And What If Life Came from the Stars?

A conversation with Ernst Zürcher, the researcher who demonstrated the moon’s influence on trees. Interview by Louis Defèche.

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Do the stars have an influence on Earth and its living beings? What was long considered mere superstition is now increasingly being confirmed by science. The more research progresses, the more connections between the heavens and the Earth come to light. And, by the way—where does life come from?

Ernst Zürcher is a forestry engineer, holds a PhD in natural sciences, and is professor emeritus of wood science at the Bern University of Applied Sciences. For many years he taught at Swiss technical universities (ETH Zurich and EPFL) as well as at the University of Lausanne. Among other works, he is the author of Les arbres, entre visible et invisible [Trees: between the visible and invisible] and Planter un arbre: Et créer une forêt [Plant a tree: and create a forest].¹ As a tireless hiker who pays attention to both the silence of the forest and the pulsing of the sky, he complements his scientific work with poetic and meditative writings: À l’écoute de la forêt [Listening to the forest], Le Pouls de la Terre [The pulse of the Earth], Paroles d’arbres [Words of the trees].² When we listen to him, read his work, or go for a walk together, our perception of nature changes. We wanted to talk with this explorer, scientist, and poet.

Cosmic Chronobiology

Louis Defèche: Ernst, what has been the red thread of your life as a scientist?

Ernst Zürcher: One of my main areas of research is chronobiology, the study of rhythms, but also cosmic chronobiology, that is, the study not only of earthly rhythms but also of all cosmic rhythms. There are no purely earthly rhythms. The sun always plays a role, as does the moon and so on.

This interest comes from my family. My grandfather had a beautiful farm in Switzerland. He ran an exemplary agricultural enterprise where people were happy and the business was profitable. He took the phases of the moon into account. Yet there was little objective evidence based on standard scientific methods to show that this actually works. I learned that biodynamics uses lunar rhythms. That made me wonder. I looked in books on biology and plant physiology. The moon wasn’t mentioned at all. But all traditions speak of it.

How did your scientific research into the relationship between trees and the moon begin?

I began by working with an African tree species, Maesopsis eminii. I conducted my work at a research station in Rwanda, where I lived for four years as part of a project run by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation. There, we had an OECD-certified seed production station for export, complete with an experimental nursery. Using this facility, we initiated germination experiments related to the phases of the moon. These were among the first such experiments conducted on tropical species.

In the case of Maesopsis eminii, plant height varied significantly four months after sowing between seeds sown two days before the full moon and those sown two days before the new moon.³ Furthermore, we observed antiphase fluctuations in Fabaceae (legumes), suggesting species-specific biorhythms instead of a universal mechanism.

And you also told me about some new discoveries?

Yes, for example, in a doctoral thesis I supervised on the electrophysiology of trees, we discovered that bioelectric currents fluctuate depending on the tides.

Tides? So far from the ocean?

Gravitational tides occur everywhere. High and low tides follow the same rhythm as they do along the coast where we can see them clearly. Depending on the location, the Earth’s crust is lifted up by as much as 40 centimeters and then lowered again. The Earth is malleable and sculptural. It pulsates like a heart.

At a conference in Montpellier in 1995, Francis Hallé—the most prominent contemporary tropical forest researcher, who passed away on December 31, 2025—introduced me to two Italian colleagues: Maria-Giulia Cantiani and Francesco Sorbetti-Guerri from the University of Florence. They described “circadian rhythms.” They had set up trees in a greenhouse under constant darkness, equipped with sensors that measure changes in trunk diameter to the nearest hundredth of a millimeter. In the dark, the normal 24-hour rhythm, which is determined by the sun, extends to 25 hours. This difference is related to the lunar rhythm of the tides—but the researchers did not mention this in their publication.

I used their data to compare the fluctuations in trunk diameter with the gravimetric tides measured in Florence at the time of the experiment. The correlation was perfect. A short article appeared in Nature in April 1998—thanks to Hallé.⁴

You then conducted a study in Switzerland to determine how the timing of felling trees throughout the lunar cycle affects wood quality.

