Alien Plants May Thrive on Many Wavelengths of Light

Aaron L. Gronstal, Astrobiology Magazine Contributor

Date: 16 March 2012 Time: 07:00 AM ET

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Different types of stars have different temperatures and lifetimes. Cooler red M-class stars live a long time, while hotter blue A-class stars have relatively brief lives. These four pictures are actually four different views of our own star, the sun. Each false-color view highlights atomic emission in different temperature regimes of the upper solar atmosphere. Yellow is 2 million Kelvin, green is 1.5 million K, blue is 1 million K, and red is 60 to 80 thousand K. CREDIT: Stereo Project/NASA View full size image

Everyone knows that we as humans literally owe the air we breathe to the greenery around us. As school children we learned that plants (as well as algae and cyanobacteria) perform the all-important biological "magic trick" known as photosynthesis, which helps generate the atmospheric oxygen we take in with every breath.
Plants, algae and cyanobacteria alter our planet in a way that only life can: they use photosynthesis to completely change the composition of the Earth's atmosphere. Since the days when dust devils on Mars were suspected to be the seasonal variation of vegetation, photosynthesis has been considered a key to identifying the presence of life on other planets.

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