4 ms·

Wood was a chief enabler of the success of our species Wood was the chief enabler of trees. Trees have to be big, strong, lightweight, and bendable. Homogeneou

Wood was a chief enabler of the success of our species Wood was the chief enabler of trees. Trees have to be big, strong, lightweight, and bendable. Homogeneous materials won't work for that application. You need a composite. So evolution invented one. Even more amazing: Trees 3D print themselves out of carbon dioxide.

shiroiushi 2y ago
>Trees have to be big, strong, lightweight, and bendable. Homogeneous materials won't work for that application. Why wouldn't titanium work for that application? (Assume that somehow the plant can move nutrients and fluids around some other way.) Or even steel, as long as it's not solid? Obviously, nature can't produce hollow steel tubes, but lots of metals satisfy your requirement list here.
- alanbernstein 2y ago
  I think mainly because trees are not steel plants
- bartc 2y ago
  Trees did not evolve with bountiful access to titanium, but it would be interesting to ponder how they would have evolved on a metal planet
  - Qwertious 2y ago
    >but it would be interesting to ponder how they would have evolved on a metal planet It overlaps a whole lot with the concept of a dyson trees, but the core problem is that it needs to be able to use the metal in the first place - earth is a metal planet, in the sense that ~10% of the planet is iron, and yet our trees are not steel.
    - joha4270 2y ago
      I don't really think that's a fair assessment, since most of it is in the core. That's some very long and heat resistant roots. I also can't help but wonder, could trees even use iron if it was plentiful in the upper crust? You need a lot of energy to separate iron oxide into elemental iron. Betting against what evolution can make is usually a bad idea, but that would be a neat trick.
      - Anotheroneagain 2y ago
        Both iron and titanium are ubiquitous in the crust. I think they are the 4th and 9th most common elements, and definitely far more common than carbon.
        shiroiushi 2y ago
        Yeah, but plants don't normally pull carbon out of the ground; they get it from the air.
        lazide 2y ago
        No reason they couldn’t, if it was advantageous for them though.
        simmo9000 2y ago
        Umm... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biological_carbon_fixation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biological_carbon_fixation.
        lazide 2y ago
        What is your point exactly?
  - nakedneuron 2y ago
    Carbon in the form of carbon dioxide as raw material is literally instantly available and the resulting "composite" is lightweight. This is not to say nature always considers recycling beforehand. Nature needed to invent fungi to break up this carbon dump. Carbon era is named thanks to this fact. And it's tempting to think nature "came up" with humankind to make the humongous carbon dump of the carbon era useful once again.
    - digging 2y ago
      Really, you have causation backward. Eg. the supposed Carboniferous Period was an opportunity for something to evolve which consumes wood. Many "problems" get solved by accident in this way, but many also don't - as long as they take place over a long enough timespan. If they happen too quickly, there's not enough time for living things to adapt. Currently there is an opportunity for an industrious plastic-eating microbe to hitch a ride in every gut on the planet, deciding the winners and losers of the plastiferous period. All that means, though, is that there's a chance such a creature could appear and take advantage, not that it will happen. (Yes I know plastic-eaters have been discovered, but I'm not aware of any having an effect on the fitness of other creatures.)
  - kevin_thibedeau 2y ago
    Titanium is more abundant than nickel and New Caledonia's plants have evolved to deal with the latter in unique ways.
- adrian_b 2y ago
