Animal Plants: Life Adapted to a Vacuum

"These remarkable creatures combine the characteristics of animals and plants and so I call them animal-plants. ..."

"All right. Don't get angry. Just explain how your creatures avoid getting dried up like mummies."

"That is simple. Their skin is covered with a glassy layer, thin and flexible but absolutely impermeable to gases and liquids and all kinds of particles, so that the creatures are protected from any loss of material. . . . Their bodies have appendages which look like wings and are exposed to the sun, serving as chemical laboratories for the production of energy and food. Such appendages would be an encumbrance in earth's gravity-field, but in the zero-g environment of space they are hardly noticeable even with a surface area of several thousand square meters."

"Stop! How do your animal-plants talk to each other and exchange ideas without any air? ..."

"They have a much more perfect and natural means of communication. One part of their body carries under the transparent skin an area like a camera obscura, on which moving pictures are continually playing, following the flow of their thoughts and representing them precisely. The pictures are formed by fluids of various colors which flow through a web of fine channels under the skin."

Notes:

Folksonomies: speculation

Taxonomies:
/business and industrial/energy/natural gas (0.501496)
/pets/dogs (0.500433)
/business and industrial/energy/oil (0.462137)

Keywords:
remarkable creatures (0.902381 (neutral:0.000000)), glassy layer (0.830471 (positive:0.357638)), Animal Plants (0.801375 (neutral:0.000000)), zero-g environment (0.792317 (negative:-0.345629)), camera obscura (0.780689 (positive:0.647402)), chemical laboratories (0.756600 (neutral:0.000000)), square meters (0.752390 (negative:-0.345629)), natural means (0.747783 (positive:0.819753)), transparent skin (0.745486 (positive:0.647402)), fine channels (0.744145 (positive:0.544432)), exchange ideas (0.743246 (negative:-0.301864)), various colors (0.740353 (positive:0.544432)), surface area (0.735319 (negative:-0.345629)), animal-plants talk (0.730599 (negative:-0.301864)), appendages (0.651893 (negative:-0.299482)), encumbrance (0.514039 (negative:-0.338524)), pictures (0.508335 (positive:0.557344)), mummies (0.500761 (negative:-0.757669)), particles (0.480159 (negative:-0.346833)), liquids (0.478237 (negative:-0.346833)), gases (0.476265 (negative:-0.346833)), Life (0.472885 (neutral:0.000000)), Vacuum (0.472757 (neutral:0.000000)), characteristics (0.472533 (neutral:0.000000)), animals (0.472469 (neutral:0.000000)), fluids (0.471879 (positive:0.544432)), wings (0.468920 (negative:-0.260441)), kinds (0.467304 (negative:-0.346833)), bodies (0.465367 (negative:-0.260441)), loss (0.463990 (negative:-0.299169))

Entities:
thousand square meters:Quantity (0.010000 (neutral:0.000000)), zero-g:Quantity (0.010000 (neutral:0.000000))

Dreams of Earth and Sky

Books, Brochures, and Chapters>Book: Tsiolkovsky, Konstantin , Dreams of Earth and Sky, The Minerva Group, Inc., Retrieved on 2015-01-24

Source Material [books.google.com]

Folksonomies: science fiction cosmology