The crazy part is the exact science behind why plants reflect green specifically is still debated. One theory is that, because much of the sun’s energy is released on that wavelength, controlling for it specifically allows the plant to better manage energy fluctuations (highly simplified but you get the idea)
That's just science
Submitted 2 months ago by The_Picard_Maneuver@lemmy.world to science_memes@mander.xyz
https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/7dda2771-e830-40da-bbc8-b7fe88c55545.jpeg
Comments
sharkfucker420@lemmy.ml 2 months ago
rants_unnecessarily@piefed.social 2 months ago
So why are some plants purple?
Aqivex@fedinsfw.app 2 months ago
Which curiously enough, can also photosynthesize, and more readily absorb energy from green light than chlorophyll!
Makes me wonder what could be achieved with some careful engineering…
ignominous_wombat@lemmy.ml 2 months ago
My wife is a horticulturist and she has showed me some plants with sun stress that have turned a reddish purple when they’re not supposed to. Eventually, the plant will die if not given a reprieve.
Maybe there is some sort of adaptation happening where the plants have been trying to survive in a low shade environment for a long time, and being purple helps in some way, so it became permanent. But I am just speculating.
Sirdubdee@piefed.social 2 months ago
Cold nights while growing.
rumba@lemmy.zip 2 months ago
“Why” and “biology” famously do not get along. The best you can usually do is say it’s evolutionarily advantageous because the true answer is usually a neural network the size of life itself. There are plenty of decent reasons that play parts that we can quibble over, though.
Zorcron@lemmy.zip 2 months ago
Very interesting, thanks for the info!
weilii@lemmy.lacasabien.space 2 months ago
Thank you so much for this comment. I have a graduate degree in plant genetics and I had never been exposed to this before and you just made my whole day by teaching me this!
How do you know so much about photosynthesis?
sharkfucker420@lemmy.ml 2 months ago
My partner recently graduated with a horticulture degree and at the time I originally learned this I was a physics major. Photosynthesis was a neat overlap of our fields.
aeronmelon@lemmy.world 2 months ago
“Incandescent rage” is one of those phrases I have pocketed for a future conversation.
isleepinahammock@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 months ago
Mirshe@lemmy.world 2 months ago
I mean, technically they weren’t wrong.
Rooskie91@discuss.online 2 months ago
It was also a great pin for the topic being discussed.
rethnor@lemmy.zip 2 months ago
Except the sun isn’t yellow, it’s white with a slight bias towards green.
Want to check, put something white outside, it looks white, not yellow.
merc@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
The reason the sun appears to be yellow is the same reason that the sky appears to be blue.
Blue light is scattered more by the air in the atmosphere than other wavelengths. Remove blue from white light and you get yellow. So the light coming from the sun that isn’t scattered and dispersed through the sky (making the sky look blue) is yellow.
mirshafie@europe.pub 2 months ago
And here’s the correct answer, boys and girls.
rethnor@lemmy.zip 2 months ago
Still, the sun is white. Sun light is white.
Are you saying the blue light is removed from the spectrum when it’s passes through the atmosphere? I assume you aren’t since you said scattered, but also imply the sun is yellow because blue is removed.
If we’re talking about sun light during sunrise or sunset then yes it gets red at more extreme angles. But the sun isn’t that color all day.
icanbrewmushrooms@lemmy.world 2 months ago
It’s the opposite, no? Red and green light have shorter wavelengths, so they get scattered before they reach our eyes, but the blue wavelengths are long enough that we actually at them
Allero@lemmy.today 2 months ago
Neither water is blue
They take us for absolute fools
HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Maybe not the water you drink (chugs Gatorade frost)
WhiskyTangoFoxtrot@lemmy.world 2 months ago
That’s why I never developed super powers.
g0d0fm15ch13f@lemmy.world 2 months ago
with a slight bias towards green
And it’s my understanding THATS why plants are green
brown567@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
Actually, leaves look green because they don’t absorb green light (that’s why grow bulbs are red & blue)
CareHare@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
Purple leaves are a thing.
lemmyng@piefed.ca 2 months ago
That’s from plants that get their air mostly from the shade and sunsets, so obviously they’d be less yellow and more dark and red.
CareHare@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
I know this is a joke, but to be fair: the scientific consensus (now) is that the purple pigmentation acts as a sort of sunscreen against too much sunlight.
Tollana1234567@lemmy.today 2 months ago
they are more dark green if they a understory plant, or a shaded plant. there of course plants that have no chlorophyll whatsoever. 2 types, one is mostly albino plants where they lose all thier chlorophyll, the other is mycoheterotrophic plants(either partial or fully). ever seen a albino redwood, apparently it lives off being attached to the roots of the parent plant where it came from or from nearby trees.
