Because of my abiding interest in science fiction, it comes as no surprise that I’d hold an abiding interest in the science that often inspires the fiction. It’s no secret that I have quite a fondness for extremphiles: I find water bears to be inordinately cute (too small to be cuddly, though) and those radiation munching fungi/bacteria now thriving at the “hot” core of Chernobyl are quite intriguing. Heck, even water fleas (daphnia) are cool and large enough to photograph. Water fleas, though they are extremophiles, aren’t that extreme…they’re just prone to taking nice, decades-long naps, until adverse environmental conditions either thaw out, or blow them into a nice, fresh puddle of mucky, somewhat thick water. Ice bugs, similar in appearance to earwigs with fashion model aspirations (yes! They’re that skinny, and they have cerci on their bums!) dwell on mountaintops, ice sheets, and exceptionally cold forests (generally under pack snow.) They are detritus feeders, but like water fleas (crustaceans with a pronounced lack of flea-like attributes) ice bugs are somewhat wimpy when it comes to hard core extremophiles. I can’t say that I have a particular favorite extremophile, but I have quite a list. As I fiddled with a spin-and-jiggle photograph, I started thinking of a particular double-whammy life form: both an extremophile and a bona fide member of the archaea club. There are countless archaea at home on the planet Earth (and in one other post, dedicated to them in my gallery!) and the strangest of them (at least in terms of appearance) are a species of…well…of archaea known simply as Haloquadratum in Latin. Their name translates, literally, to “Salt Square” and they’re called that, simply because they live in water saturated or nearly-saturated with salt. They resemble microscopic linoleum floor tiles more than anything else, and on countless levels, they’re…um…well…alien. Haloquadratum walsbyi: the inspiration of this image, lives in hypersaline water. As salt water evaporates, different salts are produced in accordance to the ratio of water to salt. Seawater, which provides sodium chloride, is pretty good at supporting life: there’s more water than salt, and so things don’t die as quickly, but as seawater evaporates, salt concentration rises, and calcium carbonate and calcium sulphate precipitation occurs. This produces a…well, a mouth-puckering nasty brine. As more evaporation takes place, raising saline levels trigger halite formation. In the final stages of halite formation, before salinity levels go from “insane” to “you’ve gotta be kidding”, Haloquadratum walsbyi thrives. According to some estimates, Haloquadratum walsbyi: has been known to make up a good 70% - 80% of brine’s biomass. I guess since very little else lives in Hqr walsbyi-friendly brine, the lack of predation makes the odd, flat/square organism a bit bold and exuberant in its reproductive business. I suspect, at some point, I’ll visit the realm of Haloquadratum walsbyi extensively, and find something to write about…but in the meantime, here is an image, inspired by some of my favorite real-life aliens. (Haloquadratum walsbyi doesn’t come in red/green/blue as semi-depicted here, but then, this image started as spin-and-jiggle photography, and the whole Hqr walsbyi connection arose simply because of the overall square shape of what I came up with.) As always, thank you for reading, viewing, and commenting, and I hope you’re all having a great week.