Forget wind power and solar power. It's time to invest in hamster power.

According to a new report on Discovery.com, scientists at Georgia Tech have figured out a way to harness hamster power. No, not by attaching some sort of apparatus to the hamster wheel. That would be too straightforward.


(Just think of the electricity that little guy could generate!)

But no, what these intrepid researchers did was sew electricity-generating threads one-fiftieth the width of a human hair into a yellow jacket worn by the hamsters as they ran. That's right, folks, they made the hamsters wear jackets. (You can see a picture of the hamster in said jacket by clicking on the link above.)

And the Georgia Tech scientists have only begun to experiment with hamster-jacket technology. Soon we could have hamster-powered vacuum cleaners, hamster-powered computers, and hamster-powered cars. (Oh wait, I think GM already invented that.)

And scientists are not stopping at hamsters. A human-sized jacket, capable of powering an iPod, could be ready in as little as three years.