MML@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
There’s also an extremely tiny percent of plants that are entirely white, they don’t get their energy through photosynthesis but instead a parasitic relationship of fungi and other plants.
sneekee_snek_17@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Mycoheterotrophs! Love them, such bizarre little plants
Tollana1234567@lemmy.today 2 months ago
Albino plants are a thing, but they usually are attached to the main plant where they came from. albino redwoods is an example. fully parasitic plants usually dont have leaves or have a small nonfunctional ones. some parasitic plants is exist as filaments inside a host(no stem no, leaves whatsoever)(rafflesia, pilostyles)
isleepinahammock@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 months ago
As is purple rain.
ech@lemmy.ca 2 months ago
Whinging about a fact being wrong without providing a correction is worse than the one being wrong.
gwl@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 months ago
The thing is it’s kinda right, just lacking detail
hirihit640@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
Cab you help explain it? I thought that the sky was blue because it reflects the ocean and because of rayleigh scattering, but do either of these affect the color of plants?
ranzispa@mander.xyz 2 months ago
This is indeed a valid theory, but not very powerful since it can only explain the color of green plants and not for example the color of non green plants or animals.
More powerful theories have been developed which can work on a much broader range of applications. For example the theory that plants are the color they are because God painted them that way.
Digit@lemmy.today 2 months ago
Why are plants purple?
Naz@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
Blue waves fast Red waves slow
Easy as
humorlessrepost@lemmy.world 2 months ago
They’re not anymore
Digit@lemmy.today 2 months ago
Some are.
whereitsat@lemmy.zip 2 months ago
lemmy poster here. both of these people are annoying, unfunny fucks.
bet you didn’t see that one coming!
btw i have a masters degree in internet posting.
mrslt@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Lemme guess, reddit transplant?
BoosBeau@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Wouldn’t it be a “lemmy” guess? I’ll go ahead and see myself out.
Zerush@lemmy.ml 2 months ago
Science is making mistakes towards to the truth
AgentOrangesicle@lemmy.world 2 months ago
I’m still not following. What part of “blue air” imparts chlorophyll with its color? I get the sun. I understand how light works (reflection, refraction, and scattering). I understand our perception of light on a neuological level (including post-processing) to an extent that most people haven’t studied. Why “blue” air make green plant?
Deme@sopuli.xyz 2 months ago
My guess would be that plants optimize also for absorbing a significant amount of the light they receive from the blue sky, so they still get some when direct sunlight isn’t available.
AgentOrangesicle@lemmy.world 2 months ago
I hate that one misclick can delete my comment.
Would that be a natural, logical discernment for someone trying to figure out why chlorophyll is green? I say that this is an unhinged take and everyone siding with it should feel like… an amount of bad. It’s pretty misleading by virtue.
MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip 2 months ago
Air is light blue because it filters out red, which is why chlorophyl optimized for the mix of the remaining wavelengths yellow and blue, which is green. Color theory of additive blending.
AgentOrangesicle@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Are you saying that chlorophyll naturally evolved to take in specific wavelengths of light given the availability of light in specific frequencies in response to how the sun’s light moves through our amosphere? I would get it, but that would be so frustrating of a response to, “why air blue matter”.
AgentOrangesicle@lemmy.world 2 months ago
I mean, yeah. I’m reaching for the, “why”, though. Specifically for chlorophyll, which reflects light with a specificity. As does carotene in dying trees in the fall.
Sixseven@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
Mix blue and yellow paint and you end up with green paint.
AgentOrangesicle@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Oh, damn. Reductionist.
heartSagan5@lemmy.zip 2 months ago
So, is the blue from the water in the plant or the air?
heartSagan5@lemmy.zip 2 months ago
So, what color were plants during the Hadean æon?
captainlezbian@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Same color as animals were
RagingRobot@lemmy.world 2 months ago
What color was the sky?
isleepinahammock@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 months ago
I liked a version of this (I believe) XKCD said once.
A perfectly valid response to the question, “why is the sky blue?” is simply, “because air is blue.”
Yes, you can give a lot of explanation about refractive index and Rayleigh scattering. But all this does is provide details of how light interacts with air. And the same reason anything is the color that it is is due to the way it reflects, transmits, or absorbs light. You’re citing real scientific principles, but you’re ultimately just explaining why air is blue.
bullsworth@pawb.social 2 months ago
It’s a very good relevant XKCD.
The title text is more directly applicable: If you ask “why are leaves green?” the usual answer is “because they’re full of chlorophyll, and chlorophyll is green,” even though “why does chlorophyll scatter green light?” is a great question too.
Redditmodstouchgrass@lemmy.zip 2 months ago
“Don’t breathe air, it has sharks in it! BLUE HAS SHARKS IN IT!” -The funny purple man
isleepinahammock@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 months ago
???
senseamidmadness@lemmygrad.ml 2 months ago
“BLUEBERRIES ARE FUCKING PURPLE!”
tetris11@feddit.uk 2 months ago
But it’s an incomplete answer.
“air is invisible at short distances, blue at longer distances, and takes on red green and orange at unset” would be better
isleepinahammock@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 months ago
The same is true for all colors. Tell me the color of a single atom.
Yes, air can be colors other than blue at unusual light conditions, like sunset. But the same is true for any material.
You’re stuck on the urge to explain. You call “the air is blue” incomplete. But all answers are incomplete. When someone asks what color an object is, they mean under ordinary distances and conditions. Air is blue even in an ordinary room. It just takes miles worth of air for its slight blue color to be noticeable.
brown567@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
Better question: “Why is the sky usually blue but sometimes red?”
Talking specifically about sunsets, not apocalyptic wildfire smoke
SLVRDRGN@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Incidentally it’s the same reason between a sunset and smoke - more scattering.