🌿 Ordinary Moss Produces Electrical Waves That Travel Across Its Tissue
Moss may look like one of nature’s quieter creations. Electrically, however, it appears to be surprisingly active.
Computer scientist Andy Adamatzky inserted electrodes into cushions of the common moss Brachythecium rutabulum and recorded their electrical activity continuously for 178 hours.
The moss produced several distinct patterns: rapid spikes, slower rhythmic oscillations, and very slow depolarization waves. Some signals appeared first at one electrode and later at another, suggesting that electrical activity was travelling across the tissue rather than occurring everywhere simultaneously.
Some spikes resembled action potentials and neuron-like spike trains. But resemblance is not equivalence: moss has no neurons, no brain, and the study provides no evidence that it thinks or possesses anything resembling consciousness.
What it may show is that a moss cushion behaves as a distributed, electrically connected system. One day, such living networks could potentially be used in biohybrid sensors, responsive building materials, or unconventional computing.
The interpretation remains preliminary. For now, the moss is not solving equations — but it may be coordinating electrical activity beneath our feet.
Could future computers be partly grown rather than manufactured?
📄 Royal Society Open Science
DOI: 10.1098/rsos.252341
#PlantBiology #Moss #BioComputing #LivingMaterials #UnconventionalComputing
Moss may look like one of nature’s quieter creations. Electrically, however, it appears to be surprisingly active.
Computer scientist Andy Adamatzky inserted electrodes into cushions of the common moss Brachythecium rutabulum and recorded their electrical activity continuously for 178 hours.
The moss produced several distinct patterns: rapid spikes, slower rhythmic oscillations, and very slow depolarization waves. Some signals appeared first at one electrode and later at another, suggesting that electrical activity was travelling across the tissue rather than occurring everywhere simultaneously.
Some spikes resembled action potentials and neuron-like spike trains. But resemblance is not equivalence: moss has no neurons, no brain, and the study provides no evidence that it thinks or possesses anything resembling consciousness.
What it may show is that a moss cushion behaves as a distributed, electrically connected system. One day, such living networks could potentially be used in biohybrid sensors, responsive building materials, or unconventional computing.
The interpretation remains preliminary. For now, the moss is not solving equations — but it may be coordinating electrical activity beneath our feet.
Could future computers be partly grown rather than manufactured?
📄 Royal Society Open Science
DOI: 10.1098/rsos.252341
#PlantBiology #Moss #BioComputing #LivingMaterials #UnconventionalComputing
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