Psychedelic Space Plants. The familiar color of our plants is not a universal property but an accident of our particular sun and atmosphere, says astrobiologist Nancy Kiang of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies. Although the sun emits visible light of every color, oxygen and ozone in our atmosphere absorb some of the blue and green light, leaving more red shining through to the surface. With so much red light bouncing around, plants evolved chlorophyll to efficiently absorb red and also blue light. “Photosynthesis is constrained by the number of photons, and there are more photons of red light reaching Earth than any other color,” Kiang says. Chlorophyll can't absorb every color, and it reflects most of the green photons, or packets of light, and those reflected photons give leaves their hue. Red. Jacob Dahlgren.
Words help deterimine what we see. Public release date: 31-Jan-2006 [ Print | E-mail Share ] [ Close Window ] Contact: William Harmsw-harms@uchicago.edu 773-702-8356University of Chicago.
