The next thing that draws your attention is the bright green color that extends across the globe. This green color of all plants in the world.
This observation may make you wonder, why plants are green in the first place?
It turns out that your being green picks up only a fraction of the sunlight to use energy, but because of the quirks of developments and conditions on Earth, it is the best choice for plants.
The ground floor is covered with green when viewed from space. Photo credits: Pexels
Plants are filled with chlorophyll, which gives the plants their green color.
Chlorophyll is a photoreceptor and photoresist, absorbs energy to convert water and carbon dioxide to produce sugar and oxygen after photosynthesis:
6CO2 + 6H2O + optical power = C6H12O6 + 6O2
This allows them to convert energy from the sun into food for themselves. In every plant on Earth, from algae to green, it has evolved only once.
Sunlight consists of different colors. Each having a different wavelength ranging from 400 to 700 nm. Chlorophyll absorbs red and blue wavelengths to be used as energy but does not absorb green - the color recovers from the paper and our eyes see the leaves as green.
In autumn, leaves appear yellow and bright red because falling plants stop producing chlorophyll for winter. Chlorophyll degrades in sunlight, so when plants stop producing it, it disappears.
The colors that are usually hidden, such as yellow and red, are hidden.
Why are plants not black or purple?
One theory is that the early oceans were full of purple microbes called archaea.
The light-sensitive molecule in these microbes is called retinol, which absorbs green light and reflects red and purple light, making it appear purple.
So, parts of the earth can look purple! Each green light was captured by the cores, so the chlorophyll was to do a blue and red light.
However, chlorophyll-based life has become more dominant because although it uses less light spectrum, chlorophyll is much more efficient.
The other theory is that the absorption of a lot of light may damage the plant more than it may help, as happens to get a lot of the sun, we get sunburn. So it may be useful that plants get less illumination.
In general, the pros of chlorophyll outweigh the negatives in the conditions of this planet, to the extent that plants dominate the world.
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