Nature Plants: Newton knew first, it transpires
Nature Plants
February 3, 2015
Sir Isaac Newton, renowned for his contributions to physics and mathematics, may have come up with a theory to explain the ascent of water in plants over 200 years before botanists, writes David Beerling in a Comment published online this week in Nature Plants.
How water moves up through plants, against the force of gravity, is explained by the widely accepted cohesion-tension theory, first proposed by botanists in 1895. According to this theory, evaporation at the leaf surface pulls water up through the plant in continuous columns.
Newton recorded his thoughts on the upwards movement of sap in trees in one of his undergraduate notebooks sometime in the early 1660s. In line with the cohesion-tension theory, he appears to describe how energy from the Sun causes sap to continually rise up through trees via ‘pores’ in the stem.
Beerling notes, “It should come as little surprise that Newton’s genius was capable of presciently imagining the germ of an idea explaining the ascent of sap in plants some two centuries before botanists came up with it for themselves.”
doi: 10.1038/nplants.2015.5
Research highlights
-
Nov 26
Evolution: Ancient bird sticks its big beak into the evolutionary recordNature
-
Nov 25
Zoology: Mineral armour discovered in insectsNature Communications
-
Nov 24
Neuroscience: Social isolation evokes craving responses in the human brainNature Neuroscience
-
Nov 20
Archaeology: Transition from tribal to feudal living in 14th century impacted local ecosystemsScientific Reports
-
Nov 18
Ecology: Migration associated with faster pace of lifeNature Communications
-
Nov 17
Gene therapy: Concerns for the long-term safety of AAV gene therapyNature Biotechnology
