lazyevaluationranch:

5/5/2018

Today we found some duckweed growing in the little square ditch next to the garage. Each plant is a floating leaf that can reproduce by budding off a new leaf, which this species can do about once every three days if they have enough nutrients. So the amount of duckweed you have doubles every three days. This makes them pretty much impossible to eradicate – if you miss even one tiny leaf, you’ll have hundreds again soon.

Okay, so the ditch is about twenty centimeters wide, a meter long, and 10 centimeters deep. It contains about 20 liters of water, and currently about 10 grams of duckweed. This is fine. May 8th, there will be 20 grams of duckweed, May 11th 40 grams, and May 14th (Dance Like A Chicken Day) 80 grams. Seems reasonable.

There will be a kilogram of duckweed twelve days later, on May 23 (Lucky Penny Day). Lucky Penny Day, that sounds totally harmless.Twelve days after that, on June fourth (National Cheese Day!) there will be twenty kilograms of duckweed; it’ll weigh as much as the water in the ditch does. Mm, cheese. June 7th (National Chocolate Ice Cream Day), the twenty-liter ditch full of duckweed will be as dense as solid stone, and June 22nd (National Chocolate Eclair Day) it’ll be considerably denser than gold. I will encourage the ducks to swim in the seething hypergreen and eat some duckweed. They are unlikely to be interested.

Sometime around July 10th (Teddy Bear Picnic Day) the concrete around the drainage ditch full of half a space shuttle’s weight in duckweed will be crumbled to nothing. Somewhere around August 21st (Senior Citizens’ Day), the duckweed will begin to burrow down through the mountain we live on, heading inexorably toward the center of the Earth. Hooray! No more duckweed!

Things will be quiet on the duckweed front until December 25th, 2018, when the duckweed at the center of the Earth will have about 1% the total mass of Earth. Walking may be noticably more difficult. Satellites will start to fail. Merry Christmas, with love from plants that double in size every three days!

A month later, the duckweed will outweigh the rest of the Earth and start pulling down the moon. Happy Bubble Wrap Appreciation Day! Bubble wrap cannot save us now.

You know how most of the matter in the universe is “dark matter” that scientists claim can’t be observed, because the equations don’t work without something that outweighs the entire visible universe pulling everything together? I’m not saying it’s all duckweed out there, and scientists call it “dark matter” that “can’t be observed” because that’s less terrifying or anything.

Wait. No. That’s exactly what I’m saying.