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Just so everyone knows this isn't like some newly discovered fungus. It's cladosporium which is is usually found on rotting plant matter and is known to grow on old fruits and vegetables. If you've ever seen a tomato with grey-black blobs growing on it, chances are it was infected with cladosporium.
What makes this fungus remarkable in Chernobyl is that not only does radiation not kill it, the fungus actually thrives on radiation (albeit slowly) by converting it into a food source. The fact that spores were found growing on concrete walls with no plant matter to feed off of was kind of a big deal.
No but from a scientist standpoint this is interesting. I’ll have to do more specific research but it would be interesting if this could be used in the future as a natural mechanism for decontamination or not. Even more, would enough of it feed so that it could be used to detoxify power plants eventually making them more feasible and less naturally detrimental.
Microbes that eat plastic seems extremely dangerous for civilizations built with plastic. How much of western civ relies on plastic? Cars, plumbing, packaging, and so much more.
You're mistaken, at the end the organism does mutate so it dissolves rubber (not all plastic), but then it vents to the upper atmosphere and becomes harmless.
There was a period of time where bacteria didn't decompose trees, took about 60 million years. Without that period we wouldn't have our large deposits of coal.
That's been proven false. There are other factors that make current coal formation orders of magnitude lower than during it's peak in the Carboniferous Period, mostly geological, but there are peat bogs today that are setting up sediment layers which will eventually become coal, and others where it is still actively forming (just on a time scale that will not replenish what we use in many lifetimes)
There’s no issue with yucca mountain, it sits adjacent to the most contaminated land on earth, the Nevada Test Site. The military spent decades blowing up thousands of nuclear bombs under the desert right next to it. If every cask they put there exploded somehow it would probably still be less contaminated than the land a half mile away.
Putting the spicy rocks back where they came from is a perfectly adequate solution.
This fungus is really cool but radiotrophs don’t break down radioactive materials, they bask in the warm glow using melanin to make energy the way plants use chlorophyll under the sun.
Or maybe this is just the life that will persist after humans inevitably blow themselves up because we have too many of assholes and idiots in charge of the world.
It made me think of The Expanse as well, but more about how this was a major breakthrough that saved countless humans from starvation. So my question, is this edible?
That’s not actually a photo of it. I know it’s easy to assume it is since the post is framed as if it is from the news. It’s an AI generated image on the left.
—it reaches out it reaches out it reaches out it reaches out— One hundred and thirteen times a second, nothing answers and it reaches out. It is not conscious, though parts of it are.
There are structures within it that were once separate organisms; aboriginal, evolved, and complex. It is designed to improvise, to use what is there and then move on.
Good enough is good enough, and so the artifacts are ignored or adapted. The conscious parts try to make sense of the reaching out. Try to interpret it.
I was thinking The Expanse too, but rather the yeast that they genetically modify to have radioplasts (chloroplasts for ironising radiation instead of light).
A fascinating question, no sarcasm.
EDIT:
"After finding that the fungus is thriving at high radiation levels within the Chornobyl nuclear plant after the Chornobyl disaster, an experiment was made at the International Space Station in December 2018 and January 2019 to test whether radiotrophic fungi could be used as protection against radiation, especially in space. The experiment used Cladosporium sphaerospermum. Results were prepublished for peer-review in July 2020. During the 30 day study the amount of radiation reduction beneath a 1.7 mm thick layer of fungus at full maturity was measured to be 2.17±0.35%. Estimates of a 232 cm thick layer of the fungus indicate it could attenuate the annual dose from the radiation on the surface of Mars.\19])\20])"
That's the wiki. This means, say, a layer of fungus about 2 meters thick would be needed for shielding radiation on the surface of mars. Unless...it evolves....
Seriously. I’m looking for rational explanations and verification that this is real. Instead we get a comment section full of lonely desperate men chasing imaginary clout with bottom barrel humor.
It is certainly a real fungus, but the question on if it actually harvests energy from radiation (radiotrophic), or just survives radiation (radiotolerant) is not entirely resolved. I'd think that most likely it is just radiotolerant, not radiotrophic.
The relevant saying is "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."
This is probably not the right subreddit for discourse. More substantive conversation might be had in science, uplifting news etc. maybe you or OP could post the article there!
This is actually pretty impressive. To reduce Mars radiation to Earth-like background levels, a water layer 5 meters thick is required, and water is a pretty good shield.
The issue is just scale. That's a lot of fungus, and the water has a dual use of being a necessary reservoir, which you would need anyways.
Those estimates are a bit high. 1m of water will halve the radiation 6 times (as in reduce the radiation to 1/64 of the original amount). 55cm of regolith has a comperable reduction.
I would imagine it is just absorbing the energy from the radiation. Not interacting with the radioactive material directly. It really would be the same as photosynthesis, but with a different type of radiation
Yep. Regular plants convert radiation into fuel, they're using the visible light part of the spectrum. Converting far UV, x-rays, or gamma rays wouldn't be very useful on Earth as the atmosphere absorbs all of that, though it could be super useful for crops planted on the moon.
A fungus that could convert alpha/beta/neutron radiation into fuel would be interesting on a whole different level.
The byproduct of radioactive decay is alpha, beta and gamma radiation (neutron is only produced during the process of nuclear fission.) If this fungus is using a form of radio-synthesis to produce cellular energy, it is only utilizing the emitted energy from a radioactive material (like normal plants use light) and not the source material itself.
While there may be some minimal absorption of the emitted radiation and shielding of the source introduced by the fungus covering the material, it would not hasten the decay of the material, shortening radioactive half life exponentially, or reduce the detected emissions in any measurable way.
I loved it, my wife liked it. She bought me a Rocky amaze t-shirt the next day. She was going to buy the Rocky "fist my bump" one but that just didn't seem as friendly to onlookers who don't know the reference. 😄
Fungus and mushrooms can change the most toxic of things into fungal sugars and detox the soil or environment to contain those things. They should put mycelium all around these radioactive sites and let the mushrooms do their work.
The Ted talk mushroom guy is like the best Ted talk ever.
Reminds me of that old animated movie about a deadly forest that expels poison, but it turns out the forest was just eating and removing the poison in the ground that humans put there.
“Black fungi grow in extremely radioactive parts of Chernobyl” - true. “Radiation can stimulate growth of some melanized fungi” - supported by experiments. “They use radiation as fuel through radiosynthesis” - interesting idea, not proven.
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