• mozz@mbin.grits.dev
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    6 months ago

    plants still absorb 90% of green light

    What are you talking about

    (Your statement is technically true I think; I assume that plants like all opaque nonreflective objects absorb most of the light of any wavelength that hits them. But that doesn’t mean they’re using the green stuff for photosynthesis)

    green light holds the highest proportion of the energy radiated by the sun

    What are you talking about

    green light has too much energy

    What are you talking about

    However, this is not to say that green lights ability to efficiently evaporate water is not a factor in this evolutionary development, hell it’s probable that these two things are heavily related

    What are you talking about

    Did you read this recently, and just automatically assume that that thing about green light is probably heavily related to this other thing about green light because they’re both green light? I’m not tryin to be a dick about it by saying that, but that doesn’t sound automatically probable to me.

    So essentially, while absorbing all green light would provide the plant with more energy, it’s not capable of handling this energy so plants evolved to limit their intake of green light.

    This part for all I know could be true. (Or, the thing that linked paper says which this is kind of a simplified version of.) I couldn’t completely make sense of the paper just from the abstract, but to me it looks just from a first glance like it’s not real convincing as an overriding proof that what they’re talking about is (a) necessarily exactly how it happens in biological systems or (b) wholly responsible for plants being green if it does. It’s just a theoretical indication of one way that you can do the regulation, which also doesn’t work real well if you’re choosing to absorb green light.

    The thing I linked to claims that the green color is a result of an evolutionary trap (presumably based on evolving under conditions of green light unavailability and then having the machinery too complete to go back and redesign to absorb green light? Once green light became available again when the retinal-based organisms weren’t around anymore? Maybe.) I’m not convinced either explanation is proven but IDK if you can say just based on this one paper that it’s absolutely definite that that’s why and how it happens.