It was actually my colleagues, the forest engineers, who wanted to know this. They said to me, “Older folks always say that the phase of the moon affects wood quality, but we don’t know what to do about it.” So we conducted the largest experiment to date on how the phase of the moon at the time of felling affects wood properties. We conducted the experiment with two tree species, spruce and sweet chestnut, at four locations in Switzerland. Every Monday and Thursday at 10 a.m., we simultaneously felled three randomly selected trees per location after first taking a “zero-time” sample for comparison. On 48 occasions, analysis of the synodic cycle (new moon, full moon, first and last quarters) yielded significant results: The lunar phase at the time of felling does indeed influence the properties of the wood.⁵

We could have left it at that, but I thought to myself: With this much data, we should ask as many questions as possible. First test: Does the day of the week matter? The analysis revealed no significant difference between the trees felled on Monday and those felled on Thursday.

That reminded me that some traditions also refer to constellations—a subject Maria Thun studied extensively.⁶ The sidereal rhythm of the moon corresponds to its path through the twelve constellations of astronomy.

When we ran this data through the statistical analysis, the box plots turned out to be even more striking than those for the synodic rhythm. We had divided the twelve constellations into four groups—fire, water, earth, and air—following the Greek tradition dating back to Empedocles. I was truly astounded by the extent of the significance.

The synodic cycle arises from the interaction of the Earth-moon-sun triangle. The sidereal rhythm, on the other hand, is independent of the sun. As it orbits the Earth, the moon passes through the twelve constellations in the celestial sphere. The sidereal month lasts 27.3 days, whereas the synodic month lasts 29.5 days. Until now, there have been virtually no publications regarding the sidereal rhythm in relation to trees. This has now been scientifically proven and peer-reviewed.⁷

You also achieved another historic feat by restoring Lili Kolisko’s work to its rightful place. How did that come about?

One research work had especially interested and also puzzled me: Ernst Rohmeder’s publication from 1938.⁸ He was a researcher at the Forestry Research Institute [Forstlichen Versuchsanstalt] in Munich, a state-run institution during the Third Reich. Drawing on the work of Lili Kolisko,⁹ Rohmeder sought to demonstrate that biodynamic agriculture was unsustainable. Rohmeder’s publication received widespread attention because it was supposedly scientifically sound. The volume of data was considerable, with measurements repeated over a two-year period.

However, the statistical analysis was incorrect. Since I am accustomed to interpreting graphs from a chronobiological perspective, when I examined his publication, something struck me. He claimed there was nothing to see, but I saw something. I collaborated with a renowned biometrician, Rodolphe Schlaepfer. We proceeded by using the raw data that Rohmeder had published, and we were able to demonstrate statistical significance through smoothing and standardization. There was not “nothing”; there was, in fact, “something.” Thus, we were able to rehabilitate Kolisko’s work 76 years later.¹⁰

Science and Its Taboos

In the foreword to your book Arbres, entre visible et invisible [Trees: Between the visible and invisible], Francis Hallé mentions the 1995 conference where you presented your research findings to a group of scholars, and some of the participants apparently felt very disturbed by the topic and made this clear.

Hallé had a truly open spirit. He had visited every tropical forest in the world, spoken with the locals, and knew that the moon plays a central role in all ancient cultures. After the germination experiments in Africa, he invited me to present my findings in Montpellier—the Mecca of botany. But some scientists expressed their disapproval in a rather rude manner. This made Hallé very uncomfortable, because he knew that this was a serious matter. I wasn’t fazed by it, because I had used standard methods, I had published my work, and I was confident. As he wrote in his foreword, the obscurantists were not the ones one might have expected.

Even today, many people who consider themselves to be scientists react with scorn when there is talk of a connection between the star system, the moon, and the Earth’s biosphere.

They’re missing the boat. Something interesting is happening right now. It’s the scientific journals that are contacting me and saying, “We’ve seen your publications on lunar chronobiology; if you have anything new in this field, we’re interested.” They’re the ones taking the initiative. Times are changing!

