Sure, but the implication was that plant mass comes from the sun. Maybe some negligible fraction of percent is but nowhere near the majority.
The sun’s energy also goes into heat all over the planet. I’m just trying to understand how any of that energy might manifest as mass in a tangible way.
Or maybe it’s just the case that the amount of energy needed to create mass is astronomically minuscule.
🤔 I suppose that’s the principle behind atomic bombs 🤔
tobogganablaze@lemmus.org 2 months ago
It would actually an astronomically large amount. An atomic bomb will turn a very tiny amount of mass into a tremendous amount of energy. And that’s with a nuclear process that is way more efficent then a chemical one like photosynthesis.
But from pure physics standpoint a carbon atom and an O2 molecule will have a teeny-tiny bit less mass then an CO2 molecule (which is why combining or burning them together will release some energy). So doing the reverse and splitting up a CO2 molecule into it’s parts will generate a little bit of mass.
ccunning@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Wow - that’s what I meant. Not sure how I managed to get it backwards.
And to think I fretted so much over using “astronomically” and “minuscule” together 🤪