Worlds With Two Suns May Sport Black Plants

sciencehabit writes "If Tatooine were real, it would probably be filled with black plants and trees. A new study finds that, to maximize energy absorption for photosynthesis, the flora on worlds that orbit two suns may have evolved to use one or more types of light-absorbing pigments that absorb across a broad range of wavelengths, which would tend to make the plant appear black or gray. Although the idea that planets that could host such life may sound far-fetched, such orbs may not be so rare: The team's computer simulations indicate that Earth-like planets can exist in several types of stable orbits in multistar systems. More than one-fourth of the sunlike stars in our galaxy and about half of the long-lived but dim, cool stars called red dwarfs are found in solar systems containing two or more stars, the researchers note."

Comments

Black Pants

[StikyPad]

Anyone else read this as "Worlds With Two Suns May Sport Black Pants?"

Re:For more than just two sun solor systems.

[camperdave]

The sky is blue because if it were white, we couldn't see the clouds.

Re:Planets around two suns probably would be lifel

[H0p313ss]

The problem is that most of the stable orbits for a planet in a binary system result in very hot temperatures for part of it's orbit and freezing for the rest of the orbit.

So a lot like Canada then?