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Old 11-08-2019, 11:13 AM   #5
Anthony
 
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: Berkeley, CA
Default Re: a science question: atmospheric disequilibrium

Quote:
Originally Posted by malloyd View Post
The purpose of photosynthesis is after all to extract the stuff you build your body from out of the environment.
Maybe to some degree, but mostly it's about using energy from sunlight to pay for reactions that would otherwise have negative enthalpy, and the resulting products are used as fuel. It's not really required that there be any gaseous substances at all.

However, if there are gaseous products, you can assume they're ones that require energy to split off, and there aren't terribly many candidates for that; splitting off light hydrocarbons won't be all that useful, nitrogen tends to be pretty inert once it gets split off so you can't have a long term, fluorine and chlorine aren't common enough.
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