On Fri, Nov 7, 2014 at 5:50 PM, <[email protected]> wrote:
> > photosynthesis in this universe always finds the most efficient > path where there are many others. > That is incorrect. Using natural sunlight the maximum theoretical efficiency in turning water and CO2 into glucose and free oxygen (photosynthesis) is 11%. For real plants the specific biochemical steps used varies according to species and so the efficiency ranges from 3 to 6%, nowhere near the maximum. But this shouldn't be surprising, Evolution never finds the perfect solution to a problem because it doesn't need to, it just needs to find a solution that's better than the competition. By the way, typical solar cells are about 20% efficient, and some very exotic (and very expensive) ones can reach 40%. Which just goes to show that human intelligent design beats the hell out of random mutation and natural selection even though it had 4 billion years to work on the problem and we've only been working on it for a decade or two. John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
