Exoplanetscape 14

More examples of my astronomical art appears in my DA "Paleo & Sci Illo" gallery:

[link]

This is the moon of a Neptunian ice giant in orbit around a red dwarf star. At the extreme temperatures approaching absolute zero Kelvin most materials begin to assume superconducting properties. Here I hypothesize a self-organizing, self-replicating crystaline latice that has taken over the surface of the moon. Given the long life of an M-type star, this world has existed for twice that of our own Solar System. It may have taken ten billion years for the crystaline matrix to grow and become self-aware, but it only takes nanoseconds to complete a thought and seconds for impulses to propogate through the entire system. It is a cerebral cortex that covers the moon over tens of thousands of square kilometers and is several kilometers deep. This cryocybernetic intelligence has seeded the surrounding moons of the system with copies of its own matrix.

art & text (C) John P. Alexander