Do you want to see a
program that says, “dirt, assemble yourself to a new laptop, mine just broke
down”? Look outside. Don’t dream about
the future, look outside. Can you see a green leaf?
Almost all plants
have tiny little green cells that perform an amazing chemical process: a tiny
nano-factory absorbs CO2 molecules from the air. At the same time water
molecules travel upwards, apparently defying the laws of gravity, are then split
by an amazing process, and by adding the hydrogen of the water molecules the
program converts the CO2 molecules in an astonishingly effective way into a pretty
complicated new substance, a carbohydrate, glucose. Like sugar as found in
sugar cane for example. Six molecules
of water plus six molecules of carbon dioxide produce one molecule of sugar
plus six molecules of oxygen. The leftover oxygen is released into the
atmosphere to maintain the atmospheric balance. Sounds easy, but just look it
up and try to understand it, ha!
All plants live from
this substance in their sap. This incredible smart program even uses solar
energy to produce what is the basis for life on Earth: carbohydrates. Photosynthesis
is the source of the carbon in all the organic compounds within organisms'
bodies. Green.exe controls the production of the source of all organic matter.
A microscopic
factory that converts fizzy water into sugar! All plants are build with carbohydrates,
life on Earth as well as in the sea is based on it. Here is where the food
chain begins. Cows turn grass into milk and steak. Bugs eat it, and chickens
turn the bugs into eggs and so on. Microscopic animals in the sea, zooplankton,
eat microscopic plants in the sea, phytoplankton, and tiny fish eat the tiny
animals, and the big fish eat the small fish, and we buy tuna in the supermarket.
Basically all animals live directly or indirectly from plants, so do we.
Whether we eat lettuce or hamburgers, at the other end of the food chain was
something based on photosynthesis.
But not only that. Time,
pressure and temperature turn vegetation into coal and oil. Modern life
runs on these results of photosynthesis. Without photosynthesis we’d have no
cars, no factories, no furniture, almost no electricity. Photosynthesis is the basic
program that enables life: embedded in a tiny green cell one of the most
amazing programs ever written produces the food and fuel that makes life on
Earth possible.
The actual process
of photosynthesis is of course much more complex than that, it involves lots of
highly complex chemicals that are activated by certain wavelengths of the sun’s
rays. If you look up photosynthesis on the internet you will find out that this
most basic element of nature that makes the most “primitive” plants tick is
nothing but an incredibly complicated sophisticated piece of high tech art. You will see
that it takes much more than just intelligence to write it. Just to build that
machine you have to be quite an engineer. But the most amazing thing is the
program itself. A program that tells this machinery to kind of put itself together
by itself, from the raw material found in dirt. In
simple words it says: “Dirt and water, assemble a machine that produces glucose!”
This was considered magic until recently. Nowadays everybody knows programs like
Skype that say: “Face of grandmother, appear on my computer screen and let me
hear her talk to me!” Yet I want to see a program that says: “Dirt, assemble yourself
to a new laptop, mine just broke down!”
What a
program! By the way, its color green seems to be the trademark of its designer.
Wherever you see life, you see green, to remind you of the One who wrote the
most wonderful program ever imagined: Life. Enjoy it. Make the most out of it.
In case you get stuck, just press the help button. He’ll show you what to do.
By FG Helmke
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