  In any stellar system like ours, where oxygen is the most abundant element, except for the hydrogen and helium that are contained mostly in the star and in the big planets, almost all metals are completely oxidized (with the exception of the siderophile elements submerged into the cores of the planets, because of their great density) and the amount of metallic substances with a natural origin that can be found in the accessible surface layers of the planets is negligible. Reducing the oxidized metals requires much more energy than reducing non-metals like carbon, nitrogen and sulfur (which is what the living beings do to make their structural materials), and preventing the reduced metals to spontaneously become oxidized again is very difficult. This is why no living beings have succeeded to use metallic materials before the humans, and the latter have succeeded to do this only after mastering the fire, which is the other thing that the non-human living beings have not succeeded to do. There exists a second class of stellar systems, where there is more carbon than oxygen, so almost all oxygen remains bound in carbon oxides, while most other elements are present as carbides, instead of oxides, like in the Solar System. These are much more rare than the stellar systems of the Solar System type and in such stellar systems the chemical composition of the planets would be extremely different from the planets of the Solar System. Because there is no detailed information about such a stellar system (due to their distance), there is very little knowledge about whether there would be conditions in such a system for the appearance of life and how could that evolve. If there is any chance for primitive life forms to use metals in their structures, that would happen only in such stellar systems.
  - airstrike 2y ago
    The only possible way this comment could be more satisfying to read would be if it ended with "Until now." before the camera pans to a strange planet and the movie begins
    - adrian_b 2y ago
      An interesting fact is that while almost all solid objects that exist in the Solar System have their origin in the condensation of gases from which the Solar System has formed, there exist also the so-called pre-solar grains. The pre-solar grains are microscopic crystals, i.e. particles of dust, which have come to the Solar System as already solid grains of dust, from other stellar systems, typically having been propelled by stellar explosions, e.g. those of supernovae. Such pre-solar grains have been incorporated in the many small bodies that have been condensed from gases along with the bigger asteroids and planets at the formation of the Solar System. Some of those small bodies have fallen on Earth as meteorites (the so-called "chondrites"). When such meteorites have been analyzed carefully, pre-solar grains have been recovered. They can usually be easily distinguished from the local objects, by having very different isotopic compositions. Among the pre-solar grains, there are many that have come from stellar systems of the second kind, with more carbon than oxygen. Such grains, instead of being silicates, i.e. the most frequent minerals in the stellar systems of the Solar type, have chemical compositions that are unusual for the minerals of the planets of the Solar System, like diamond, graphite, silicon carbide or nitride, titanium carbide or nitride, metal grains of either platinum-group metals or iron-group metals, other carbides, nitrides, sulfides, silicides or titanides. For now, this is the only direct evidence of the second class of stellar systems, beyond the spectroscopic observations of various stars, which provide estimations for the relative abundance of carbon and oxygen in those stellar systems. While we have some idea about what kind of minerals might be the most abundant in such stellar systems at the time of their initial condensation from gases, I am not aware of any attempt to simulate the possible internal structure for big planets in such stellar systems, in order to determine whether in such planets there could exist some analogs of the volcanism and hydrothermal vents that can provide the energy flux necessary for the appearance of life in the planets of the terrestrial type.
sph 2y ago
> Even more amazing: Trees 3D print themselves out of carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide and low-entropy energy in the form of solar light.

