All Max needed to do was sail north for a few hours and keep his eye on the dim glow of the city in the distance.

NEWYORKER: Max at Sea

If the light were not infrared but were instead in the visible spectrum, there was enough of it that the naked eye could have seen a glow, according to Phaedon Avouris , manager of nanometer scale science and technology at IBM (nyse: IBM - news - people ) Research Laboratories in Yorktown Heights, N.

FORBES: IBM Makes Molecule-Sized Light

Along with key landmarks such as Big Ben, the Houses of Parliament, and The London Eye going dark, the quadrocopters will turn off their glow in support of Earth Hour.

ENGADGET: Quadrocopter fleet stuns Londoners with giant hovering Star Trek logo (video)