Scientists Build a Better Incandescent Light Bulb

Six years after the last incandescent light bulb factory in the U.S. shut down due to strict new federal energy conservation standards, scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have come up with a technological breakthrough that could make incandescent bulbs twice as energy-efficient as their replacements. MIT researchers discovered that by wrapping the filament of an incandescent bulb with a “photonic crystal,” they could “recycle” the energy that was typically lost as heat to create more light.