Fact: You can get glow-in-the-dark ice cream.
You might have heard somewhere that Tonic water glows under UV light, but the story of the glow-in-the-dark ice cream takes all that one step further. Its jellyfish flavoured.
Using the same principles described last week, animals can produce light by a phenomenon called bioluminescence – they produce proteins which absorb light and then emit it in a particular colour, making them glow in the dark to attract mates or warn off predators. Jellyfish are some of the most famous bioluminescent creatures, since the protein ‘green flourescent protein’ – or GFP – made by them revolutionized biological experiments by allowing scientists to mark specific proteins in cells and thus watch them under a fluorescent microscope.
The company ‘Lick Me, I’m Delicious’ has now put that same protien in an ice cream, so when the protien is warmed up and exposed to the ions in your saliva it begins to emit light – or to put it simply, it glows when you lick it. Awesome, yes. Expensive, yes: £140 a scoop to be precise.
Perhaps more insane, the same company made a flavour of ice cream called ‘The Arousal’, which contains 25mg of Viagra per scoop and tastes like champagne. Just make sure you don’t comfort eat the whole tub in one sitting…
‘Another one of Mr Shaunak’s Little Bites of Science’
Image under Creative Commons license
Mr Shaunak's Little Bites of Science 