Nature Research Puns

A man was recruited for a space colony

He had been posted to a planet 14 light-years from Sol. As his ship landed on the planet's glowing surface, he saw a car waiting for him.

"Welcome to Anti-Earth," The driver said, "don't worry we are going to change the name soon. I am here to take you to your quarters and show you the colony on the way."

They had been driving for a couple of minutes when the recruit saw glowing buildings far away.

"Why are the buildings shining like that?", he asked.

"Didn't they brief you about the colony?", the driver asked "We don't call it Anti-Earth for no reason, it's literally the opposite of Earth. Any element rare on Earth is as common as carbon (C) here, and interestingly carbon (C) doesn't occur naturally here. So we had to make good of what we had, the buildings are made of rare metals like radium (Ra) which glow in the dark."

After half an hour they arrived at what seemed the main highway, the road had a faint bluish glow and the sides were lined with metallic posts shining faintly in the double moonlight. They stopped near a small dilapidated shack with the words "COMMUNICATION OFFICE" crudely etched on the walls.

"This is your office. You are supposed to handle communications for the colony," the driver said. "We can't use any wireless communication as the high amount of radioactive gases in the atmosphere interferes with the signal, so we have to use a type of telegraph instead. Come on, I'll show you our most important resource."

They walked a bit till they reached a plantation full of bizarre trees. Some were made of precious metals, some of common earth metals and some of them were glowing radioactively.

"This is the plantation for building the posts. We brought these seeds from Earth and planted them, apparently as they couldn't get the conventional elements they just used what the soil contained. We just sell the gold (Au), silver (Ag) and platinum (Pt) trees to Earth, the iron (Fe) and aluminium (Al) are used for constructing equipment and there are some pretty rare elements like uranium (U) and astatine (At) (which is the rarest element on Earth) which are used for scientific research. However, these aren't what we are here for."

The driver motioned him to follow him towards a small area of trees with a silvery sheen to them.

"These are made of rhenium (Re) one of the densest elements with one of the highest melting and boiling points. It is strong enough to withstand the toxic atmosphere and radioa