In article <408c3d0f$1@news.povray.org>, Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> 
wrote:

> Haven't you heard of launching lasers and light sails? :-) Anyway, you 
> *can* hold energy from absobed light indefinitely. That's what 
> photosynthesis does.

But you can't continue to accumulate it indefinitely...for example, if 
the stored energy were never used, plants would eventually run out of 
CO2 and H20 to build the sugars which they store the energy in. You will 
eventually reach some equilibrium where total input == total output. 
However, if albedo includes radiation as well as reflection, then 
objects like suns and gas giants have albedos greater than 1.

Also, albedo could be used to refer specifically to visible light...in 
which case it would actually be possible for the reflective albedo to be 
greater than 100%, due to fluorescent materials on the surface. 
Extremely unlikely on a dead rock, though a planet with a large amount 
of fluorescent plant life could do it naturally.

-- 
Christopher James Huff <cja### [at] earthlinknet>
http://home.earthlink.net/~cjameshuff/
POV-Ray TAG: <chr### [at] tagpovrayorg>
http://tag.povray.org/

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