First off, two of the Astrophage whipped over to the filter. They saw the light and went right for it. But how? It should be impossible for Astrophage to interact with a wavelength that big. I mean… literally impossible!

Light is a funny thing. Its wavelength defines what it can and can’t interact with. Anything smaller than the wavelength is functionally nonexistent to that photon. That’s why there’s a mesh over the window of a microwave. The holes in the mesh are too small for microwaves to pass through. But visible light, with a much shorter wavelength, can go through freely. So you get to watch your food cook without melting your face off.

Astrophage is smaller than 18.31 microns but somehow still absorbs light at that frequency. How?

But that’s not even the strangest thing that happened. Yes, two of them took off for the filter, but the other two stayed put. They didn’t seem to care. They just hung out on the slide. Maybe they didn’t interact with the larger wavelength?

So I did one more experiment. I shined the 4.26 micron light at them again. And I got the same results. The same two went right for the filter as before, and the other two just didn’t care.

And there it was. I couldn’t be 100 percent certain, but I was pretty sure I’d just discovered the whole Astrophage life-cycle. It clicked in my mind like puzzle pieces finally fitting together.

The two holdouts didn’t want to go to Venus anymore. They wanted to go back to the sun. Why? Because one of them just divided and created the other.

Astrophage hang out on the surface of the sun gathering energy via heat. They store it internally in some way no one understands. Then, when they have enough, they migrate to Venus to breed, using that stored energy to fly through space using infrared light as a propellant. Lots of species migrate to breed. Why would Astrophage be any different?

The Aussies already worked out that the inside of Astrophage wasn’t much different from Earth life. It needed carbon and oxygen to make the complex proteins required for DNA, mitochondria, and all the other fun stuff found in cells. There’s plenty of hydrogen on the sun. But the other elements just aren’t present. So Astrophage migrates to the nearest supply of carbon dioxide: Venus.

First, it follows magnetic field lines and goes straight away from the sun’s North Pole. It has to do that, or the light from the sun would be too blinding to find Venus. And going straight up from the pole means the Astrophage will have a full view of Venus’s entire orbital path—no portion of it occluded by the sun.

Ah, and that’s why Astrophage is so inconsistent on reacting to magnetic fields. It only cares about them at the very beginning of its journey and at no other time.

Then it looks for Venus’s massive carbon dioxide spectral signature. Well, not really “looks for.” It’s probably more a simple stimulus-response thing initiated by the 4.26 and 18.31 micron light bands. Anyway, once it “sees” Venus, it goes straight to it. The path it takes—straight away from the solar pole, then sharply turning toward Venus—that’s the Petrova line.