Manufacturing chlorophyll and adding special electronics to capture the coherent light and transform it to electricity rather than store it in a phosphate bond or harvest the energy directly from phosphate bonds into electricity rather than create sugars, cellulose , use water and CO2, etc... may be the key to huge efficiencies in electricity generation, especially in sun rich regions or with artificial chlorophyll, gold and magnesium will play a significant role as mineral elements, and much technique and knowledge and large teams will be required to accomplish this like a manhattan style project. If it goes ahead and is successful within ten years, it could oust nuclear energy as the planets climate change energy solution, and see the end of coal and gas as well. Plus win Nobel prizes and acclaim for its proponents and developers.
Many people including James Lovelock of the Gaia theory (and we have seen an interpretation of Gaia in the great movie Avatar) are proponents of nuclear energy peacefully with things like thorium.
Roseanne J. Sension in a Nature article quotes that there is a 95% efficiency, the efficiency of chlorophyll prior or just after conversion to ATP, 1 km of land on a bright sunny august day in ontario can produce about 150 Mega Watts per square kilometre.
That is huge.
So how do we tap into the suns power. Ted Sargent is trying with nanotechnology and his book 'Dance of the molecules' is a good read and has been advertized by the Sierra Club.
Perhaps we are missing something simple. Chlorophyll has been doing it all these aeons.
What about instead of producing Adenosine Tri phosphate from adenosine Di-Phosphate (ATP from ADP) and storing the sunds energy in that triple phosphate bond , later to be used to create sugars for the cell and cellulose for cell walls, etc. Why don't we try to build a little gold antenna to capture that energy directly and from the magnesium core of the chlorophyll reaction centre and convert it directly into electricity for use and conversion by a population. Perhaps we can pump water uphill, later to be run down again through turbines (my mums idea).
Perhaps also reading the following article would help budding scientists truly start on this quest.
Perhaps Ted Sargent knows more than he is legally allowed to let on, perhaps he doesn't. But we need alternate approaches to this problem in a public domain anyway.
an introduction to photosynthesis and chlorophyll
http://www.jstor.org/...
this article is based on the article by Roseanne J. Sension
Biophysics : quantum path to photosynthesis
http://www.nature.com/...
and three recent articles appeared in Nature magazine, here are the links
that may also be of interest:
Coherently wired light-harvesting in photosynthetic marine algae at ambient temperature
http://www.nature.com/...
Quantum design for a light trap
http://www.nature.com/...
and
Evidence for wavelike energy transfer through quantum coherence in photosynthesis (letter)
http://www.nature.com/...
To really make headway in this field, one needs to be able to manufacture chlorophyll ie. leaves or algae and extract it intact to put it in arrays. Biology and chemistry and lab skills
to build a small gold antenna, access to small quantities of gold and the ability to arrange them nanoscopically and antenna theory. a tall order. or a membrane that converts ATP to ADP and converts the energy in the phosphate bond to electricity.
but first to understand quantum mechanics, start with Polkinghornes 'The quantum world' as an introduction, or try QED by Feynman, or look at Feynmans advanced lecture notes. You will need to understand the Schrodinger equation, but not necessarily Schrodingers cat.
you will need to understand perhaps coherance and lasers. control theory and signal processing.
Stephane Mallats book, Wavelets a sparse tour is a thorough base along with Oppenheim and Young's Signal Processing. You might also need Oppenheim and Willsky.
You will also have to understand Electromagnetic Theory, ie. Maxwells equations, but perhaps not relativity.... good on you if you do.
You will need to work in teams and delegate parts of the project. No one person can do this all alone.
You will need governement science funding or a rich patron, and you would need protection and need to ensure that you have a 'normal' life at the end of the day. Make sure you keep your health and your mind/brain/body intact through all of this, not as obvious as it first seems.
All this is a tall order, open challenge, but there you have it.