Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Giant trees have no trouble pumping water to top branches: new research

news.exeter.ac.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 134 posts

Re: Giant trees have no trouble pumping water to top branches: new research

#71

Post by taneq »

tenuousemphasis wrote: post #26
pulvinar wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The trick for trees is capillaries, which change the equation. The 10 meter limit only applies to larger columns. With capillaries there's a high negative tension that allows evaporation from leaves to pull the xylem sap up 100 meters or more. There's no free lunch here. The Sun drives the evaporation, and if the tree were in a closed system with no solar input, the humidity would eventually get high enough to stop i…

>if the tree were in a closed system with no solar input ... that would be the least of the tree's problems.

It’s like the pop sci fact that if you took all your blood vessels and laid them end to end… you would die.

Re: Giant trees have no trouble pumping water to top branches: new research

#72

Post by card_zero »

karim79 wrote: post #60

I grow marijuana and chillies from time to time. I got good at it. I will say that plants are malleable in untold ways and so I find this article to be unsurprising. Plants will do what they need to do in the end. I've done stuff like co2 bombing, and increasing nutrients to the point to where I get a whole new ecosystem of insects and an entirely new situation. It is such fascinating stuff that it's actually the lif…

There is apparently such a thing as "Computational Botany", where you model virtual plants.

Re: Giant trees have no trouble pumping water to top branches: new research

#73

Post by oersted »

fc417fc802 wrote: post #68
oersted wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds cool but for such experimentation you would want relatively fast experimental iterations to get anywhere, and this would take literal ages. You can play around with growth speed of course but that’s a different question and might be in some ways opposed to achieving height.

I don't think so. You don't have to reach the height limit just to iteratively develop the initial implementation of the pump system. A system that actively moves water would push it out the top so you've got an observable phenomenon to work with.

I’m sure there will be a ton of unexpected complexities that arise only when you are trying to push the limits, like in all engineering domains. And it’s all a highly interconnected system, you cannot expect to dramatically change the water flow without impacting others aspects.

I know it is quite distant, but from my experience in large-scale data engineering, 90% of the time goes in addressing subtle issues that can only be observed hours into a job, the rest of the issues are quickly resolved earlier. I am assuming that such complexities will be so much harder in physical systems, and even more so in biological systems.

Re: Giant trees have no trouble pumping water to top branches: new research

#74

Post by aaron695 »

karim79 wrote: post #60

I grow marijuana and chillies from time to time. I got good at it. I will say that plants are malleable in untold ways and so I find this article to be unsurprising. Plants will do what they need to do in the end. I've done stuff like co2 bombing, and increasing nutrients to the point to where I get a whole new ecosystem of insects and an entirely new situation. It is such fascinating stuff that it's actually the lif…

[dead]

Re: Giant trees have no trouble pumping water to top branches: new research

#76

Post by mountainriver »

karim79 wrote: post #60

I grow marijuana and chillies from time to time. I got good at it. I will say that plants are malleable in untold ways and so I find this article to be unsurprising. Plants will do what they need to do in the end. I've done stuff like co2 bombing, and increasing nutrients to the point to where I get a whole new ecosystem of insects and an entirely new situation. It is such fascinating stuff that it's actually the lif…

With a lot of software getting eaten up I’m increasingly interested in biology. Seems like one of the later frontiers that could have massive benefits, and AI is really well suited to help us understand it.

Re: Giant trees have no trouble pumping water to top branches: new research

#78

Post by alchemism »

card_zero wrote: post #47
vlovich123 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Barbarism was just the ethnic slang Greeks had for non Greeks that Romans then adopted for non Romans. But cultures playing “I’m the best” is not new nor did it require cultural development; othering is a natural part of game theory to make sure your tribe has tighter cohesion against intruders.

Yeah, they were called barbarians because they talked funny. Bar bar barbar bar, they went.

...and if you aren't pronouncing it "Var" you might be one ;-)

Re: Giant trees have no trouble pumping water to top branches: new research

#79

Post by hinkley »

card_zero wrote: post #48
hinkley wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s harder to remove the moss from high up in the tree and there are more risks in doing so. I was never clear on how prevalent this shittery was.

Who wants moss!? Is it luxury moss?

When peeled off the trunk it comes off in sheets, which is a bit harder to accomplish than just creating tufts and blobs of moss.

Re: Giant trees have no trouble pumping water to top branches: new research

#80

Post by karim79 »

mountainriver wrote: post #76
karim79 wrote: post #60

I grow marijuana and chillies from time to time. I got good at it. I will say that plants are malleable in untold ways and so I find this article to be unsurprising. Plants will do what they need to do in the end. I've done stuff like co2 bombing, and increasing nutrients to the point to where I get a whole new ecosystem of insects and an entirely new situation. It is such fascinating stuff that it's actually the lif…

With a lot of software getting eaten up I’m increasingly interested in biology. Seems like one of the later frontiers that could have massive benefits, and AI is really well suited to help us understand it.

True and also, the actual physical contact and results are absolute magic. Maybe we need to create a "computer scientists for botony" forum. I think that has legs.

Botany is great because the results are basically what I'd call magic. It's such beauty (and horror on occasion).

The marriage of CS and botany seems like a match made in heaven and just from writing these comments I've convinced myself that it's probably the most practical way to go forward in life.

Post reply on HN