09/11/2025
Living Microalgae Bask in the Light of Another Star For The First Time.
For over 3 billion years, life on Earth has lived on the light of a single star, but all that could soon change. The Center for PostNatural History (CPNH)—which has played a vital role in increasing understanding of human entanglement with the natural world since its founding in 2008—has announced that for the first time, light from a star outside of the Earth’s solar system was used to illuminate and photograph a living microbe under a microscope. This achievement is the first step towards the more complex goal of sustaining a living organism with the light of another star, a first-ever experiment in interstellar photosynthesis. According to Rich Pell, the founder and Executive Director of CPNH and Associate Professor of Art at Carnegie Mellon, “The goal of our experiment, which I am calling “Stellar Harvest,” is to cultivate a living organism on the light of a star other than the Sun. To the best of my knowledge, this has never happened before in the history of our planet. If any of the cells manage to grow and divide on that other star’s light, at least energetically, it could arguably be living on another star, without ever having left Earth.”
Pell designed the Stellar Harvest project to use the light-concentrating power of a large reflecting telescope to gather light from the brightest available star in the night sky for the smallest light-loving microorganisms on Earth - phytoplankton. The project will examine the ability of a type of phytoplankton known as diatoms, which are found in every aquatic environment on the planet and responsible for a significant amount of the oxygen we breathe, to grow off the light from a star. These lucky lifeforms will be the first to experience actual light from another star at concentrations similar to a forest floor or deep ocean waters on Earth: a fraction of a percent of direct sunlight’s intensity. Some diatoms are already adapted to the extremely low-light conditions that will be necessary for this project to work. “It’s not easy to squeeze light from the night sky,” continues Pell. “To reimagine the night as a source of light, is a real break with tradition to say the least. A lot of science and engineering contributes to our being able to do this, but the motivation comes from elsewhere. At the Center for PostNatural History, we are dedicated to the collection and exposition of life-forms that have been intentionally and heritably altered by people through domestication, selective breeding, or genetic engineering, but Stellar Harvest marks the first time we as an organization are taking part in using these same methods to alter an organism.”
The project gets its name from a process Pell calls “Stellar Drift:” preparing the microbes for their new host star using a custom incubator which simulates the gradual shift from the lighting conditions of the Sun towards those of the new star. Another invention necessary to the project is what Pell calls the “Stellar Harvestar,” a little box he designed that fits where an eyepiece or camera normally would go on the telescope, and maintains the conditions that the cells need to live and holds them in the right place to receive the stellar light. Pell elaborates: “Some of the diatoms we are interested in need things like sea water at a specific temperature in order to survive, and habitats such as these have never had to integrate with a telescope before.”
The most recent advances in the Stellar Harvest project were made possible thanks to Pell’s recent experience at the Summer Observational Astrophysics Retreat (SOAR) program at the Mount Wilson Observatory, operated by the Carnegie Institute. It was there that Pell was able to use the historic 100-inch Ho**er reflector telescope, made famous by Edwin Hubble, who used it to prove the existence of galaxies beyond the Milky Way and provided evidence for the theory that the Universe is continually expanding. In Pell’s case, he used the groundbreaking telescope to gather the light of the star Vega—a bright star roughly 25 light years away.
For Pell, “Stellar Harvest is not about practicality. There is simply no hope of ever extracting useful amounts of energy in this manner. Our Sun is 13 billion times brighter than the next brightest star and appears to be in good working order. It instead pays homage to Carl Sagan’s promise that, “We are all made of star stuff”. And takes seriously Octavia Butler's proposition that, “There is nothing new under the Sun, but there are new Suns.” I believe there is something to be gained in stepping beyond the theoretical by doing something that appears impossible. It’s 21st century alchemy that might help get us out of the cosmic rut we as a civilization appear to be in. At the very least, the absurd effort it takes to utilize the energy of a distant star makes me appreciate how lucky we are to be so close to one in our solar system.”
Stellar Harvest is an initiative of the Center for PostNatural History and has received initial support from individual donors and through the Fund for Research and Creativity at Carnegie Mellon University in 2025.
That was then. This is now.
