Trees Come 'From Out Of The Air' Says Nobel Laureate Richard
Feynman. Really? Originally published on Tue September 25, 2012
4:05 pm Ask one of the greatest scientists of the 20th century a
simple question, and his answer makes me go, "What? What did he
just say?" The question was: Where do trees come from? Meaning,
when you see a tree, a big, tall, heavy one, and you wonder
where did it get its mass, its thick trunk, its branches — the
instinctive answer would be from the soil below, plus a little
water (and, in some mysterious way, sunshine), right? Nope, says
the late Nobel laureate Richard Feynman, sitting in an easy
chair, thinking out loud in a You Tube video clip from 1983:
"People look at a tree and think it comes out of the ground,
that plants grow out of the ground, " he says, but "if you ask,
where does the substance [of the tree] come from? You find out
... trees come out of the air!" From the air? Trees are hard,
branchy, heavy, covered with bark. They don't precipitate out of
air. This sounds li