During your lecture in Lausanne, you said something that struck me.¹¹ The connection between nature, the moon, and the stars is often considered to have been disproved by science, but it is actually a taboo of religious origin.

In the sixth century, observing the stars and the moon—for sowing, harvesting, logging, and weddings—was deemed pagan and thus heretical. This new dogma was established at councils held in Braga, Portugal. From then on, it became dangerous to apply this knowledge in areas under the direct influence of the Church; it survived primarily in the valleys and mountains, far from ecclesiastical control. Yet science eventually emerged from within the ranks of the Church, thanks to monks who could read, write, and do arithmetic.

So the moon was pushed into the background—and with it, an aspect of the feminine. These traditions were, after all, largely upheld by women and passed down from mother to daughter. If there is one topic that pertains to the feminine, it is surely the lunar cycles—even though we are all sensitive to the moon, if only because of our sleep. Since this ban, scientific circles—even after breaking away from the Church—have continued, perhaps unconsciously, to take it for granted that the moon plays no role and frown whenever it is mentioned.

So, this is also linked to the history of women in our culture.

Absolutely. The witch hunts and the burnings at the stake stem in part from the same logic. And the Church has never fully reversed this exclusion. We still await a reckoning with the past.

Toward an Explanation: The Fourth State of Water

Let’s now turn to the processes themselves. How can these phenomena be explained? What do you think?

Scientific work involves two steps: First, demonstrating that a phenomenon is real and objectively measurable. We did this by using electrodes on seedlings and conducting experiments and statistical analyses where wood behavior is concerned. Second, understanding what causes it. The fact that we do not yet have a model for this does not mean that the phenomenon does not exist. Phenomenology accepts reality as it presents itself.

To explain why wood takes on different properties depending on the phase of the moon, the new water paradigm initiated by Gerald Pollack is one of the most promising approaches today.¹² He has brought together a community of researchers—from Italy, France, Germany, Bulgaria, Russia, the United States, and Australia—and brought previously ostracized researchers such as Jacques Benveniste back into the spotlight. Luc Montagnier (Nobel laureate in 2008) subsequently embraced this new understanding of water.

In 2013, Pollack published The Fourth Phase of Water. He demonstrates that water assumes a special state when it comes into contact with hydrophilic membranes—and we are made entirely of hydrophilic membranes, just like all plants. Upon contact with such surfaces, over an area of 300 to 400 micrometers—almost half a millimeter—water takes on different properties: altered viscosity, refractive index, and electrical charge.

Is that what is referred to as the morphogenetic state of water?

Some people call it that. “Morphogenetics” would mean that this water enables the formation of shapes in living organisms. This new paradigm can explain a whole range of properties that humans, in their arrogance, have labeled “anomalies of water.” Water is not abnormal; we simply don’t understand it yet.

And how is that related to the phases of the moon?

The state of aggregation of water molecules—which never occur individually but always in clusters—would change in accordance with these rhythms. This is where Gerhard Dorda comes into play.¹³ He was a co-discoverer of the quantum Hall effect, which demonstrates that the electrical conductivity of certain materials varies in discrete steps rather than randomly. Dorda therefore proposed, in addition to a quantization of gravity, a quantization of time—the idea of “granular” time. On this basis, he developed a model of universal gravitation that incorporates the motion of celestial bodies: Moving masses would alter the state of aggregation of water and thereby its properties. To support this model, he used the graph from our publication in Nature.

This leads us to suspect that the wood is saturated with water that is more or less bound. Depending on the conditions and the lunar cycles, this water may take the form of either large pockets that are difficult to remove or smaller pockets that are easier to dislodge.

That’s good for the moon. But when it comes to the constellations of the zodiac, is that not another dimension entirely?

I am still in the stage of formulating hypotheses. How can the synodic rhythm—involving the moon, Earth, and sun and their gravitational effects—and the sidereal rhythm, where the constellations exert no perceptible gravitational force, be unified into a single model?

