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Sometimes you have to think outside the box. What better example of this than a recent paper published by Dimitra Atri, a research scientist at the Blue Marble Space Institute of Science, titled: “On the Possibility of Cosmic Ray-Induced Ionizing Radiation-Powered Life in Subsurface Environments in the Universe.”

An interesting idea and completely novel to our mainstream thinking that all life on Earth is based on energy from our Sun that starts with photosynthesis as the initial step. His paper proposes that the radiation capable of supporting life can be of cosmic origin and originate from beyond our solar system in the form of cosmic rays – the strange particles that continuously bathe our planet in a steady stream. Somehow, Atri claims, bacteria can digest these particles and live a normal life – moving, and reproducing without any interaction with sunlight at all.

You may recall that cosmic rays are for the most part high speed protons that enter our atmosphere and collide with the air molecules that get in their way, producing showers of secondary particles called muons. It is these muons that are responsible for the background clicks heard in Geiger Counters when no other radioactive material is present.