On Friday, October 24, 2014 12:21:02 AM UTC-5, Her Lao wrote:
http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20141017-how-flowers-conquered-the-world
"... from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved."
+++++++++++++++++++
Trees evolving to live underground, with only mostly leaves above ground, to do photosynthesis, the act in which chlorophyll molecules in the chloroplast (containing 4 manganese and 1 calcium atoms, arranging in a "metal cluster") allows photons to be absorbed so that 2 water molecules (2Hv20) could be split into 1 oxygen molecule (02) and 4H+ and 4e- ....
But the complete equation for plants is more like this, because plants also need nutrients from the soil, to add to the energy from the sun, to make "food" for them to grow):
6CO2 + 6H2O + [light energy] → 6O2 + C6H12O6
(carbon dioxide + water + [light energy] → oxygen + glucose)
That's where our breathing oxygen came from: the by-product/work of algae and plants.
http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20141103-why-some-trees-live-underground
Why we can not easily imitate some very basic processes of nature, despite our knowledge in fundamental physics and chemistry...
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20120906-will-humans-ever-photosynthesise
http://www.hometrainingtools.com/a/photosynthesis-newsletter
http://www.theenvironmentalblog.org/2012/04/artificial-photosynthesis/
At this point in our knowledge, in our technology, the biggest obstacle ---- there are many obstacles but the biggest of them all ---- is that nature (leaves) uses QUANTUM mechanical processes to absorb photons to do photosynthesis.
We have just BARELY started exploring very, very crude quantum mechanical activities, with the most "advanced" quantum computers being like children's toys right now, being mostly restricted to very crude algorithms exploration mostly maximization activities....
Adapting our crude applied knowledge of quantum mechanical activities to EFFICIENT Bio-molecular activities (imitating photosynthesis) is still decades, if not centuries, away...