anyone know anything about this? They are supposed to be good for growing and maybe even healing tissue. NASA is using them for growing on the space station. I've got some cantaloupes growing under a 20 w red led light, we'll see what happens.
Dont know about healing tissue, id have said that maybe an old wives tail. Its possible that the heat from IR light may increase the rate of reaction of teh bodies healing process, no idea. But it is true that an excess of red light can make a plant grow taller. Plants associate red light with being in the shade, so they grow taller to try and reach the light, a rather funky adaptation. So by having a red light you fool the plant into thinking its in the shade and so it will grow taller. Though id be careful about using only red light, as a plant does need light from other parts of the spectrum as well. Especially with a very spectral source like an LED that may give very little light over the rest of the visible spectrum.
I thought red light was for in the sun. Oh well, I have a couple pots of perlite sitting in an igloo water cooler w' a red led light (actually 630 leds in a 12" dia case). My seeds that are sitting in the shade outside haven't sprouted yet but my ones under the led light have. I'm kinda curious what exposure to only the red led will do.
My guess would be they'll still grow, especially with 50W of LED on them. Though quite what such a blue defiency will do a google search will probably reveal.
you'll find that the leds used are of a particular frequency/ies and are used by exposing the affected areas to a certain concentration of light. i think they now use this in the treatment of cancer, after chemo i think. if the leds are not of the nominated frequency i doubt they will do much.
Red light seems to tend to induce seed germination among other things. http://www.altgarden.com/site/library/lights.html http://www.biologie.uni-hamburg.de/b-online/e30/30b.htm (the first part of that is more readable for us non-biochemists... http://www.sciencenews.org/pages/pdfs/data/1997/152-24/15224-13.pdf Also there's tons of info out there on some of the more advanced grower forums dedicated to our favorite plant... though since overgrow shut down I've kind of lost track of that.
