FORGET squeezing fruit to see if it’s ripe—just look at the way it
glows in the dark. That’s the message from Portugal, where scientists have
discovered that, when ripe, fruits such as apples and kiwi fruit fluoresce
brightly if they are zapped with a laser. They hope the effect will provide a
way to tell the age and ripeness of fruit on an industrial scale, without anyone
having to touch it.
Alexander Kharmalov, a physicist at the University of Coimbra in Portugal,
discovered the effect by accident. For a laugh, he placed an apple in a device
for measuring…
