Humans With Green Skin Could Live Off Sunlight.

Sounds ludicrous at first, I know, but a sea slug has managed to do just that. To quote Frank Ryan from his excellent groundbreaking book 'Virolution':

Has anyone read his fascinating book on evolution?

 

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No, nor do I intend to read, but I post to note my doubts about the thread title's assertion.

When energy conversion is taken into consideration, I think that even nude in the tropics you could not even meet your energy requirements and of course you would still need to injest material to replace dying cells etc.

To increase the surface to volume ratio, these green "people" need to evolve to a more pancake shape.

 

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Well, you've just made She-Hulk very happy--it should save her tens of thousand of dollars in food bills, being able to live on sunlight from now on...

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Well, it’s not green pigment per se that allows an organism to perform photosynthesis. Chlorophyll is a green pigment, but not all green pigments are photosynthetic like chlorophyll.

Why, exactly, is it “groundbreaking”?

I’ve had a look at the synopsis. It appears to be a ‘popular science’ book focusing on evolution. Whilst it might be a terrific read, it’s hardly breaking new ground. Science popularizers and their books have been around for quite a while.

 

Our skin is already an organ, and already uses sunlight, to make vitamin D. So it would have a hard time using solar energy to power two reactions.

Also, photosynthesis only produces simple carbohyrdates. It's already been pointed out that we need a far wider variety in our diet, metals for instance, to repair ourselves.

Also, we use up about 100w of energy, while conscious. That's a lot to get from solar power, and we'd have to store it for when the sun set. IE, we cannot run solely on solar power.

So, yet again, you display a lack of thought in your postulations, taking a little fact far too far.

 

Chloroplasts do the photosynthesising. There's a sea slug that has managed to acquire DNA so that the green food that it eats has migrated under its skin to turn it green and gain energy from sunlight! The author makes the claim that viruses are able to transfer DNA from one organism to another. This is in direct contrast to the Darwinian view that genetic mutation is the only mechanism for natural selection. It's big stuff.

 

What makes you think humans have a large enough exposed surface area to make this work (not that it's not nonsense in the first place..) ?

 

Oh my.. !!! :crazy:

:wallbang:
:facepalm:

 

I wasn't being totally serious. It's the concept in general..

You got a problem with that statement? I'll get the exact quote from the book, if you wish. Or do you think you're more of an expert than Frank Ryan?

 

Apparently I am. Teach yourself.

 

Viruses don't generally insert DNA into your sperm or eggs, so any genetic changes that you acquired from them wouldn't be passed on.

 

Read the book. I'm not the expert, by a long shot. I'll try and get an answer for that tomorrow.

 

What, you did read the book.. answer it now :shrug:

 

A ballpark figure for human energy consumption is 100W. Adults have about 2 square meters of skin, and the average solar flux on the earth's surface is about 160W/m^2. So theoretically you could get more than enough energy (assuming you were outside all the time and were naked). But I believe even the best photosynthesizing organisms are only able to achieve something like 10% light-to-chemical energy efficiency, so in practice you would probably have a very hard time coming up with a photosystem that was efficient enough.

 

You are overlooking one thing, even if we were completely flattened, at most half of our surface area would be sunlit. And that's if you keep an optimum angle to the sun at all times.

 

I'm no biologist or geneticist. I found it quite hard to follow and skim read most of it. The examples of fish (wrasse) changing sex from female to male is quite memorable though. It's a whole new language, even for biologists I imagine.

 

In that case, this a good place to start: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_selection#Types_of_selection

 

Quote from wiki:

 

Yes, and ?

 

I had a girlfriend with green patches on her skin, the doctor said is was a kind of plant but it was harmless.