Crafting strange fiction from stranger fact.
On Earth, the most common forms of energy storage molecules are sugars. These are rings made of oxygen, carbon, and hydrogen atoms which store chemical energy in their bonds. How exactly does this work, you ask? Well, chemical bonds take energy to create. They also release energy when they are broken. The more chemical bonds … Continue reading Sugar, Acetylene, and Life on Titan: Life Not As We Know It
The most basic possible definition of life is this: life is a self-replicating pattern. The simplest forms of life on Earth today are bacteria, who exist for the sole purpose of reproducing more of themselves. Over time, copying errors + natural selection cause versions of the pattern that are better and better at surviving to … Continue reading Genetic Material: Alien and Earthly
Biochemistry is a big, scary word. And it does mean quite a lot of complex things. But at the end of the day, it’s this: how do the molecules that make up our cells work together to produce life? In this blog entry we’re going to look at the most basic and important building blocks … Continue reading The Biochemistry of Life As We Know It
Today’s blog entry will be much shorter than Friday’s, for one simple reason: Class K “orange dwarf” stars are much less terrifying than Class M red dwarfs. That means there are fewer survival challenges and requirements for your characters. Class K stars are something of a “happy medium” between our own Sun and red dwarfs. … Continue reading Orange Dwarfs: Life Around Class K Stars
C. L. Kagmi 