Re: Scientists ponder plant life on extrasolar planets
- From: BradGuth <bradguth@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 15 Jul 2007 15:55:34 -0000
On Jun 20, 11:22 am, doolit...@xxxxxxxx wrote:
It could be the plants are black, says Robert Blankenship, Ph.D.,
Lucille P. Markey Distinguished Professor in Arts & Sciences at
Washington University in St. Louis. But it all depends on what size
and light intensity of star - or sun - the planet feeds off, and the
extrasolar planet's atmospheric chemistry.
"Ideally, what you want is a black molecule that absorbs all of the
light," Blankenship said. "There could be another system developed on
an extrasolar planet where plants are completely black if the spectrum
of light that's available to organisms is different from the light
available to organisms on Earth."
I totally agree, that depending upon the spectrum of available energy
as light (much of which is outside the threshold of human vision), the
forms of plant/microbe/animal life should have adapted, as do our
terrestrial diatoms for taking the fullest advantage of the given
energy spectrum that's in charge of illuminating a given environment,
including everything from UV starshine to that of a brown dwarf's
black IR/FIR radiating sun (aka 'hot rock') should do just fine as
long as the local, solar, moon and cosmic dosage of gamma and hard-
Xrays are within the scope of whatever such ET DNA or whatever
alternative can cope with.
How about our best of science wizards pondering on behalf of other
intelligent life that's either evolved or having been one way or
another transported onto intrasolar planets or moons, meaning the
likes of Venus or a few of those interesting Saturn or Jupiter moons
seems every bit as worthy as for any little frozen to death Ceres
dwarf of a planet, and otherwise certainly a whole lot better off than
anything Mars could sustain without imported resources.
At most a planet that's hosting intelligent other life needs merely a
brown dwarf of a sun, or at least having a Saturn+ or Jupiter+ class
of a mother planet from which to draw energy from. In the case of
Venus being of such a newish planetology, chances are that it could
have survived an extended interstellar trek pretty much all by itself,
perhaps bringing along its own icy moon and whatever collection of
complex life that's capable of having survived where most terrestrial
forms of life from Earth simply would never have survived, much less
having evolved into the sorts of life as we know it.
Just because a given planet or moon is not 100% suited to our butt
naked and often dumbfounded usage as is, doesn't exclude such other
orbs from having their own populations of weird or even somewhat
terrestrial forms of survival intelligent other life to behold, much
like there being complex life within terrestrial ice or having been
surviving within certain places similar to being as hot as hell on
Earth, as well as within testy environments under the depths of an
ocean that would just as easily crush your typical submarine that's
accommodating us wussy humans, along with terminating our extremely
frail DNA that hasn't hardly evolved for the better since the last ice
age this planet is ever going to see, that is as long as we're going
to keep putting up with that massive and fast moving moon of ours
that's cruising so close to our home world that's 98.5% fluid and thus
unavoidably affected by those horrific tidal forces at play.
-
Brad Guth
.
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