Scientists are searching for strange plants

On the Orion Arm of the Milky Way, about 93 million miles (150 million kilometers) from the yellow dwarf star it orbits, is a medium-sized rocky planet. On the edge of the vast Southern Ocean lie the gently flowing waters of a pink lagoon. With its snow-white crystalline beaches and 38 times the salt concentration of pickled olives, its only inhabitants live a mysterious, startlingly purple kind of life. These primitive microorganisms certainly look like aliens: they’re not quite bacteria, but they’re not quite like anything else either, able to thrive in alien-like conditions. Completely inhospitable.

This planet is of course Earth, and the lake is located on the southern coast of Western Australia. But the violetHalobacteria“, which helps ensure that the waters of Lake Hillier always remain pink for Barbie Holding clues To find a certain kind of life on farther worlds: alien plants.

Over the past three decades, astronomers have identified 5,528 planets Outside our solar system – a mixture of alien worlds, starting with a world so dark, he is trapped in a world Eternal night (TrES-2 b), to an evil planet orbiting a planet Undead star (PSR B1257+12 B). In the not too distant future, astronomers are confident that – if there is indeed life outside Earth – they will be able to discover the planet. An unambiguous signature For extraterrestrial photosynthesis.

Exotic plants are expected to be exactly as you imagine: forests Black trees Under a sky with many suns; The growth of strange bushes that all lean in one direction, In the middle of a perpetual sunset; Carnivorous Saplings that can swallow other alien life forms whole.

Planet of plants

Whether aliens resemble advanced jellyfish creatures, three-headed beetles, or are so alien that they defy the imagination, there are some rules to their biology established by physics. One thing is certain: to resist the irrepressible force of entropy—which wants to disintegrate living organisms, atom by atom—they will need an energy source. There is only Three known methods To extract this resource from the environment. Aliens can obtain it directly, by trapping it from sunlight, as plants do, or by using inorganic chemicals, as bacteria found in hydrothermal vents do. Alternatively, they could take a shortcut, and simply devour another organism that has already done one of these things, as animals do.