View Single Post
Old 08-26-2016, 07:49 PM   #19
malloyd
 
Join Date: Jun 2006
Default Re: Lucy's Choice: Let's make Lucifer Parallels!

Quote:
Originally Posted by Flyndaran View Post
Plants make almost everything they need from air and water as life is essentially carbon, oxygen, hydrogen... and traces of other stuff.
"Traces" being defined as 5-10%. Nitrogen can be had from air too (most plants don't, but those of them with the right symbiotic bacteria do). But you aren't going to be able to engineer around needing phosphorous for anything remoted based on terrestrial life (the TP in the fundamental biochemical energy transfer molecule ATP is "triphosphate") and not to be found in air much. For a plant, chlorophyll requires magnesium, and the secondary stages of photosynthesis involve manganese and copper, but metal atoms don't seem absolutely essential - some photosynthetic bacteria do without some of them.
__________________
--
MA Lloyd
malloyd is online now   Reply With Quote