NASA: National Aeronautics and Space Administration

  1. Content with the tag: “photosynthesis

  2. Planetary Surface and Interior Models and Super Earths

    ROADMAP OBJECTIVES: 1.1, 1.2, 4.1, 5.2, 6.1, 7.2

    The Virtual Planetary Laboratory – The Life Modules - Photosynthesis

    ROADMAP OBJECTIVES: 5.1, 6.1, 6.2, 7.2
  3. New Evidence for an Earlier Origin of Oxygenic Photosynthesis


    Outcroppings of ancient ocean sediments show deposits of the iron oxide, hematite. CREDIT: HIROSHI OHMOTO

    NAI’s Archean Biosphere Drilling Project supported the acquisition of pristine drill core samples obtained from ancient rocks in Western Australia. New results from those studies, published in the current issue of Nature Geoscience, point toward an earlier start for oxygenic photosynthesis on the early Earth than previously thought.

    An international team of researchers, including members of NAI’s Penn State Team, found hematite crystals and associated minerals preserved in a jasper formation within ancient marine sedimentary rocks. Their interpretation is that the rocks formed in an oxygenated water body 3.46 billion years ago. Because the findings imply the presence...

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  4. The Color of Alien Plants


    Scientific American April 2008

    The April 2008 issue of Scientific American features an article by Nancy Kiang of NAI’s Virtual Planetary Laboratory Team based on her studies predicting the colors of plants on other worlds. The studies, published in Astrobiology in February 2007, consider that as photosynthesis on Earth produces the primary signatures of life that can be detected astronomically at the global scale, a strong focus of the search for extrasolar life will be photosynthesis, particularly photosynthesis that has evolved with a different parent star. Depending on the nature...

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    Source: [Scientific American]

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