When cosmic rays reach the Earth, they collide with atoms in the atmosphere, blowing them apart into subatomic particles (pions, muons, and neutrinos). Most of them only make it that far, but a few (about 100,000 per square meter per second) reach the ground. They can trigger lightning strikes, cause electronics to malfunction, or damage living cells. (Don't worry too much about this last one, though, you're at much greater risk from UV radiation than from cosmic rays.)
The chances of every atom in an organism being struck by a cosmic ray simultaneously are astronomical (no pun intended). But I decided to simulate what that might look like, with garden plants (mostly flowers) as my subject, using Stable Diffusion. Sometimes the plants stayed intact and color exploded around them. Sometimes the plants burst into a conflagration of extra leaves, stems, and petals that were still identifiable as the original plant, though twisted or distorted. Other times the plants were completely consumed by the explosion so that only streamers of color were left.
Snowdrops
Speedwell (Veronica)
Stargazer Lily
Statice
Stonecrop
Strawflower
Strelitzia (Bird-of-Paradise)
Succulent
Sunflower
Sweet Pea
Thistle
Thryptomene (Saxicola)
Tulip
Tweedia
Violets
Warbler
Water Lily
Waxflower
Wisteria
Wood Sorrel
Yarrow
Yucca
Zinnia
And just for fun, a few of the attempts that didn't turn out quite right but that are still interesting:
Bleeding Hearts and Brain Celosia
Four O'Clocks (Mirabilis)
Iris
Mock Orange
Towards the end of this project, the AI was briefly re-trained. The results were still sometimes good art, but they were no longer in the same style. Fortunately, the original training was brought back long enough for me to finish the project. Here are those alternate images:
Snapdragon, Snowdrops, Stonecrop
Statice, Sweet Pea, Tulip
Violets, Wisteria, Zinnia
These illustrations were drawn using Stable Diffusion 2.1.
