>>14414539interesting... but aren't the surface continents/cratons above sea level because they are less dense than oceanic crust?
>>14414580where would the mass for this be coming from? there's always the matter accreted by gravitation but that seems way too insufficient (it's something like ~100 tons per year, which would require 175 million years to accumulate mass equivalent to a single Mt. Everest)
>>14414719>>14414877these read like AI chatbots, complete lack of contextual awareness
>>14415005doesn't seem fringe to me, just a normal hypothesis (not enough investment in not believing it to be possible for it to get labeled as "fringe"; the word is an epistemological slur)
as i understand it, retinal is simpler chemically, but less efficient than chlorophyll - and you can get chlorophyll by modifying retinal. that gives a clear evolutionary pathway for photosynthetic evolution that doesn't require the evolution of a complex molecule like chlorophyll first.
