Living Planet Possible?

Let's say you have a planet pretty similar to Earth. It resembles Earth at around the time life is thought to have begun - except that it's a bit less hostile to life. The atmosphere is mainly carbon dioxide and nitrogen, the oceans have plenty of water, and the tectonic plates are relatively stable. No life has developed yet. All in all, a good place to be.

Now take a seed - never mind how it gets here; you can invoke panspermia if you want - and put it in the middle of a small meadow near a river. The sky opens up, and rain falls, and as the seed, engulfed in the dirt, receives that water, it begins to open up and grow. It slowly stretches out tendrils toward the river, until it has a permanent source of water. It has carbon dioxide in the air, plenty of sunlight, and some organic nutrients and minerals in the soil. And so it grows.

Our little friend resembles an aspen. It slowly grows into a small tree, drinking in nutrients. Eventually, it does something aspen sometimes do: it grows a clonal colony. What appears to be a grove of trees forms, although, contrary to what it might seem like, it is simply one organism (like the Pando grove). Its root system connects all the trees, and they are genetically identical.

Imagine the colony spreads. It couldn't spread too far north or south, because plants are really only fit for a single biome, and adaptations in a single tree would mean that tree has become a different creature.. But it can spread across the globe, eventually becoming part of an unfinished ring. If the continents of the planet are all connected in just the right way, it could actually fully encircle the planet. This world is now dominated by this organism. Thus, you have an incomplete version of Mogo.

There are some obvious limitations (I already mentioned that it would have a limited range). One is that the plant would have to deal with the fact that the atmosphere of the planet would be becoming increasingly "polluted" with oxygen, which would leave less carbon dioxide for it to feast on. Perhaps we can avoid that hurdle by imagining it has another energy-generating mechanism that takes in oxygen and lets out carbon dioxide. Unlikely, but possible.

Would this plant "be" the planet? I doubt it; there is still far too much material on the planet that it could never assimilated. But it would still be pretty darn large, and would, from the perspective of any extraterrestrial visitors, be the planet.

posted about 10 years ago

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