Original version From This story Appeared in Quanta Magazine.
Most life engines work with sunlight. Photons are filtered through the atmosphere and are eagerly absorbed by light organisms such as plants and algae. Through photosynthesis, power particles are a cellular reaction that produces chemical energy (in the form of sugars), which is then transmitted in a complex dance of vegetarians, hunters, scavings, decomposters and more around the food network.
On a bright and sunny day, there are many photons that you can go around. But what happens in dim light? Biologists have long been curious about how a light photosynthesis can be run – or several photons need to enter, and how fast, photoconticular cellular machines for processing carbon dioxide to oxygen and energy. The at least theoretical calculations of about 0.01 micromol per square meter or less than one hundred thousand of light have suggested a sunny day.
For decades, this was theoretical calculation due to the problems of studying photosynthesis in low light. No one can confirm it in this area, though there are many places on earth where light is hard to reach. For example, every winter in the North Pole, the sun, hidden by the slope of the Earth, disappears for months. The snow meter of the sea ice blankets and blocks the inlet light and places the cold ocean under it as dark as the tomb. There, biologists assumed that the photosynthetic algae that live for the water and ice season waiting for the return of heat and light.
“People from the polar nights thought that there was a very small life, and everything was in the hibernation and waiting for the next spring,” said Clara Happe, a biogymal at the Alfred Wegner Institute in Germany. “But really, people had never looked at it.”
In the winter of 2020, Happeh lived for months that on a frozen ship in an ice ice, through the polar night, to study photosynthesis limitations in the dark. His recent study of nature’s communication from the growth and reproduction of light at or near the minimum theoretical – lower than previously observed in nature was growth and reproduction.
This study shows that in some of the coldest and darkest places on earth, life flourishes with the least quantum of light. “At least some phytoplankton, under some circumstances, may be able to do very useful work in very low light,” said Douglas Campbell, a specialist at Aquatic Photosphere at the University of Mount Alison, Canada, who was not involved in the study. “This is important.”
The power of the dark side
Scientists have traditionally understood the Arctic, which is a place to live in most years. In winter, organisms that can escape cold waters do so. The ones that live live from stored reserves or drown in a silent sleep. Then, when the sun returns, the place returns to life. During the spring blossom, a climbing of photosynthesis and other microbes begins the Arctic ecosystem and annually fuels an annual happiness with hardships, fish, seals, birds, polar bears, whales and more.
Each phytoplankton seemed to be able to start earlier than the competition, which could have a more successful summer. This surprised him exactly when organisms can respond to light return.
