[Loser]

Picoturion Fire storm

Adumas
System Lord
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Doctor Loser:
In the wake of the Picoturion III Fire storm, I am planning to send a reconnaissance party to the surface to assess the damage and determine if it can be recolonized. Long range scans do validate that it is still and Ice Planet with its oxygen atmosphere intact. The condition sensors indicate that it is Optimal, but I believe this needs to be verified by surface inspection. The Picoturion scientists are still puzzled by the fact we had a firestorm on an ice planet. I am glad to say that we did rescue all the population before hand and that no one was lost. This monthe we will start construction of a new Polaris ship to be ready to recolonize the planet.
The reconnaissance will be done by the crew of the RTS Onyx next month as they stop by on their way to the Pico Military Base. Are there any special precautions that the crew should take, and do you have any suggestions as to what to look for, or what special tests to perform.
I will post any findings into this log.
Adumas, Picoturion System Lord.

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Doctor Loser
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To the Office of Adumas, Picoturion System Lord,

A Firestorm is a catacylsmic checmical reaction that occurs due to reactions between chemicals in the atmosphere or crust of a world. Though localized fires may occur in differring periods on many worlds a Firestorm requires that a significant portion of the planet's surface is subject to intense and destructive heat levels.

The recent Firestorm on Picoturion III appears to have been the result of the natural life cycle of the planet's primary flora, a variety of grass-like xeno-fungal species collectively referred to as Picoturion Red Grass. This life form exists as symbiotic relationship between the fungal stalks and blade-like structures and a wide variety of microscopic flora that inhabits and is contained by the grass-like lifeform. The microscopic life preforms a form of radiosynthesis that converts a wide range of electro-magnetic radiation into chemical energy, off which both the microscopic single-celled flora and the complex fungus subsist.

This form of radiosynthesis can be found on any number of iceworlds with oxygen atmospheres, and relies on a complex polymer as its liquid suspension, as normal water would freeze and destructivly cyrstalize at the temperatures found on the surface of such worlds.

What is unique about the life on Picoturion III is that it will nearly destory itself on a geologically frequent basis. WHile the manner in which these Firestorms melt much of the surface of the world makes determining certain aspects of the past fairly difficult, the Ministry of Science believes that the Picoturion Red Grasses reach this stage of their lifecycle every twenty or thrity thousand years.

Based on the buildup of decaying plant and animal matter on the surface of the world, the Red Grasses begin to produce highly flamible chemicals and, over the course of a century of two, this stockpile reaches a level where the inert materials in which these reactants are infused become unable to unable to truely contain them. When the reactants reach a level, in some local area, where the Red Grasses are no longer able to contain them, they begin to leak into the atmosphere.

Within weeks, the presence of the reactants in the atmosphere signals a world-wide change in the metabolism of the Red Grasses, and they begin to produce chemicals that break down the inert stabilizer that had, up to that point, been keepign the reactants in check.

Eventually, the reactant reaches concentration levels in the atmosphere that guarantee the begining of the Firestorm. Flames and waves of explosive heat wash over the planet, and the worlds atmosphere actually extends to three tiems its normal altitude. nearly all life on the surface of the world is reduced to ash, save for specialized, hardened pods produced by the Red Grasses that protect their spores and a hibernating culture of the micro-flora with which they live.

On some areas of the globe the heat will be so intense that it will melt clear through the crust, which is only a few hundred meters thick in any case, exposing the liquid water layer to the burning atmosphere. The life-rich upper reaches of the watery depths of Picoturion III will then begin to boil, and the chruning, steaming, dealy new sea will casts large amounts of biomass high into the atmosphere. In this way, the Red Grasses not only reset the biomass on the surface of Picoturion III to a digestable form, they add to it from the more life-rich subcrustal sea.

It is suspected that this bizarre life cycle also ensures the supremacy of the Red Grasses on the surface of Picoturion III. Should any other lifeform develop between cycles, the Firestorm is almost guaranteed to eliminate it.

Since our people lived on Picoturion III in habitates built in the subcrustal seas, hard mounted to the underside of the frozen crust, the condition of the planet is not greatly altered, from our points of view. Whatever habitats we might have had on Picoturion III are surely now destroyed, as even where the crust is not penetrated it is weaked to the point that it would not have been able to support our massive arcologies, and many lives would have been lost were it not for the quick thinking and fast actions on your part and that of the Ministry of Transportation.

If you have any further questions about this phenomenom, please do not hesitate to contact me.

Dr. Loser
Minister of Science
Lord Avalon