Where did the plant come from?

If you pushed some seeds from a tomato pulp into a pot of soil; kept it in the Sun and lightly watered it everyday; soon enough, a tomato plant would start growing.

Where did the plant come from? How did the stem, branches, leaves, fruits get build? To build anything, you need raw material. Where does the plant get its raw material?

First Guess: The soil became the plant.
You can see if this is true. Keep weighing the pot everyday. If the soil is becoming the plant, then the weight of the potted plant should remain the same. However, the potted plant keeps getting heavier as the plant keeps getting bigger, it must be sucking the mass from somewhere else. Besides, farms never lose soil after repeated harvests. Wrong Answer.

Second Guess: The water became the plant.
Two problems with this. First, the plant, like all life forms, is carbon based. There is no carbon in the water. Second, it doesn’t absorb as much water as the plant weights. You can confirm this if you are carefully measure the amount of water you give to the plant. Wrong answer.

Once you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.
– Sherlock Holmes

The Correct Answer : The air became the plant. The air has carbon dioxide. The plant absorbs carbon dioxide, uses the energy from the Sun to release oxygen back into the atmosphere and builds itself up into a larger plant.

Let that sink in, it is really a fascinating phenomenon. A seed, sown in the soil, starts sucking carbon from the air and using the sunlight, starts to build itself into any and every tasty fruit and vegetable that you have ever eaten. Your Alphonso mango, the french grapes, the avocado from Chile. They were all built from thin air.

– Farhan

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