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Music that makes tomatoes grow twice as big |
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Score
86%
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583 votes,
Feasibility
64%
Originality
81%
Humour
63% |
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Joel Sternheimer, a French physicist and musician, writes melodies that allegedly help plants grow, and has recently applied for a patent. He chooses each note to correspond to an amino acid in a protein, and the full tune corresponds to an entire protein. Sternheimer claims that when plants 'hear' the appropriate tune, they produce more of that protein. He also writes tunes that inhibit the synthesis of proteins.
He claims to be able, using simple physics, to translate into audible vibrations of music the quantum vibrations that occur at the molecular level as a protein is being assembled from its constituent amino acids.
His patent includes melodies for cytochrome oxidase and cytochrome C, two proteins involved in respiration, troponin C, which regulates calcium uptake in muscles, and the tune for inhibiting chalcone synthase, an enzyme involved in making plant pigments. Sternheimer claims that in experiments, tomatoes exposed to his tunes grew two-and-a-half times as big as controls. Some were sweeter as well, he says.
Summarised from an article in New Scientist (May 28th '94) by Andy Coghlan entitled 'Good vibrations give plant excitations'.
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