Talk:2171: Shadow Biosphere

Just spit-balling here, but here goes: This comic seems to be making a joke between the meaning of "shadow biosphere" and the more common meaning behind "shadow" being something unseen. I think "shadow biosphere" is currently pretty loosely defined and not widely accepted by academics, and it seems to refer simply to organisms that might exist but are not currently being studied widely. In fact to me, the use of the term "shadow" in the name is relatively misleading and simply refers to a possible case of something not understood and/or studied at length, not that it's invisible. Randall appears to be making fun of the name by suggesting it means invisible to normal life as we know it. The title text further pushes this pun by suggesting that a coating of "desert varnish" makes normally visible objects become invisible, as with the buildings where shadow biologists carry out their work. Desert varnish is in fact visible when it is found in appropriate locations on normal objects like rocks - it does not make the rocks invisible! Somehow, I think these ideas need to be incorporated into the explanation. Ianrbibtitlht (talk) 17:00, 3 July 2019 (UTC)

The first paragraph of this comic explanation is a verbatim copy from the beginning of the Wikipedia article for shadow biosphere. It seems that we really should include citations when adding something like this. ---diGGdoug 172.69.170.28 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

The desert varnish reference in the alt text is because desert varnish is the most likely example of the shadow biosphere. It seems to be doing something at least vaugely like metabolism, concentrating certain minerals far beyond expected by nature. -162.158.107.67 19:47, 3 July 2019 (UTC)

Do you have a citation for that? Wikipedia article doesn't mention any metabolism. 172.68.38.64 22:31, 3 July 2019 (UTC)bk

Could "Shadow" be a Babylon 5 reference? -162.158.214.148 01:03, 4 July 2019 (UTC)