Reply to comment

  Back from our adventures in space we came across this foreign planetary organism. When we arrived on Planet Farther, we were immediately struck by the amount of green we observed in the landscape. We saw many green structures, some larger brown structures with green appendages, and some soft green ground covering. We began our investigation in an area where the smaller green structures were heavily concentrated. There were a lot of them, many of them had all of the same characteristics and some were slightly different from each other. The smaller ones were lighter in color, and the larger ones were darker. Each individual had many different appendages of different sizes and sometimes different colors. In instances mentioned above when some of these structures were slightly different from one another, it was the shape of these appendages that differed. We developed a couple of ideas about life on this planet based on these findings. One idea that became the basis for the rest of our investigation is that we believe that on this planet green = life. We think this because we believed that we saw evidence of growth in these specimen, and we also saw what we believed to be dead specimen, as they were dry, not green (orange, brown, yellow, and red), and not connected to anything. The smaller ones were a lighter green and the larger a darker green, we believe that the lighter color of green indicated a younger specimen because it was smaller. Another thought we had about a requirement for life on this planet was being connected to the ground, because all of the specimens that we found that were green and showed evidence of growth were also connected to the ground. Even the larger brown structures were connected to the ground and were tinted green on the outside. There were smaller versions of these as well, that seemed to grow out of the larger structures. They were thinner and smaller overall, and also a lighter color and more green. We thought that these were "baby" versions of the larger structures, this being evidence of reproduction and therefore, we said, life. When we looked at the "ground covering" again, we decided that according to our criteria it too was life.

Taking all of this into account, we developed three different theories, a) that all of these organisms are seperate individuals, b) that the entire "planet" is in fact one single living organism, and c) a combination of a and b, that there are many smaller organisms growing on one larger organism (that some of the structures are part of one individual while others are separate organisms). Our basis for theory b was that all of the green things are connected to the "ground," and that they might perhaps all just be different parts of one organism. We didn't come to a conclusion about which theory is more plausible, but we are leaning towards theory c.

By Claire Jensen and Keshia Koech