Speaking of green things and outer space, the grass may not always be more verdant on the other side of the star cluster. So concludes a study at Caltech’s Virtual Planetary Laboratory that was recently published as two papers in Astrobiology. Depending on the range of colors emitted by the local sun, leaves in other hues might be the most efficient at soaking up the available energy. This illustration, by E&S’s own Doug Cummings, was published in the July 2007 issue of Discover.