I came across an article by a geophysicist who studied the Earth’s geomagnetic activity in relation to the lunar cycle and the moon passing in front of the sun. It is well known that solar activity, which varies in an 11-year cycle, influences the Earth’s geomagnetic activity—in short, the Earth shivers when the sun flares up. The author reports that this effect diminishes when the moon passes in front of the sun: in other words, the moon acts as a shield.

His observation is astounding: the screening effect begins as early as 15 degrees before the conjunction of the moon and the sun and continues for another 15 degrees afterward, covering a total span of 30 degrees. Now, 30 degrees is one-twelfth of 360 degrees—that is, the average width of a zodiac constellation.

Proceeding from this, my working hypothesis is that the moon constantly acts as a shield: first against the sun—during the new moon phase—and everything behind it, and then successively against everything behind it, each time over a width of 30 degrees. Thus, it is not that the constellation would have an effect, but rather it would “stop” being effective during the moon’s passage. As far as I know, no one has yet investigated this approach. I intend to propose it in my next publication.

The Biosphere: Rethinking Life

During your lecture in Lausanne, you spoke quite clearly about abiogenesis—the idea that life arose from non-living matter. Like Vernadsky, you view this hypothesis with great skepticism.¹⁴

Where does life come from? To me, that’s actually the wrong question. Life has no origin: Life is the origin. This became clear to me through my work with trees, and I found this insight echoed by Pierre Feschotte, in his book Les mirages de la science [The mirages of science].¹⁵ Instead of asking the wrong question, “Where does life come from?,” it would be much more fruitful to ask where death comes from. There, we are experts.

Take a tree, for example: At the beginning, in the sprouting seed, there is only life. It is only as the tree grows that death sets in. The cambium forms bark and bast on the outside and wood on the inside. Inside, cells die off until the trunk’s core eventually consists of dead wood. Lifeless matter thus arises from living organic matter—not the other way around. As the tree ages and hollows out, soil even forms inside it. Seeds can germinate in the rotting wood of a hollow trunk; sometimes new roots sprout there. Death is a “byproduct” of life; only gradually does life learn to cope with it. Thus, the tree can live for thousands of years by building itself up on lifeless, solid substance that it produces itself and then grows over—an earthly outgrowth that creates its own soil within.

Vernadsky believes that the sun is at the heart of the biosphere. If the sun is the true center of life, then it is a living being—and all stars would be living beings as well. What do you think?

To comprehend how much the sun is alive, it is enough to take a temporal perspective. The Earth-moon-sun system pulsates like a heart. And one of the essential characteristics of the living—as Rudolf Steiner put it—is precisely this pulsation: everything that lives pulsates. Once you understand this, you see things differently and ask, “Does it pulsate or not?” The sun pulsates. We cannot verify whether there are bacteria on the sun—and there certainly aren’t—but one of the most important characteristics of life, pulsation, is definitely present.

Incidentally, in 1989, the French mathematician Jean-Marie Souriau demonstrated something remarkable at the Geneva Observatory.¹⁶ The orbital periods of Earth and Venus yield a ratio close to the golden ratio. If one continues the sequence as a Fibonacci series, the orbital periods of the other planets appear; if one goes further inward, one arrives at a value close to 30 days. The sun rotates on average in 25 to 30 days, emitting the solar wind in a spiral pattern.

So could we say that life comes from the stars?

We should not view life as proceeding from a single point, but rather in connection with the immeasurable dome of the constellations and all that it encompasses. A great botanist once said, “Plants form cells, not cells plants.” Perhaps, by analogy, we should then say, “Life is the origin of the stars, not the stars are the origin of life.”

The “Sylvosphere”: The Forest as a Superorganism

In your view, what role do trees, in the broadest sense, play for humans and for the Earth?

