(urth) Today, a Sea Slug. Tomorrow, ... ?

[Jeff Wilson]

On 1/17/2010 10:14 PM, Jerry Friedman wrote:
> --- On Sun, 1/17/10, Jeff Wilson<jwilson at io.com>  wrote:
>>> Severian's friend the Green Man
>> always seemed quite plausible to me. I
>>> hadn't realized just how plausible. Apparently a sea
>> slug has
>>> incorporate algae genes into its genome and produces
>> and uses
>>> chlorophyll inside its body:
>>>
>>> http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/53496/title/Sea_slug_steals_genes_for_greens,_makes_chlorophyll_like_a_plan
>
> That's pretty amazing, if it's confirmed.

Did you see the thing last year? A predator microbe that becomes 
photosynthetic if it eats this other microbe, then fissions into the 
original separate microbes again?

>> There's still a question of him being able to intercept
>> enough sunlight to
>> be more active than a slug. A man-sized silhouette in
>> Earthly conditions
>> intercepts less than 100 calories worth of sunlight a day.
>
> Is that with perfect efficiency?  Gosh, are you seriously
> telling me to do the calculation?  Half a square meter in
> sunbathing position, 1 kilowatt, 8 hours, that's 14,400
> kJ or about 3400 big calories.  You're assuming something
> like present photosynthetic efficiency.

He said it was pond scum, so I presume it was something vaguely like 
pond scum.

>>  From the Green
>> Man's sunny smile, his people apparently still have
>> humanlike teeth, so
>> presumably they can eat a variety of food to make up the
>> deficit, but I'm
>> not sure if reducing your food needs by 1/30 is worth the
>> hassle.
>
> The sun could be brighter in his time than ours, and genetic
> engineering could have improved the efficiency of
> photosynthesis and that of metabolism.

maybe, but 30x as efficient?

-- 
Jeff Wilson - jwilson at io.com
IEEE Student Chapter Blog at
< http://ieeetamut.org >