Fungus at Chernobyl absorbs nuclear radiation via radiosynthesis

>> it could be shown that the melanized fungus C. sphaerospermum can be cultivated in LEO (Low Earth Orbit), while subject to the unique microgravity and radiation environment of the ISS.

I believe this "small scale" experiment was meant as a "proof of concept" to illustrate the idea whether this could be done in house in adverse conditions (unlike Earth's conditions) and could be a potential long term solution for radiation attenuation. I would hope that these somewhat promising results would allow them to conduct a large scale experiment.

Reading the paper again, I made a mistake in my comment above. The mass attenuation coefficient was at 10keV not 100MeV. Water has a mass attenuation coefficient of about 5cm^2/g at 10keV.

Table 1 [1] in the paper shows the true comparison with water at 100 MeV where it can be seen that there is not a large difference. On a weight basis stainless steel outperforms the fungus.

[1] https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.16.205534v1....

still worth for the conversion of radiative energy to biological activity

nuclear waste may become green :)

Yes! Ever since I read that I’ve caught myself thinking of cosmic radiation as ‘the pain of space’.

Haha, yes that was the first thing that popped into my head too.

I remember thinkig how ridiculous (but entertaining) an idea that was, like many of his very unusual thoughts. Maybe not so crazy after all!

Interesting - how haven’t I heard about that story? I immediately thought about how Rick covers his outpost in screaming Mortys so that the galactic government can’t detect him. Morty pain as anti-Rick is a strange, appealing and disturbing thought... they’re effectively oysters soaking up the pain of the universe.

When I was in High School I had a teacher who taught a Literature of SF class.

Every single short story in the Science Fiction Hall of Fame Vol. 1 was required reading.

I remain thankful to that teacher.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Science_Fiction_Hall_of_Fa...

Absorbtion is a misnomer.

It uses a tiny fraction of energy of whatever particle it is. In terms of attenuation it cant be different from anything else of similar density and composition.

Given we are taking about space here I'm quite sure water outperforms per kg compared to the others you've mentioned.

Fairly certain there's no high-Z solid that could compete on cost to orbit.

I think the whole framing of this discussion is inappropriate. The interesting thing about this fungus is that it can use the radiation as an energy source to sustain life. The fact that we can’t use the fungus as some kind of miracle lightweight radiation shield is missing the point.

Here we have a life form that has adapted to make use of a very unusual (on earth’s surface, anyway) energy source. That should not be taken for granted. It’s an amazing demonstration of the adaptability of life. It also warrants a deeper investigation into how this ability works and how it came about by evolutionary processes.

Density blocks radiation but it's the "hard way" of doing it

It's better to have something that resonates in the frequencies you want to block.

Given that melanin already works in the UV range it's not surprising that maybe with some changes it works with higher frequencies (though not too trivial neither because of the way quantum physics work)

Life can't exceed the capabilities of its substrates on their own terms, but it's not clear that life can be fully explained in or reduced to those terms either.

Anyways, yes, this is super cool.

On the contrary, I’d argue that most “life” (in the sense of our Eucledian definition of it) relies on exceeding the capabilities of its substrates via emergent properties - at least from the perspective of our current infantile understanding of the universe. Photosynthesis is so efficient because electrons jump multi-molecule gaps due to quantum effects, as we’ve found only a few years ago. The theory that most biological brains heavily leverage quantum processes is rapidly gaining ground as well - we simply lack the intelligence and processing capacity to design anything like it, since compared to our current computational abilities, millions of years worth of entropy may as well be an infinite amount.

Reductionism fails as completely as it does hilariously when it comes to systems where the whole does indeed exceed the sum of its parts due to laws of the universe we have yet to grasp. A much more sane approach is to think of the matter something is comprised of as nothing more than a filter/transformer for the entropy and environment it exists within. Life routinely harnesses entropy whereas our current technology is so ass backwards it does little but struggle against it (dendrites in batteries, for example). What science considers to be degradation or wear and tear is the very process living things rely on to exist - let that sink in.

Earth has always been radioactive, so my guess is that this is an ancient ability rarely used/seen, not something that evolved since 1986.

And for a layman digestible version https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/radiation-helps-f... (from 2007)

>> radiation beneath a ≈ 1.7 mm thick lawn of the melanized radiotrophic fungus (180° protection radius) was 2.17±0.35% lower as compared to the negative control.

