The Grass Isn't Greener
By Helen Potter
The grass may be greener on the other side, but if you wish to extend your proverb to a galactic scale a change of colour may be in order.
Proving that researchers can take something as cool as life on other planets and break it down to the mundane, a group of scientists has worked out that there may be red, green or even yellow plants on extra-solar planets.
This all stems from the fact that other stars will emit a different range of colours of light to our star.
Chlorophyll absorbs mainly red and blue light, making Earth plants appear green. This is particularly sensible as the absorption of light by gases in the atmosphere mean that more red light reaches the surface than that of any other colour.
Nancy Kiang, a biometeorologist at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, New York and her team calculated what colours of light would reach the surface of Earth-like planets whose atmospheric chemistry was consistent with the stars they orbit. Each planet will have a different dominant colour for photosynthesis depending on the individual conditions, but the research was able to narrow down the range of expected colours.
"This work will help guide designs for future space telescopes that will study extrasolar planets, to see if they are habitable, and could have alien plants," said Victoria Meadows, an astronomer who heads the Virtual Planet Laboratory.
So if and when global warming and rising sea levels force us to flee into space, we should be able to find a nice planet where we can kick back and relax on the red, red grass of home.
Read more from Helen.
Proving that researchers can take something as cool as life on other planets and break it down to the mundane, a group of scientists has worked out that there may be red, green or even yellow plants on extra-solar planets.
This all stems from the fact that other stars will emit a different range of colours of light to our star.
Chlorophyll absorbs mainly red and blue light, making Earth plants appear green. This is particularly sensible as the absorption of light by gases in the atmosphere mean that more red light reaches the surface than that of any other colour.
Nancy Kiang, a biometeorologist at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, New York and her team calculated what colours of light would reach the surface of Earth-like planets whose atmospheric chemistry was consistent with the stars they orbit. Each planet will have a different dominant colour for photosynthesis depending on the individual conditions, but the research was able to narrow down the range of expected colours.
"This work will help guide designs for future space telescopes that will study extrasolar planets, to see if they are habitable, and could have alien plants," said Victoria Meadows, an astronomer who heads the Virtual Planet Laboratory.
So if and when global warming and rising sea levels force us to flee into space, we should be able to find a nice planet where we can kick back and relax on the red, red grass of home.
Read more from Helen.
Image: Rodolpho Clix
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