What matters most is always how we think about things. This is also at the heart of Goethe’s epistemology, as interpreted by Steiner. What one sees is true, but one can interpret it correctly or incorrectly. When we think of trees, we usually think of individual trees. A tree, however, can be both an organism and an organ. It is an organism, for example, when it stands alone on a hill, with its roots anchoring it in the ground. If, however, this tree is allowed to develop freely, it is very quickly joined by others. Birds bring seeds, the wind brings them as well, and other trees grow up alongside it. Together with them, it eventually forms a community—and this community becomes a forest. There, the tree becomes an organ of this forest.

And we need to be more precise. It is not the individual tree that is the organ but its species within this whole. The oak is an organ of the oak forest, which also includes other tree species—pure forest stands of a single species are virtually nonexistent in nature.

The book I’m currently writing is devoted to what I call the “sylvosphere.” It’s a new concept designed to explain how the forest forms a sheath, an interior. The individual tree—unless it has a large, freely unfolding crown—has no true interior: its trunk is solid; it is made of wood. The forest, on the other hand, is a metaorganism—a superorganism or holobiont—consisting of trees that protect its interior through the canopy and the forest edge. The interior of the forest has its own atmosphere, its own hydrology, its own soil formation, its own electrical charge in the air, and its own scent throughout the seasons. And this interior—especially its moisture—must be protected.

In this way, we move from the purely plant world—which consists solely of surface—to something that lies between plant and animal: to something that possesses an interior—just as a flower has an interior that opens to the insect coming to pollinate it. The flower bud forms a sheath; the forest does the same on a larger scale.

So my idea is that the forest is a superorganism with three components: flora, fauna, and fungi (in the form of mycorrhizae), existing both above and below ground. The fauna is the mobile part of it; the animals are the forest’s sensory organs. The forest even sends messengers to other continents; migratory birds fly to Africa and return.

From one forest to another?

From one forest to another, from one continent to another, through rivers, forests also communicate with the oceans. Salmon swim upstream to spawn, supplying the forest with phosphorus and nitrogen from the ocean. In the forests of the Pacific Northwest, home to salmon-loving bears, it has been found that up to 20 percent of the leaf nitrogen in trees along the riverbank, within a 500-meter strip on either side of the river, originates from the ocean. The forest, therefore, is in dialogue with the ocean, just as it is with other continents; it is an organism that communicates on a far broader scale than one’s conceptions might suggest.

The “Tree of Connection”: A New Pact

Do you have one final message about trees to share?

Choose your tree. They’re everywhere. The most interesting ones aren’t those that display power but those that prove resilience and endurance. These are trees that aren’t necessarily beautiful but where you can truly find peace—trees that teach us something because they have overcome trials. The trees that are, on the other hand, simply beautiful and provide wood that is perfect by technological standards are less interesting, in my opinion.

There is a wonderful project on this topic currently being developed, called L’Arbre lien [The connecting tree].¹⁷ The idea is to select trees in the forests (one per hectare) or even outside the forests, in areas visited by people. Around these trees, the forester makes a pact with the visitors who come here to recharge their force. These trees will never be cut down. They are generally of no commercial interest but are valuable in other ways. Together with their wildlife, they become part of a “primeval forest” that will never be cleared by humans, and thanks to human protection, they may live for several centuries or even millennia. In this way, a new relationship with nature can develop.

Thank you very much. This was really interesting!

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This conversation was conducted in French.

