I was having a little fun at others' expense. I never said it wasn't a hoax, but the science is there, but it isn't 'here' in the sense that it's usable today.

I was having a little fun at others' expense. I never said it wasn't a hoax, but the science is there, but it isn't 'here' in the sense that it's usable today. I got upvoted talking about photosynthesis with no mention of photovoltaics in an article about a PV cell. Chlorophyll is currently being developed as a low cost dye in solar cells (the dye is the photoelectric material sandwiched in the middle that produces the electricity). Melanin itself is currently of interest due to it enabling the standard dyes (silicon dioxide, titanium dioxide, etc) to capture electrons they shouldn't be able to, it somehow takes low-energy light (even infra-red) and kicks it up a notch for the standard dye to capture. Melanin in itself has a few amazing properties. It's apparently photoelectric right through from IR to Gamma rays, and also alpha, beta and neutrons produce the same effect in it. The IR and UV effects are the best features, making it an efficiency booster in existing solar panels by one means or another. The fact that it can potentially produce electricity through radiation has a whole other interesting factor to it, it creates the potential for a direct radiation->electricity just as solar cells have provided for solar energy (coal, oil and natural gas are just dead plants and animals that harvested solar energy a million years ago, wind is the thermal effect from solar, hydroelectric comes from rivers that came from rain that came from a heated ocean, etc). The two raw power sources we have are solar and nuclear (I suppose technically tidal and geothermal are raw sources too, but neither are developed enough), skipping the middle-men, so to speak, in the process is likely to be crucial in our future. Melanin photovoltaic cells could enable the direct harvesting of radiation to produce electricity from many sources. Either stray radiation in a nuclear reactor (basically as radiation shielding that makes you money), or as an alternative to RTG's, but currently its greatest use in this field could be harvesting energy from nuclear waste, both the thermal products and the ionizing radiation. It's also of interest for space, as ionizing radiation there is immense, the sun emits vast amounts of x-rays constantly, we're just buried under our planets radiation shields. The science is there for melanin as I said, but it'll likely take a lot of R&D before a melanin-based cell is on the store front, and it likely won't appear on its own to the general public as the uses of melanin-based cells are likely to be found where civilians are not (IE radioactive places or space).