Among all the hues found in rocks, plants and flowers, or in the fur, feathers, scales and skin of animals, blue is surprisingly scarce.
When you look up at the blue sky overhead or gaze across the seemingly endless expanse of a blue ocean, you might think that the color blue is common in nature.
When we look at a colorful object, such as a sparkling sapphire or a vibrant hydrangea bloom,"the object is absorbing some of the white light that falls onto it; because it's absorbing some of the light, the rest of the light that's reflected has a color," science writer Kai Kupferschmidt, author of"Blue: In Search of Nature's Rarest Color " , told Live Science.
Generating such molecules — which are large and complex — is difficult for plants to do, which is why blue flowers are produced by fewer than 10% of the world's nearly 300,000 flowering plant species.
"But it takes a lot of work to make this blue, and so the other question becomes: What are the evolutionary reasons to make blue? What's the incentive?" Kupferschmidt said."The fascinating thing when you dive into these animal worlds is always, who's the recipient of this message and can they see the blue?"
The earliest use of blue dye dates to about 6,000 years ago in Peru, and the ancient Egyptians combined silica, calcium oxide and copper oxide to create a long-lasting blue pigment known as irtyu for decorating statues, researchers reported Jan. 15 in the journal Frontiers in Plant Science. Ultramarine, a vivid blue pigment ground from lapis lazuli, was as precious as gold in medieval Europe, and was reserved primarily for illustrating illuminated manuscripts.
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