According to Professor Ariel Novoplansky, who oversaw the research, “The results demonstrate that unstressed plants are able to perceive and respond to stress cues emitted by the roots of their drought-stressed neighbors and, via ‘relay cuing’, elicit stress responses in further unstressed plants. Further work is underway to study the underlying mechanisms of this new mode of plant communication and its possible adaptive implications for the anticipation of forthcoming abiotic stresses by plants."

Previous research by Exeter University in Britain also turned up evidence of plant communication. In that study, cabbages were used rather than pea plants and the form of communication was quite different. In this case the cabbages were also placed close to each other. Certain cabbages had their leaves snipped with scissors. This caused the damaged plants to emit a gas, made visible through genetic mutation, which alerted their neighbours. The nearby cabbages reacted to this gas by producing a toxin in their leaves making them less palatable to predators such as caterpillars.

smitty wrote:We best stop pissing off the trees then.

a massive cloud of charged particles is due to arrive early Thursday and could disrupt utility grids, airline flights, satellite networks and GPS services

is growing as it races outward from the sun, expanding like a giant soap bubble. When it strikes early Thursday, the particles will be moving at 4 million mph.

another set of active sunspots is ready to aim at Earth right after this.

“This is a big sun spot group, particularly nasty,” NASA solar physicist David Hathaway said. “Things are really twisted up and mixed up. It keeps flaring.”

the potential for problems is widespread.

In 1989, a strong solar storm knocked out the power grid in Quebec, causing 6 million people to lose power.

The storm could trigger communication problems and additional radiation around the north and south poles...

Satellites could be affected, too.