Glassy and reactive: plants are more dynamic than you think

An AI-generated artistic representation of a glassy plant leaf. Image by Nico Schramma (UvA), using DALL·E 2 (OpenAI). Is the inside of a plant cell more like a liquid or a solid? While this may sound like an odd question, research carried out at the University of Amsterdam demonstrates it can be either, depending on how much light you shine on it. Chloroplasts within plant cells constitute an active form of matter that undergoes dramatic phase transitions. The question of how plants sense and respond to their environment has fascinated scientists and philosophers since ancient times. More than two millennia ago, Plato wrote in his Timaeus that plants have a "soul" that experiences "sensation, pleasure, pain, and desire" while lacking "judgment and intelligence". To move, or not to move.