Thursday, December 3, 2009

Emerging Space Monarchs

Check out the video of the first butterfly floating around, hanging on to its chrysalis, yet still fully able to weightlessly inflate its wings. Link here.

And below are the pupating three astropillars, floating around. One is detached from its spot, another pupated while free and easy.

5 comments:

Town Mouse said...

That's pretty impressive. I was sure they'd need gravity to do all this becoming a butterfly stuff.

Pam said...

Gravity is over-rated, I'm guessing...especially for creatures with short growth/life stages.

Benjamin Vogt said...

Yeah, I guess for such organisms gravity isn't a necessary force to grow. I wonder if they will just "euthanize" them by tossing them out the airlock.

Pam said...

Or maybe it'll be more dramatic, less a toss, than with all of them lined up, in Starfleet uniforms (oops, wait, that's a MOVIE) and they'll be shot out in a lovely black metallic pod, only to land in some lush place where they will take over, grow to 10,000,000 times their normal size (due to the effect of lack of gravity on the arrangement of their genome) and so there will be a sequel...

Benjamin Vogt said...

That'd be so cool! Or maybe they adapt to the vacuum, and become butterflies that live in space--that's Star Trek TNG. God speed, gentle monarchs.