>Organisms that appear blue must absorb very small amounts of energy, while reflecting high-energy blue light. Since penetrating the molecules that are capable of absorbing this energy is a complex process, the color blue is less common than other colors in the natural world.
I’m not a biologist, but these sentences immediately reminded me of reading articles about my company/technology after press briefings and feeling like they butchered a basic concept (or more correctly, I failed to explain it in an accessible way). Like, the sentences are grammatically correct but don’t make technical sense.
You’re not wrong. It appears to be a very garbled technical explanation. Mainly that organisms need to absorb low frequency/energy light while reflecting higher frequency/energy light. I’m guessing that chemically that’s harder to do.
Molecules that appear blue must absorb very small amounts of energy, while reflecting high-energy blue light. Since assembling the molecules that are capable of absorbing this energy is a complex process, the color blue is less common than other colors in the natural world.
- Blue is rare in plants since it means leaving high energy behind.
- Many animals are a color because of there food, and see above.
- Thus, any blue is trickier, and usually done via scattering and mixing rather than a pigment. "The only exception in nature is the obrina olivewing butterfly, which is the only known animal to produce a true blue pigment."
> "The only exception in nature is the obrina olivewing butterfly, which is the only known animal to produce a true blue pigment."
That is a bold claim, but a false one. A few butterfly species share that pigment. Mussels also have other blue pigments based in carothenes that don't depend on iridiscence.
Also, there is a snail that was revered millennia ago for some blue ink that could be extracted from it. Several religions, notably Judaism among them because it is still around today, attach significance to this difficult-to-obtain colour.
Here’s a good answer from SE: https://biology.stackexchange.com/questions/56476/why-are-so... (spoiler: we don’t know). But the second answer speculates that blue light was the most available to the ancestors of current plants (due to properties of Earth’s atmosphere) so they evolved to absorb it.
2) Each strand has an array of flowers which bloom serially => quite long blooming timespan (and damage by bad weather is limited if it affected only the flowers).
3) Bumblebees absolutely love them (this year I put exclusively Phacelia seeds into 1 of my 2 big pots on the balcony, with max seed density, and often there were up to 10 bumblebees at once per pot checking them), and I absolutely love bumblebees (they look clumsy, they're kind of funny + they absolutely ignore me, respectively when they happen to fly in my direction and they notice me they take a turn as soon as their flight envelope allows them to)
4) This might be just random or caused by some other factor like weather/neighbours/whatever, anyway:
since I planted this year Phacelia flowers and the bumblebees started coming I have hardly seen any wasps nor especially hornets (I've seen twice a hornet flying by, but it took a large curve from my balcony - during the same timespan at the other sides of my flat I noticed four times hornets investigating in front of the windows). Last year (without Phacelia/bumblebees) I had a lot more problems with wasps&hornets => maybe wasps & hornets noticed the bumblebees and thought "ah, already taken/busy!" and therefore marked my balcony as a no-go zone?
Fascinating article. But early on I had one question - why is a blue that is made by sunlight hitting hair nanostructures considered a "simulation" thereby differentiating it from color made through sunlight interaction with biochemistry of surfaces and subsurfaces?
To draw that out further, by the same logic we might consider properties of human-made metamaterials also simulations?
I believe all of the colors of butterfly wings, and of all feathered animals are produced in the same way? I've always assumed that "simulation" has a local definition in the study of biological color reproduction, where light interactions with ultra fine structure at the atomic level is the default, or perhaps maybe on the time scale of evolution, the oldest means of reproducing color.
Contrast this witb a much coarser structural phenomenon manifesting at a level much closer to macroscopic is thus considered to be a "cheaper" simulation of that effect, in order to derive its same selective benefits but with less of a radical genetic shift required for the production of the right proteins etc.
The article says "manipulate the light that shines on them that simulates their signature blue look". https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/simulation meaning number 4, "Assuming an appearance which is feigned, or not true.".
I believe what they are trying to communicate (pretty poorly) is that the hairs are not blue as such, but in certain circumstances can manipulate light into the blue-violet spectrum.
Think of it this way: a prism isn't any of the rainbow colors, but can manipulate light into such.
"...once Nakamura succeeded in creating a commercially viable prototype, 3 orders of magnitude (1000 times) brighter than previously successful blue LEDs, Nichia pursued developing the marketable product. The company's gross receipt surged from just over ¥20 billion (≈US$200 million) in 1993 to ¥80 billion (≈US$800 million) by 2001, 60 percent of which was accounted for by sales of blue LED products."
