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The molecule c60, a.k.a Buckminsterfullerium, has shown to have powerful anti-radiation effects(http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19914272 http://www.ncbi.nlm.

The molecule c60, a.k.a Buckminsterfullerium, has shown to have powerful anti-radiation effects(http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19914272 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19914272). It can absorb ionizing radiation without degrading. They tried to kill mice by feeding them it, but they lived twice as long (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22498298 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22498298). Unfortunately, this result is so bizarre that nobody will ever believe it. NASA and SpaceX won't ever figure this out though. They will fund some sort of initiative that will waste billions and give lots of researchers jobs for years. It will test billions of small molecules and find something that improves tolerance to radiation by .1% but has toxic side effects. Edit: Gave medical study citations for both claims and got down votes? There are actually a lot of surprising results in medical literature that are ignored because there's not a lot of money in them and they were discovered with so little effort. The conventional wisdom is: if it didn't cost a billion dollars to develop, it couldn't possibly work.

Symmetry 10y ago
The potential anti-aging effects of c60 are interesting but there's no reason to believe it can help with radiation. Lots of things can absorb radiation without degrading, that doesn't mean that eating them will transfer their powers to you.
- narrator 10y ago
  This is a really phenomenal mouse study: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19914272 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19914272 It's so bizarre that it won't get followed up. I spend a lot of time digging in pubmed and when I find stuff like this, nobody cares. It's too cheap of a solution and not patentable. It will be forgotten because 95% of people will scoff at the result. It's simply too miraculous to be believed.
  - Symmetry 10y ago
    If that was just a single result I'd scoff too but it was following up on some earlier indications of the same thing so I agree it needs to be investigated more. Still, it appears to be entirely unrelated to radiation tolerance.
    - narrator 10y ago
      From the previously mentioned study: "It was found that 2-week C(60)(OH)(24) pretreatment effectively reduced whole body irradiation-induced mortality without apparent toxicity." Am I reading that wrong? That seems to say that mice that got the pretreatment with C60 were less likely to die of radiation poisoning than controls and there was no observed toxicity. That's a pretty astonishing result. This study even has several further studies that cite it, so it seems that there's some followup going on.

Symmetry 10y ago

The potential anti-aging effects of c60 are interesting but there's no reason to believe it can help with radiation. Lots of things can absorb radiation without degrading, that doesn't mean that eating them will transfer their powers to you.

narrator 10y ago
This is a really phenomenal mouse study: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19914272 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19914272 It's so bizarre that it won't get followed up. I spend a lot of time digging in pubmed and when I find stuff like this, nobody cares. It's too cheap of a solution and not patentable. It will be forgotten because 95% of people will scoff at the result. It's simply too miraculous to be believed.
- Symmetry 10y ago
  If that was just a single result I'd scoff too but it was following up on some earlier indications of the same thing so I agree it needs to be investigated more. Still, it appears to be entirely unrelated to radiation tolerance.
  - narrator 10y ago
    From the previously mentioned study: "It was found that 2-week C(60)(OH)(24) pretreatment effectively reduced whole body irradiation-induced mortality without apparent toxicity." Am I reading that wrong? That seems to say that mice that got the pretreatment with C60 were less likely to die of radiation poisoning than controls and there was no observed toxicity. That's a pretty astonishing result. This study even has several further studies that cite it, so it seems that there's some followup going on.