shiroiushi 2y ago

>Trees have to be big, strong, lightweight, and bendable. Homogeneous materials won't work for that application. Why wouldn't titanium work for that application? (Assume that somehow the plant can move nutrients and fluids around some other way.) Or even steel, as long as it's not solid? Obviously, nature can't produce hollow steel tubes, but lots of metals satisfy your requirement list here.

alanbernstein 2y ago
I think mainly because trees are not steel plants
bartc 2y ago
Trees did not evolve with bountiful access to titanium, but it would be interesting to ponder how they would have evolved on a metal planet
- Qwertious 2y ago
  >but it would be interesting to ponder how they would have evolved on a metal planet It overlaps a whole lot with the concept of a dyson trees, but the core problem is that it needs to be able to use the metal in the first place - earth is a metal planet, in the sense that ~10% of the planet is iron, and yet our trees are not steel.
  - joha4270 2y ago
    I don't really think that's a fair assessment, since most of it is in the core. That's some very long and heat resistant roots. I also can't help but wonder, could trees even use iron if it was plentiful in the upper crust? You need a lot of energy to separate iron oxide into elemental iron. Betting against what evolution can make is usually a bad idea, but that would be a neat trick.
    - Anotheroneagain 2y ago
      Both iron and titanium are ubiquitous in the crust. I think they are the 4th and 9th most common elements, and definitely far more common than carbon.
      - shiroiushi 2y ago
        Yeah, but plants don't normally pull carbon out of the ground; they get it from the air.
        lazide 2y ago
        No reason they couldn’t, if it was advantageous for them though.
        simmo9000 2y ago
        Umm... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biological_carbon_fixation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biological_carbon_fixation.
        lazide 2y ago
        What is your point exactly?
- nakedneuron 2y ago
  Carbon in the form of carbon dioxide as raw material is literally instantly available and the resulting "composite" is lightweight. This is not to say nature always considers recycling beforehand. Nature needed to invent fungi to break up this carbon dump. Carbon era is named thanks to this fact. And it's tempting to think nature "came up" with humankind to make the humongous carbon dump of the carbon era useful once again.
  - digging 2y ago
    Really, you have causation backward. Eg. the supposed Carboniferous Period was an opportunity for something to evolve which consumes wood. Many "problems" get solved by accident in this way, but many also don't - as long as they take place over a long enough timespan. If they happen too quickly, there's not enough time for living things to adapt. Currently there is an opportunity for an industrious plastic-eating microbe to hitch a ride in every gut on the planet, deciding the winners and losers of the plastiferous period. All that means, though, is that there's a chance such a creature could appear and take advantage, not that it will happen. (Yes I know plastic-eaters have been discovered, but I'm not aware of any having an effect on the fitness of other creatures.)
- kevin_thibedeau 2y ago
  Titanium is more abundant than nickel and New Caledonia's plants have evolved to deal with the latter in unique ways.
adrian_b 2y ago
In any stellar system like ours, where oxygen is the most abundant element, except for the hydrogen and helium that are contained mostly in the star and in the big planets, almost all metals are completely oxidized (with the exception of the siderophile elements submerged into the cores of the planets, because of their great density) and the amount of metallic substances with a natural origin that can be found in the accessible surface layers of the planets is negligible. Reducing the oxidized metals requires much more energy than reducing non-metals like carbon, nitrogen and sulfur (which is what the living beings do to make their structural materials), and preventing the reduced metals to spontaneously become oxidized again is very difficult. This is why no living beings have succeeded to use metallic materials before the humans, and the latter have succeeded to do this only after mastering the fire, which is the other thing that the non-human living beings have not succeeded to do. There exists a second class of stellar systems, where there is more carbon than oxygen, so almost all oxygen remains bound in carbon oxides, while most other elements are present as carbides, instead of oxides, like in the Solar System. These are much more rare than the stellar systems of the Solar System type and in such stellar systems the chemical composition of the planets would be extremely different from the planets of the Solar System. Because there is no detailed information about such a stellar system (due to their distance), there is very little knowledge about whether there would be conditions in such a system for the appearance of life and how could that evolve. If there is any chance for primitive life forms to use metals in their structures, that would happen only in such stellar systems.
- airstrike 2y ago
  The only possible way this comment could be more satisfying to read would be if it ended with "Until now." before the camera pans to a strange planet and the movie begins
  - adrian_b 2y ago
    An interesting fact is that while almost all solid objects that exist in the Solar System have their origin in the condensation of gases from which the Solar System has formed, there exist also the so-called pre-solar grains. The pre-solar grains are microscopic crystals, i.e. particles of dust, which have come to the Solar System as already solid grains of dust, from other stellar systems, typically having been propelled by stellar explosions, e.g. those of supernovae. Such pre-solar grains have been incorporated in the many small bodies that have been condensed from gases along with the bigger asteroids and planets at the formation of the Solar System. Some of those small bodies have fallen on Earth as meteorites (the so-called "chondrites"). When such meteorites have been analyzed carefully, pre-solar grains have been recovered. They can usually be easily distinguished from the local objects, by having very different isotopic compositions. Among the pre-solar grains, there are many that have come from stellar systems of the second kind, with more carbon than oxygen. Such grains, instead of being silicates, i.e. the most frequent minerals in the stellar systems of the Solar type, have chemical compositions that are unusual for the minerals of the planets of the Solar System, like diamond, graphite, silicon carbide or nitride, titanium carbide or nitride, metal grains of either platinum-group metals or iron-group metals, other carbides, nitrides, sulfides, silicides or titanides. For now, this is the only direct evidence of the second class of stellar systems, beyond the spectroscopic observations of various stars, which provide estimations for the relative abundance of carbon and oxygen in those stellar systems. While we have some idea about what kind of minerals might be the most abundant in such stellar systems at the time of their initial condensation from gases, I am not aware of any attempt to simulate the possible internal structure for big planets in such stellar systems, in order to determine whether in such planets there could exist some analogs of the volcanism and hydrothermal vents that can provide the energy flux necessary for the appearance of life in the planets of the terrestrial type.

sph 2y ago

> Even more amazing: Trees 3D print themselves out of carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide and low-entropy energy in the form of solar light.