2% doesn't seem much but again its just from 1.7 mm thick fungus. Wouldn't it be easier to grow it on Earth instead and test with thicker fungus layer for a significant attenuation of the radiation? I understand that they want to use it eventually on the ISS but couldn't the prototype be tested on Earth as well?

And they just found an ocean on Ceres. Is that in the book?

> Is it doable to maintain a 21-cm thick layer of fungus, at all, let alone in space, for a prolonged period of time?

Building a living wall isn’t hard, I have one with moss in my flat it does wonders for air quality (even if not actual one just the smell/perception is enough), fungus is easy to grow - feed it shit and keep it in the dark does work.

> Wouldn't it be easier/simpler to replicate this radio-synthesis mechanism in a non-organic setting?

This is pretty much one the hardest things to do in science today, replicating complex biological processes in a non-biological manner.

Insulin while being the first human protein to be synthesized today is still created using biotechnology by using bacteria to manufacture it simply because of how difficult it is to synthesize proteins.

On (2): It is often easier to have the organism do it for us.

Fungi are especially good at creating defense compounds like antivirals, antibacterials, and antifungals. This makes sense when you think about how they grow: miles of hyphae in a single square inch, and only one cell wall keeping the inside from the outside.

There are a lot of compounds that we don’t know how to synthesize, or where it’s so costly so as not to be worth it. Compare that to simply feeding a mushroom waste and waiting. Plants work similar wonders with chemistry.

Well, we are as much alike as our consciousness/brain can manage to find a pattern for. The consciousness compresses reality by finding patterns. As long as we are able to understand some phenomenon, there will always be a pattern that this understanding is serviced by, and we will be able to see some relation between two different things through that pattern. In that sense, everything we perceive will be connected in one way or another. In that sense, everything is "one".

But does that say anything about the physical world, or rather about our own brains, our consciousness and how it works? A matter of perspective. And of how you define "real".

Fungi and animals actually have a common ancestor, protista. It's not exactly my area of expertise, but I believe that the way a fungus grows its tendrils and communicates over it is much like our nervous system. Here[0] is a fancy graphic that succinctly displays how the kingdoms of life are categorized.

[0]https://biologydictionary.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Tre...

I attended a course of neurophysiology, and the most stunning thing I've found was that all (or maybe almost all, I don't remember clearly) the neurotransmitters used by a human's neurons exist in a single cellular organisms, even in prokaryotes. Serotonin, glutamat, dopamin and others could be found in bacteria, so bacteria had all the chemistry needed for a central neural system hundreds of millions years ago, and nevertheless it took hunderds of millions years ago to build Einstein's brains.

Here's the real question. Or, can it be made edible? Cultivating something like this on Mars out in the open makes more sense than growing potatoes indoors.

It shouldn't be too surprising since the universe and earth have been and remain naturally filled with radiation for billions of years. The heat that keeps magma warm in the earth comes 50% from radioactive decay of uranium and its daughters. Life today is based on plants and microorganisms absorbing radiation emanating from a giant nuclear reactor in the sky.

This is just a twist on how it's always been done.

Ah so that's why Access basically dropped off the face of the Earth, they were trapped in the sarcophagus

The videos are written, produced, generated and posted by autonomous GPT-3 bots. The first time any human became aware of this video was at the same time you became aware of it, by following the link from HN.

Disclosure: This comment was written by an autonomous GPT-3 bot.

This happened in a demo at work recently. I couldn't follow along, the robot voice was just too distracting.

In that case I think it was someone insecure in their English skills, which I guess I can understand. I would rather they just do their best and we will make it work. Most of my coworkers are ESL anyway.

If it's really a problem just ask someone else to do the voiceover. The robots are not anywhere close to good enough to do the narration without being incredibly distracting.

a guess: cheaper to produce than other videos & favorably ranked (& chosen by consumers) in search results (vs only text)?

Last minute changes to the content become a bit of a nuisance when the deliverable involves a voice recording, to say the least. A good synthesis pipeline could be set up to re-render the whole thing on a git hook.

I think this speaks to a common fear of technology taking over and incidentally/consequentially killing everyone. Like the Terminator series, and many others as well. IRL you might recall the torrents of fearful articles and posts about the world being consumed by a human-triggered black hole when they started building the massive colliders. And every few years, someone predicts AI will do us in. And HAARP killing us with bad weather and earthquakes. So many examples abound.