A small team of biologists, environmental scientists and chemists from Queen Mary University in the UK have discovered through modeling that it is possible to grow a variety of plants on rocky planets like Earth. In their paper, published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, the group describes how they modeled the photosynthetic antenna, taking into account possible scenarios and the results of their experiments on planets in other star systems.
As scientists continue to consider the possibility of life outside Earth, they are trying to expand the possible scenarios in which life could exist. Finally, exoplanets roughly the size of Earth significantly limit the possibility of life existing. In this new project, the research team examined the fundamental processes of photosynthesis here on Earth and possible changes in a process that enable the growth of different plant species on other worlds.
To develop a photosynthesis model that could be applied to alien plants, the researchers closely examined the photosynthetic antennae, the plant parts that are actively involved in harvesting light. On Earth, this type of antenna only works with light between 400 nm and 700 nm.
They also found that most exoplanets observed so far are red dwarfs, which emit light with wavelengths longer than 700 nm. This means that plants have to process this type of light very efficiently and therefore cannot go beyond very simple structures. However, there is potential for photosynthetic antennas that can operate on gases other than oxygen, such as sulfur.
In such situations, the plants they use are not green but may be purple, orange or red, for example. This depends on the wavelength of light they use as an energy source. They argue that these plants likely need to extract nutrients from the type of soil in which they grow, even though these species are different from those on Earth.
The researchers show that their model allows the basic mechanics of photosynthetic antennas to process wavelengths of light in areas already observed on exoplanets, meaning they may need new methods to study them to identify the plants that live there . they are
Further information: Christopher DP Duffy et al, Photosynthesis under a red sun: predicting the absorption properties of an external light-harvesting antenna, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (2023). DOI: 10.1093/mnras/stad2823
© 2023 Science X Network
Citation : Photosynthetic antenna model suggests different types of plants could grow on rocky Earth-like planets (October 3, 2023) Retrieved October 10, 2023 from https://phys.org/news/2023-10-photosynthetic-antenna-earth - has been reached. like-rocky-planets.html
This document is subject to copyright. No part may be reproduced for personal study or research purposes without written permission without fair use. The content is for informational purposes only.
