why people are getting pretty hyped over this new type of artificial sunlight, developed by Italian company CoeLux. It seriously looks just like real daylight streaming through a skylight. It even has the blue sky to prove it.
But despite the incredibly natural look of the light source (and no, none of these photos have been photoshopped), it's actually completely artificial. Developed by Italian scientists, the LED skylight uses a thin coating of nanoparticles to recreate the effect that makes the sky blue, known as Rayleigh scattering.
This means that the sunlight doesn't just light up a room, so to speak, it also produces the texture and feel of sunlight. In fact, it's so good, it really tricks the brain into thinking you're outdoors - even if you're kilometres underground.
Speaking in the video above, one of the scientists who worked on the device, Paolo Di Trapani, believes that this light source won't just make environments such as hospitals, offices, gyms and below-ground spas more pleasant, it will also have a far bigger impact. Like inventions such as the elevator before it, he believes the skylight will allow developers of the future to not just build up, but also far down below the ground - without any of the dinginess that currently keeps us above ground.
The CoeLux skylight could also be used in photography studios to recreate that natural sunlight effect, 24/7. Of course, right now, the technology is a little too expensive to be adopted widely - it costs around US$61,000 to buy and then around US$7,000 for installation, as Michael Zhang reports for PetaPixel. But in the future, the developers hope to find a way to drop the cost, and also want to make the position of the sun in the "sky" variable, as well as the dynamic colour temperature of their light.
Just imagine how good the skylights would look shining down on this underground park in New York.
We're excited that, in the future, when the human race is driven underground like mole people in order to survive the spoils of nuclear war, we'll still be able to feel the sunlight on our faces.
Source: PetaPixel