No, of course not, the last dye to try would be any kind of chlorophyll,
because it is very sensitive to oxygen and light when isolated from
living cells.
Moreover every silicon cell has its optical maximum in the region
of near infrared. No chlorophyll is needed to achieve that.
Georg

Torbjörn Larsson, you seem to have a good head for this. Thoughts?

EM antennas coupled to chemical metabolism

Oh, and new research seems to confirm a long held suspicion of some: these natural light absorbers are quantum coupled to the rest of the molecule system. (Because such a model is tested well by predicting the antenna dynamics.)

Apparently the “Q” coupling [slight pun, since traditional high Q value resonators are good resonators] is both energy and time efficient; instead of EM energy being rattling about and wasted because of bad impedance matching the quantum system moves it without very little loss in energy and time further away to do chemical work.

IIRC it is a form of quantum coherent container coupling, one can make an analogy of a bath tub sloshing over and the slosh captured timely. In a conventional impedance coupled system the tub would keep sloshing many times from the “back slosh” before settling.

This speedy coupling releases the antenna quicker and so increases its efficiency in two ways simultaneously.

Efficient little piece of biochemical machinery function evolution has stumbled on and perfected!

But very strange is that gap in the green of the “normal” chlorophylls :
what is this good for?

AFAIU plant photosynthesis uses a two photon metabolism to extract energy, one energetic blue photon and the remaining sufficient as red. In this way plants uses infalling light more efficiently.

thermosynthesis

Right, but the citation shows that it is the oxygenic metabolism that is surprising. It all depends on how the chlorophyll system extracts energy, doesn’t it?

IIRC people didn’t think you could utilize less energetic photons in the standard way. It would be interesting to know how it does its trick!

Near infrared correlates to a temperature above 1000 °C!

So? The sun surface temperature is way above that, it emits photons in a ~ 6000 K roughly black body distribution. The 465 nm photon is from a ~ 6200 K peak black body emitter, the 697 nm from a ~ 4200 K peak bbe, 706 nm from a ~ 4100 K peak bbe.

Granted the atmosphere filters many of them out (which is why we see in the more pervasive visible light that the atmospheric windows let in), but there are IR photons left, especially these associated with the visible window. Don’t mistake our adaptations wavelength sensitivity for the actual windowed wavelengths.

As for how the cells extract the incipient photon energy, well that _is_ the trick. But it isn’t dependent on thermal processes as such, chlorophylls are EM antennas coupled to chemical metabolism. The newly discovered trait should be a phylogenetically related variant of that.

This is nonsense! Near infrared correlates to a temperature
above 1000 °C!
Regards
Georg

It reflects the near infrared as well, a very unique feature compared
to most other dyes and pigments. (making plants bright in infrared
night vision gadgets)
What about reflection in this new chlorophyll?
But very strange is that gap in the green of the “normal” chlorophylls :
what is this good for?
Making use of the green light would be easier than using red or infrared.
(after You mastered the use of blue_green)
Georg