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Subterranean fungi networks more than 100 quadrillion km in length

by tosh | 77 points | 18 comments | 2026-06-11 15:51:11 Central

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N_Lens
I believe Planet will talk to us if we are willing to
listen. These fungal stalks behave as multistate relays:
taken together, the neural net connectivity must be
staggering. Can a planet be said to have achieved
sentience?- Lady Deirdre Skye, Planet Dreams, Alpha
Centauri

  > dude250711
No Deirdre, it cannot.
TrackerFF
Say you have a filament that's 1 µm in diameter, and 1
meter long. You want to fill up a 1m^3 (1m W x 1m H x 1m
L) space with these, how many of these can you place in
such a space? Over a trillion! And thus, the combined km
length of these will also be over a billion km. At such
small scales things can become very long when summed up.

mkl
100×10^12 km is about 10.6 light years. There are about
16 other stars closer to the sun than that. It's a bit
like a human body containing blood vessels with total
length greater than twice the Earth's circumference.

  > uberex
How many light years is the English coastline?
  > N_Lens
Reality appears to be fractal.
  > themafia
So it could be sentient but it's pace of thinking
might be absolutely glacial.

    > > mkl
Doh, you're right, it's way bigger. I was in too
much of a rush.

  > perarneng
Imagine if a 3year old has only one single blood
vessel:
The single blood vessel grows by approximately 88
kilometers per day since conception.Here is the quick
calculation using that timeline:•Total Days: ~1,365
days (270 days in the womb + 1,095 days of life up to
age 3).•Total Length: ~120,000 kilometers.That
breaks down to an astonishing 3.7 kilometers of growth
every single hour.Typical adult walking speed: ~5 km/h
. Next time you are walking then imagine the tiny thin
blood vessel growing behind you almost at the same
speed you are walking. If you slow down and stop it
will catch up to you.

reliablereason
If you have a number that is 1000^90000000 that number is
larger than the number of atoms in the observable
universe.

  > xattt
Length is ultimately an arbitrary concept, and a
measurement like thay can be made even more impressive
by going down to some other unit like Angstroms.

contingencies
Interesting how deeply east coast Australia is colored. I
live in Sydney, a city of 5.6 million humans, and yet my
yard apparently has at least the following fungi I can
identify to species level: Aseroe rubra (alien thing with
tendrils), Astraeus hygrometricus, Cladia aggregata,
Coprinellus disseminatus, Coprinellus micaceus,
Cruentomycena viscidocruenta, Flavoparmelia caperata,
Heterodea muelleri, Hypholoma fasciculare, Leratiomyces
ceres, Mycena tenerrima, Myriostoma australianum,
Omphalotus nidiformis (glows in the dark), Panellus
luxfilamentus, Satyrus rubicundus (looks like a red
penis), Scleroderma cepa, Scleroderma citrinum, Trametes
coccinea, Trametes versicolor, Usnea hirta.

  > birdfood
I live on the Gold Coast and I have seen in my yard
Aseroe rubra, glow in the dark mushrooms (not for a
while now) and many others. Just this weekend I found
one that looks a bit like a king oyster. Where did you
get your list? I was looking for a visual guide to
local fungi

    > > contingencies
I got mine from a few years of iNaturalist. I have
more, just not confirmed at species level. You can
try https://qldfungi.org.au/fungi-id/foq-main-page
... probably the Border Ranges will have a lot,
but right on the coast you'll see less.

waterTanuki
The map looks off. No way the American Southwest has 3
meters per cm cubed of fungal density in such an arid
region. Plenty of desert.

  > kakacik
Well South Sudan as highlighted has 8, and thats
basically a desert. Tibetan plateau is high altitude
frozen desert with permafrost in many parts, and its
11.4.Maybe there is more complexity than meets the
first glance.

    > > NDlurker
South Sudan isn't a desert. Tibet isn't all
permafrost and glaciers.