Even If Aliens Really Exist, They Should Be Purple, Not Green

When we say “alien”, the first color that comes to our mind is undoubtedly green. There are some reasons why we think so, but advancing science, it might actually be purple says.

Of course, it’s not just about color or it’s not that simple. We will get down to bacteria We will go on a space journey.

Extraterrestrial life may contain purple bacteria, according to astronomers who recorded the chemical structure specific to purple-colored organisms.

These microbes, which are estimated to have lived in the earliest periods of our planet’s history, can survive and thrive under such a variety of conditions that on different planets They might even be. Current research into alien life has generally focused on searching for green pigments. We will explain why in a moment.

Researchers who wanted to study the chemical structure of purple organisms collected data from different places. They grew purple bacteria and they modeled purple bacteria that dominate various Earth-sized planets, including terrestrial rocky spheres like our Earth.

What distinguishes these bacteria from others is not only their color but also the type of energy they feed on. They perform photosynthesis with heat and infrared. This shows that their biopigments are on the very different side of what we are used to looking for.

We define the Earth with the color green.

cyanobacteria

The only planet we know life on is Earth, and so as we look for life on other planets We use the Earth as reference. Chlorophyll, which most organisms use to benefit from sunlight, is green pigmented.

However, about 2.4 billion years ago, the first species known to photosynthesize tiny, blue-green algae called “cyanobacteria” This wasn’t the case until it started using chlorophyll to use sunlight and carbon dioxide for metabolic energy, releasing oxygen as a byproduct.

Before green there was purple.

Previously, microorganisms produced metabolic energy from sunlight using a purple pigmented molecule called retinal, whose origin may have predated chlorophyll. If retinal exists on other distant worlds, the molecule’s unique properties could be predicted in the future. by space-based telescope noticeable!

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