[HN Gopher] Scientists Found a 'Leak' in Photosynthesis That Cou...
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Scientists Found a 'Leak' in Photosynthesis That Could Be Tapped
into Energy
Author : vinni2
Score : 29 points
Date : 2023-04-02 19:37 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.cnet.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.cnet.com)
| SomewhatLikely wrote:
| "We rely on plants for everything we eat"
|
| This struck me as a bit absolute, and I immediately thought of
| mushrooms, but I believe they may in turn rely largely on organic
| matter such as plants. There are some worms and other animals
| that can survive on bacteria, so I suppose you could
| theoretically eat those and invalidate this quote. However, it
| seems to be more true than I immediately suspected.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Makes me wonder if anyone made a chart of various organisms
| depicted as ranges on a "degree of energy separation from
| sunlight", where plants are 0 (they eat sunlight), herbivores
| are 1 (they eat plants, which eat sunlight), etc.
| swagasaurus-rex wrote:
| Deep sea vent organisms can extract energy from the nutrients
| and heat from the geothermal vents.
| teruakohatu wrote:
| A quick Google told me that photosynthesis uses 45% of the
| daylight spectrum. So I don't really understand this article,
| especially since it talks about photosynthesis being 100%
| efficient, when it is actually quite low:
|
| "Photosynthetically active radiation (400-700 nm) constitutes
| only 45% of the actual daylight. Therefore the maximum
| theoretical efficiency of the photosynthesis process is
| approximately 11%. In fact, in any case, plants don't use all
| incoming sunlight (due to respiration, reflection, light
| inhibition and light saturation) and do not convert all harvested
| energy into biomass, which brings about a general photosynthetic
| proficiency of 3%-6% based on total solar radiation. "
|
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/biochemistry-genetics-a...
| BobbyJo wrote:
| The difference may be the efficiency of the photosynthetic
| process and the efficiency of the plant itself. Like how a
| motor may be X% efficient, but the car it's driving on the road
| is far less efficient.
| elcritch wrote:
| The quantum chemical process of photosynthesis in chlorophyll
| is (nearly) 100% efficient. The process works via quantum
| teleportation which means you don't get phonon / heat loss like
| you do with semiconductor absorption bands, IIRC.
| fsckboy wrote:
| the shocking part (haha it's electrons, get it?) is that natural
| selection hasn't figured out a way to harvest this free energy,
| it's usually so good at that! Perhaps the speculation that it's
| potentially harmful energy bleedoff fits that scenario, but
| still, life usually finds a way to exploit resources.
| throwawaymaths wrote:
| Nah, the rate limiting step of plant growth is carbon fixation.
| The problem is if you harvest _too many_ electrons what are you
| going to do with this energy. Travel too far off of "neutral"
| redox potential and it winds up being a problem.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| >the shocking part is that natural selection hasn't figured out
| a way to harvest this free energy, it's usually so good at
| that!
|
| Natural selection optimizes for "good enough", not "the best".
| catoc wrote:
| Plants care more about a stable photosynthetic energy flow than
| about higher conversion rates.
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