And IIRC, in return for that he got a $180 bonus from his employer, and a bit later, a Nobel prize.
Plants are green(On earth) because they reflect the green color (which the sun spectrum is strongest) because they have probably adapted to better regulate different lightning condition during the day, for this they use two different pigments (chlorophyll a(blue), chlorophyll b(red); or other pairs)
Readit News
I’m not a biologist, but these sentences immediately reminded me of reading articles about my company/technology after press briefings and feeling like they butchered a basic concept (or more correctly, I failed to explain it in an accessible way). Like, the sentences are grammatically correct but don’t make technical sense.
Molecules that appear blue must absorb very small amounts of energy, while reflecting high-energy blue light. Since assembling the molecules that are capable of absorbing this energy is a complex process, the color blue is less common than other colors in the natural world.
Basically:
- Blue is rare in plants since it means leaving high energy behind.
- Many animals are a color because of there food, and see above.
- Thus, any blue is trickier, and usually done via scattering and mixing rather than a pigment. "The only exception in nature is the obrina olivewing butterfly, which is the only known animal to produce a true blue pigment."
That is a bold claim, but a false one. A few butterfly species share that pigment. Mussels also have other blue pigments based in carothenes that don't depend on iridiscence.
[Centaurea cyanus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centaurea_cyanus?wprov=sfla1)
[Digitalis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digitalis?wprov=sfla1)
[Centaurea](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centaurea?wprov=sfla1)
[Scabiosa](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scabiosa?wprov=sfla1)
[Phacelia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phacelia?wprov=sfla1)
and last but not least many varieties of [Campanula](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campanula?wprov=sfla1)
I could offer
[Chicory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicory?wprov=sfla1), [Myosotis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myosotis?wprov=sfla1) and [Borage](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borage?wprov=sfla1)
as replacements ...
They are made to stand out, so it is like they are a purposeful exception to the rule
I am pretty sure that they were referring to the plant itself being blue (like leaves and stems), not the flowers.
Related question is why plants are green: https://biology.stackexchange.com/questions/450/why-do-plant...
1) Seeds easy to find in most stores.
2) Each strand has an array of flowers which bloom serially => quite long blooming timespan (and damage by bad weather is limited if it affected only the flowers).
3) Bumblebees absolutely love them (this year I put exclusively Phacelia seeds into 1 of my 2 big pots on the balcony, with max seed density, and often there were up to 10 bumblebees at once per pot checking them), and I absolutely love bumblebees (they look clumsy, they're kind of funny + they absolutely ignore me, respectively when they happen to fly in my direction and they notice me they take a turn as soon as their flight envelope allows them to)
4) This might be just random or caused by some other factor like weather/neighbours/whatever, anyway:
since I planted this year Phacelia flowers and the bumblebees started coming I have hardly seen any wasps nor especially hornets (I've seen twice a hornet flying by, but it took a large curve from my balcony - during the same timespan at the other sides of my flat I noticed four times hornets investigating in front of the windows). Last year (without Phacelia/bumblebees) I had a lot more problems with wasps&hornets => maybe wasps & hornets noticed the bumblebees and thought "ah, already taken/busy!" and therefore marked my balcony as a no-go zone?
EDIT:
I recommend the app "PlantNet" for Android ( https://play.google.com/store/apps/dev?id=829216199869931637... ) & iOS ( https://apps.apple.com/ch/app/plantnet/id600547573 ): take a picture of your plant/flower and you get the name.
To draw that out further, by the same logic we might consider properties of human-made metamaterials also simulations?
Contrast this witb a much coarser structural phenomenon manifesting at a level much closer to macroscopic is thus considered to be a "cheaper" simulation of that effect, in order to derive its same selective benefits but with less of a radical genetic shift required for the production of the right proteins etc.
I believe what they are trying to communicate (pretty poorly) is that the hairs are not blue as such, but in certain circumstances can manipulate light into the blue-violet spectrum.
Think of it this way: a prism isn't any of the rainbow colors, but can manipulate light into such.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=AF8d72mA41M
And IIRC, in return for that he got a $180 bonus from his employer, and a bit later, a Nobel prize.
Plants are green(On earth) because they reflect the green color (which the sun spectrum is strongest) because they have probably adapted to better regulate different lightning condition during the day, for this they use two different pigments (chlorophyll a(blue), chlorophyll b(red); or other pairs)