An interactive digital platforms lets viewers travel to planets like Phainoterra, microbial life … [+] survives in sulfuric acid.
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A yellowish-orange glow bathes Phainoterra, a planet of dramatic lightning storms and mountain peaks towering above its scorching surface. On this distant world, microbial life survives in sulfuric acid instead of water, and these tiny organisms exhibit an impressive collective intelligence akin to ant colonies.
Phainoterra isn’t real, but it very well could be. Two MIT researchers imagined it with meticulous attention to plausibility as part of Proxima Kosmos, a new project that unites scientists, including one from NASA, with designers and sci-fi writers to create a speculative solar system consistent with the laws of astronomy and physics. Its aim? To challenge our understanding of habitability, evolution and intelligence beyond Earth.
Proxima Kosmos launched Saturday featuring a sweeping interactive digital platform, films and a limited-run zine that expands the speculative universe through essays, art and storytelling. Science fiction authors wrote original narratives to correspond with each of the nine imaginary planets.
“I really hope people take from this wonder and curiosity about all the many kinds of worlds that can exist,” project lead Claire Isabel Webb said in an interview. Webb is future humans program director at the Berggruen Institute, the forward-looking L.A.-based think tank behind the interdisciplinary experiment.
“I want people to come away with this sense of Earth as one world in a catalog of many possible worlds that could share characteristics with Earth, or be totally alien or be remixes of Earth with different evolutionary lineages,” she said.
Sara Walker and Estelle Janin of Arizona State University created Magikos, a planet that represents … [+] a possible future where intelligence isn’t bound to biology.
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The world-building project encompasses planets like Magikos, a technosphere where self-replicating systems blur the line between the organic and the artificial and represent a possible future where intelligence isn’t bound to biology.
Another planet, Aponoristerra, is an early Earth frozen in a stage of evolution from 3.5 billion years ago. Then there’s Nekrosterra, or “dead Earth,” a cautionary tale strewn with the remnants of once-thriving civilizations destroyed by nuclear fallout and climate disasters. Penny Boston, director of the NASA Astrobiology Institute at NASA Ames, developed Akroterra, a frigid, nitrogen-rich extreme Earth with a radioactive core that sustains life deep underground.
The Proxima Kosmos platform allows space watchers to discover data — on the planets’ timelines, transit paths, mass and temperature, for example — while exploring 3D satellite and terrain views by clicking, zooming and scrolling to otherworldly soundscapes by composer Ranger Liu. Some planets in the ongoing experiment have yet to be fully unveiled.
Phainoterra is among the celestial bodies completely rendered and ready for visitors. To create it, Sara Seager, an MIT professor of planetary science, physics and aerospace engineering, teamed with MIT postdoctoral fellow Iaroslav Iakubivskyi, who focuses on planetary atmospheres and exoplanet modeling. For inspiration, the pair looked to Venus and its thick cloud layer made of tiny sulfuric acid droplets. Designing an imaginary world with a habitable sulfuric acid-based biochemistry required extensive scientific research and cross-checking against known physical precepts.
“I often found myself deep in scientific literature about extremophiles and exotic chemistry, only to realize I needed to rethink entire ecosystems when a single chemical reaction wouldn’t work as theorized,” Iakubivskyi said in an interview.
Speculative Science, Real-World Missions?
The biggest challenge in creating a scientifically plausible planet, Iakubivskyi said, was maintaining the delicate equilibrium between scientific accuracy and creative imagination.
Sci-fi and fantasy writer Caroline M. Yoachim navigated a similar balance when writing “Etching,” a story accompanying the description of Phainoterra. It takes place on Earth in 2525, at an event recalling the groundbreaking journey of three scientists who reached Phainoterra 188 years prior.
Phainoterra struck the writer as both a beautiful and harsh world.
“It has mountain pools of liquid sulfuric acid, replenished by clouds that are similarly caustic, and setting the story in this inhospitable environment allowed us to highlight the tenacity of life, showing adaptations that might allow microbes to live on a world that resembles Venus more closely than Earth,” Yoachim said in an interview.
The biggest challenge in creating Phainoterra was navigating the balance between scientific accuracy … [+] and creative imagination, says MIT’s Iaroslav Iakubivskyi.
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But while creative visuals, sound and storytelling shape the speculative solar system, the scientists involved believe the detailed planets could have real-world implications.
“I’ve come to appreciate how speculative scientific modeling serves as a bridge between pure imagination and testable hypotheses, helping to guide research priorities and mission planning,” Iakubivskyi said.
Project lead Claire Webb concurs.
“Simulations allow us to test planetary pathways not taken, revealing how alien life could emerge under radically different conditions,” she said. “If we detect life beyond Earth, it won’t just change science. It will redefine what it means to be human in the cosmos.”
The project includes a four-part zine series that expands the project’s speculative worlds through … [+] essays, artwork and storytelling.
Berggruen Institute