Careful. Muskrat might read this and think it’s a good idea to try to waste loads of CO2 emissions manufacturing synthetic trees
They also look amazing, with a stunning variety of forms and foliage.
Yeah, this is a really really neat way of looking at nature that I sometimes thought about. Nature is pretty fucking darn technologically advanced
They have JUST a slight time advantage: over 1.1 billion years. And that’s LESS than ¼ of Terra’s age.
Yup. To put it another way, we’d be hard-pressed to replicate all of that with our current non-tree-based technology track, at even a fraction of the same efficiency. Chlorophyll is basically a miracle-molecule that makes all that possible, and we have yet to engineer anything like it.
I’d think we could probably engineer similarly insanely capable biotech if we were completely reckless, committed a serious fraction of our resources and people, and had infinite Earths to ruin in the process.
I’m not sure how GMO’s are handled, but I’m guessing it’s a quite restrictive on the engineering side and somewhat cautious in implementation.
We are likely a few hundred years away from actually synthesizing a close equivalent and if we do, this one most likely is THE molecule for planet Earth. Other molecules may be suited for other stars and other atmospheres, but clearly chlorophyll won the race of the most efficient simplest molecule to best utilize the resources of our planet.
actually we have solar panels and electrolysis of water, which produces hydrogen, which you can perceive to be H2, which is H-(CH2)0-H, so it’s the simplest (zeroth) hydrocarbon if you will. Not quite glucose, but it’s something.
btw i give H2 the name zen-ane (where zen means zero and -ane means it’s an alcane).
Don’t tell conservatives, they’ll suspect the Jews invented them to like do something or something
Not to make this sound less cool but you forgot to mention the speed.
That being said, there are some ridiculously fast growing plants on this planet.
“wow, cool. Let’s see how people interact with these magical creatures”
They are mowed down faster than they can regrow and are replaced with asphalt. Oh.
“Burn Them!
I do live in a bit of a different part of the globe. It is a losing battle here on side of humans. Trees pop up and every year there are less people around.
I like it here, may it make me a hillbilly on a flat ground or not.
Your part of the globe sounds awesome. I suspect it’s close to my part of the globe.
I have to keep reminding myself that effectively our technology is just a loosely-based, extremely primitive, and extremely inefficient mimicry of shit that started happening on its own billions and billions of years ago across the entire universe and perfectly scales from microscopic to galactic levels.
Well, yeah, because we can’t make that yet. If you describe anything in nature we can’t make with technology as technology then it sounds like science fiction. That’s just tautological!
Replace “machines” with “organisms”.
Self-replicating, solar-powered machines with long life cycles that synthesise carbon dioxide and rainwater into oxygen, sturdy building materials and sometimes edible products, while providing shade, cooling and ground stabilisation.
I think this is a missed trope for solarpunkish scifi: manipulating plants to grow anything. Fabric for clothes growing as bark. Tomatoes with pracetamol in them. Flowers depositing certain minerals it picks up from the ground in them. Stuff like this.
The cotton plant, hemp and flax do grow fabric for clothes, and willow bark contains the active ingredient of Aspirin.
Flowers (Fabaceae) can even pick up nitrogen from the air and deposit it into the ground where it acts as fertilizer.There are even a few textile producing trees, like mulberry, that are even better, because it doesn’t need to be spun and woven. The raw inner bark can be pounded together to form sheets of barkcloth.
Like a factory game but you have to modify plants and animal’s with crispr
Monsantio
Children of time had a lot of this. One factions technology is mostly based on natural processes. Their most complicated computer systems are ant based if I remember well. Great book.
So did the Discworld books!
A setting I’m working on includes engineered plants for construction. Think a tree that can be shaped like a vine, a grow light box strapped to the leader node, the light box changes angles to get the plant to change direction of new growth, forming the main supports to have the floors built on. They’ve also got effectively artificial mycelium cultivated over entire planets that form internet connections and backup power grid, with fruiting bodies that provide solar energy to the system
“Leviathan” by Scott Westerfeld ?
deleted by creator
Went out on a limb for that one.
No reason to bark at them, it has a nice ring to it.
Leaf them bee
I’m rooting for them
Take a bough.
And they’re spread by forgetful squirrels.
I heard that every five years oak trees produce WAY more acorns so that even if squirrels get them all every year, the fifth year they won’t be able to.
With biodegradeable solar panels, even. And tasty ‘fruit’ sometimes, too.
You actually see this kind of shit in tech bro spheres where they describe some “new groundbreaking invention” using terms like this when it’s something we already have, but they’re version is shittier.
Adam Something on Youtube has a saddening amount of videos on this sort of shit.
I was talking to someone the other day who was really gung-ho about carbon capture technology. I listened patiently, and then asked: “You mean like trees?” Which set him off talking about using genetically modified algae for carbon capture, which is a neat idea, I guess, but the impression I got was that there’s just no money in planting more trees so he wasn’t interested in them.
