Photosynthesis

This is something we all learn in primary school. Green plants absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and with water they absorb from the soil via their roots, they use sunlight to convert these 3 items into sugars and release oxygen. We need both the oxygen and the sugars to live. It is something we all take for granted because it is so ubiquitous.

But last night I was reading a book on the origins of life and there was a chapter on photosynthesis. Then I realized how complex this process actually is.  It has baffled scientists over the years who have been trying to understand this process and work out the exact manner by which this is done. Even today, the detailed process by which sugars are created from sunlight, water and carbon dioxide with the release of oxygen is not understood. Much work has been done in this field because if this process can be relicated, then we can set up factories to make sugars and do the conversion ourselves without having to rely on living plants and trees to sustain humans.

But photosynthesis was essential for the creation of life as we know it because without sufficient oxygen we may not exist. Without sugars we will also die, albeit a bit later. And if all the carbon dioxide we exhale is not converted into oxygen, we will also die.

We rely on the sugars created by photosynthesis as our nutrition to live. All the plants, fruits and animals we eat all have consumed the sugars from photosynthesis. These eventually become food for us.

It is incredible to imagine how these green chlorophyll organisms somehow were created early on in the history of earth which led to the oxygenation of our planet and to give rise to life as we know it on land. And the proportion of oxygen in the atmosphere has to be just right because too much oxygen is poisonous and will kill us off. Green plants and trees maintain that balance for us to be able to live.

The more I read I begin to wonder if the creation of humans was purely fortuitous or by some divine stroke. The number of things that had to be there in the right time, place and proportions for life to exist is just mind boggling!