The article is still pretty cool, even though the discussion brings up some issues with their arithmetic.
Subterranean fungi networks more than 100 quadrillion km in length
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Re: Subterranean fungi networks more than 100 quadrillion km in length
#32I believe Planet will talk to us if we are willing to listen. These fungal stalks behave as multistate relays: taken together, the neural net connectivity must be staggering. Can a planet be said to have achieved sentience? - Lady Deirdre Skye, Planet Dreams, Alpha Centauri
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Re: Subterranean fungi networks more than 100 quadrillion km in length
#33Say you have a filament that's 1 µm in diameter, and 1 meter long. You want to fill up a 1m^3 (1m W x 1m H x 1m L) space with these, how many of these can you place in such a space? Over a trillion! And thus, the combined km length of these will also be over a billion km. At such small scales things can become very long when summed up.
Everytime I see people talking about the length of their coastlines ...
Look at how long this edge of my fractal is, Ma!
Re: Subterranean fungi networks more than 100 quadrillion km in length
#34Highly recommended: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/52668915-entangled-life
It is on my to-read list, but be sure to take some claims of common mycorrhizal networks (aka "wood wide web") with a grain of salt. A later review paper [0] found that evidence for some claims is weak.
Re: Subterranean fungi networks more than 100 quadrillion km in length
#35Say you have a filament that's 1 µm in diameter, and 1 meter long. You want to fill up a 1m^3 (1m W x 1m H x 1m L) space with these, how many of these can you place in such a space? Over a trillion! And thus, the combined km length of these will also be over a billion km. At such small scales things can become very long when summed up.
How would this compare with packing the volume with DNA ?
Re: Subterranean fungi networks more than 100 quadrillion km in length
#36Meanwhile, a single human cell's DNA stretches for about 2 meter, one human's DNA stretches for about 2 x 5.4 trillion meter, and all living human DNA for a whopping 8.6 x 10^22 meters, nearly a thousand times longer than the fungi networks...
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/theydidthemath/comments/1gfq6k2/how...
Re: Subterranean fungi networks more than 100 quadrillion km in length
#37Meanwhile, a single human cell's DNA stretches for about 2 meter, one human's DNA stretches for about 2 x 5.4 trillion meter, and all living human DNA for a whopping 8.6 x 10^22 meters, nearly a thousand times longer than the fungi networks... [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/theydidthemath/comments/1gfq6k2/how...
Those fungi networks also have DNA
Re: Subterranean fungi networks more than 100 quadrillion km in length
#38I believe Planet will talk to us if we are willing to listen. These fungal stalks behave as multistate relays: taken together, the neural net connectivity must be staggering. Can a planet be said to have achieved sentience? - Lady Deirdre Skye, Planet Dreams, Alpha Centauri
Meanwhile she's using mind worms as police. I would love for Firaxis to revisit Alpha Centauri.
Re: Subterranean fungi networks more than 100 quadrillion km in length
#39I believe Planet will talk to us if we are willing to listen. These fungal stalks behave as multistate relays: taken together, the neural net connectivity must be staggering. Can a planet be said to have achieved sentience? - Lady Deirdre Skye, Planet Dreams, Alpha Centauri
Meanwhile she's using mind worms as police. I would love for Firaxis to revisit Alpha Centauri.
There wasn’t a government in that game that didn’t have a single horrifying policy of some sort. They were living their own individuated utopian dreams, and I feel like what made it real was that the writers never shied away from the dark side of each utopia.
Re: Subterranean fungi networks more than 100 quadrillion km in length
#40Say you have a filament that's 1 µm in diameter, and 1 meter long. You want to fill up a 1m^3 (1m W x 1m H x 1m L) space with these, how many of these can you place in such a space? Over a trillion! And thus, the combined km length of these will also be over a billion km. At such small scales things can become very long when summed up.
It is obvious when you think that 3d volumes scale cubicly and 1d lengths scale linearly. Adding another 1 meter to a cube of said filaments would increase the total length by a power of 3!