Imagine a world like ours, only 6.5 light years away – but filled with life forms unlike anything found on Earth. Take a simulated trip in the near future, where astronomers and biologists alike admire the potential to Darwin IV, a nearby planet with two suns, 60% gravity and an atmosphere capable of supporting life.
Having identified Darwin as a likely home for life, scientists send a series of unmanned probes to the planet. Initially, the expectation is to find microscopic life. But the probes soon find themselves in the middle of a developed ecosystem, filled with various creatures of all sizes.
Looking through the “eyes” of the probes, marvel strange inhabitants of the planet – like the heavy Groveback, which supports a small forest vegetation in the rear; Prongheads deadly hunt in packs, like wolves, and the elegant Gyrosprinter, an elk-like creature with a body of luminescent biolights points.
The look and the biology of each animal is based on the laws of evolution and physics, then the model to fit the hypothetical environment of Darwin IV. Leading experts in the fields of paleontology, astrophysics and astrobiology explain how these creatures could evolve the characteristics of another world, such as hollow bodies, propulsion “jet” and skewers pierced tongue.