Translation from the German Joshua Kelberman

1. Ernst Zürcher, Les arbres, entre visible et invisible [Trees: Between the visible and invisible] (Arles: Actes Sud, 2016); Die Bäume und das Unsichtbare: Erstaunliche Erkenntnisse aus der Forschung (Aarau and Munich: AT Verlag, 2020); Planter un arbre: Et créer une forêt [Plant a tree: And create a forest] (Arles: Actes Sud, 2021).
2. Ernst Zürcher, À l’écoute de la forêt [Listening to the forest] (Lausanne: Éditions Favre, 2021); Le Pouls de la Terre [The pulse of the Earth] (Neuchâtel: La Salamandre, 2023); Paroles d’arbres (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2023).
3. Ernst Zürcher, “Rhythmicities in the Germination and Initial Growth of a Tropical Forest Tree Species,” Schweizerische Zeitschrift für Forstwesen / Journal forestier suisse 143, no. 12 (1992): 951–966.
4. Ernst Zürcher, Maria Giulia Cantiani, Francesco Sorbetti-Guerri, and Denis Michel, “Tree Stem Diameters Fluctuate with Tide,” Nature 392, no. 6677 (April 16, 1998): 665–666.
5. Ernst Zürcher, Rodolphe Schlaepfer, Marco Conedera, and Francesco Giudici, “Looking for Differences in Wood Properties as a Function of the Felling Date: Lunar Phase-Correlated Variations in the Drying Behavior of Norway Spruce (Picea abies Karst.) and Sweet Chestnut (Castanea sativa Mill.),” Trees: Structure and Function 24, no. 1 (2010): 31–41.
6. Maria Thun (1922–2012), a researcher in the field of biodynamic agriculture and the creator of the biodynamic sowing calendar starting in 1956.
7. Ernst Zürcher, Christine Rogenmoser, Alireza Soleimany Kartalaei, and Didier Rambert, “Reversible Variations in Some Wood Properties of Norway Spruce (Picea abies Karst.), Depending on the Tree Felling Date,” in Spruce: Ecology, Management and Conservation, edited by K. I. Nowak and H. F. Strybel (Hauppauge, NY: Nova Science Publishers, 2012), 75–94.
8. Ernst Rohmeder, “Der Einfluss der Mondphasen auf die Keimung und erste Jugendentwicklung der Fichte (Zugleich Auswertung wiederholter Keimversuche mit gealtertem Fichtensamen)” [The influence of lunar phases on the germination and early development of Norway Spruce (Including an evaluation of repeated germination experiments with aged spruce seed)], Forstwissenschaftliches Centralblatt 60, nos. 19–20 (October 1938): 593–603 and 634–646.
9. Lili Kolisko, The Moon and the Growth of Plants (Bournemouth, England: Kolisko Archive Publications, 1978); first published in German as “Der Mond und das Pflanzenwachstum” in Mitteilungen des Biologischen Instituts am Goetheanum (Stuttgart: Biologischen Instituts am Goetheanum, 1933).
10. Ernst Zürcher and Rodolphe Schlaepfer, “Lunar Rhythmicities in the Biology of Trees, Especially in the Germination of European Spruce (Picea abies Karst.): A New Statistical Analysis of Previously Published Data,” Journal of Plant Studies 3, no. 1 (2014): 103–113. The article reanalyzes Ernst Rohmeder’s 1938 spruce-germination data using modern statistical methods and reports statistically significant lunar periodicities that were not recognized in the original interpretation.
11. Lecture and discussion on March 29, 2025, at the Maison du Peuple in Lausanne, organized by Martin Bernard and the Swiss Anthroposophical Society to mark the 100th anniversary of Rudolf Steiner’s death.
12. Gerald Pollack, professor of bioengineering at the University of Washington. The Fourth Phase of Water: Beyond Solid, Liquid, and Vapor (Seattle, WA: Ebner & Sons Publishers, 2013).
13. Gerhard Dorda, German physicist. The 1985 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to Klaus von Klitzing for the discovery of the quantum Hall effect, in which Gerhard Dorda was a co-author.
14. Vladimir I. Vernadsky (1863–1945), Russian geochemist. The Biosphere (New York: Copernicus, Springer-Verlag, 1998); first published in Russian, 1926.
15. Pierre Feschotte, Swiss chemist. Les mirages de la science [The mirages of science] (Strasbourg: Les Trois Arches, 1990).
16. Jean-Marie Souriau (1922–2012), French mathematician and pioneer of symplectic geometry. Le Nombre d’or et le Système solaire [The golden ratio and the solar system] (Marseille: CNRS Luminy, 1989).
17. L’Arbre lien at arbre-lien.com.