[TML] Alien ecologies

[Jerry W Barrington]

On 8/21/08 3:58 AM, "Robert" <robocon at ozemail.com.au> wrote:

> Darby Eckles wrote:
>> When I run games, I like to have very alien planets.
> 
> This isn't a bad article from Scientific American (April '08):
> http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=the-color-of-plants-on-other-worlds
> http://www.sciam.com/slideshow.cfm?id=the-color-of-plants-on-other-worlds
> 
> The info may be helpful for your worldbuilding!

I'm not sure it's all that helpful.  Look at Earth: chlorophyll, the main
photosynthesizing pigment, does *not* have it's best absorption where the
sun has it's best emissions.  Thus it would be naive to think that merely
shifting the peak emission will likely result in a different pigment.  If
chlorophyll is one of the easiest pigments to evolve, then it may have a
shot at dominance on any inhabitable planet.  Conversely, if there's no
special reason why chlorophyll happened to evolve, then even a very
Earth-like planet could have very divergent plants.

We just don't know enough to generalize.  And by generalizing, you make the
life too predictable based on the local star.