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Study: Potatoes can grow on Mars
- CalRobert 10y ago"CubeSat indicator experiments prove potatoes can grow on Mars. " That's a pretty flagrant abuse of the word "prove". "Suggests" would be a better choice.
- nikosdabizas 10y agoHey guys, I helped build the Cubesat, any questions - Fire away!
- TeeWEE 10y agoWhat was the atmospheric pressure during the tests? Martian like?
- nikosdabizas 10y agoIt is about 40% of Earth's pressure. So low, but not as low as the actual pressure on Mars, which is too low to even consider. This assumes a greenhouse environment but without the necessity to create exact earth pressure, making it easier to maintain, using less energy.
- nikosdabizas 10y agoHi guys, I helped build the Cubesat. Any questions: Fire away!
- rmeertens 10y agoHey! Great that you answer questions. A question I had was if you took the temperature into account in your experiments. A second question I has was: how similar is the sand you are using to real martian sand? Do you have any images of the resulting potatoes? Would they be edible?
- nikosdabizas 10y agoSo, we are regulating temperature in the cubesat. We're assuming the best conditions possible on Mars, which is summer near the equator. This means up to 20°C during the day and around zero at night (if you watch the timelapse you can occasionally see the humidity freeze and defrost, dripping on the soil)
- nikosdabizas 10y agoThe sand is very similar to Martian soil samples observed by various NASA landers over the years. It comes from a very special region in the Atacama desert called Pampas De La Joya. Our lead biologist, Julio, has been doing experiments there for years. You can read more about it on potatoes.space/mars
- nikosdabizas 10y agoLastly, the potatoes are still growing, but we expect them to be edible. Tests done outside the cubesat prior to this, growing potatoes in the soil from La Joya, were safe to eat.
- UncleSlacky 10y ago/r/ShitAmericansSay...
- dang 10y agoPlease don't do this here. We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13826998 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13826998 and marked it off-topic.
- thatgerhard 10y agowell duh, matt damon did it :P
- nsxwolf 10y ago"Scientists with the International Potato Center" made my day.
- devoply 10y agoThey're a Russian import.
- clem 10y agoShouldn't that now be the Interplanetary Potato Center?
- carterehsmith 10y agoThat, and their President is one W. Ed Russet Burbank, and he can (allegedly?) grow potatoes where noone else can. #respect
- Deestan 10y agoSoon "potato scientist" will be as impressive as - if not more than - "rocket scientist".
- dvtv75 10y agoSecond post on this thread, and sadly it's as much a joke as the first. From this point on, I'm going to cease saying "it's not rocket science," and start saying "...it's not potato science."
- donpdonp 10y agoI know, I saw Matt Daemon grow potatoes on Mars in an in-flight documentary called "The Martian".
- pklausler 10y ago/sbin/mattd
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- Waterluvian 10y agoCan I get in on the joke? :)
- tarmstrong 10y agoThey're making a joke about the misspelling of Matt Damon. "Daemon" is a computing term [0] and /sbin/ is a folder that you might want to put a Matt Daemon in. (Also, daemons are often named with a "d" at the end, like "etcd" or "mattd".) [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daemon_(computing) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daemon_(computing)
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- LeifCarrotson 10y agoThe actor is Matt Damon. Parent spelled it Matt Daemon, as in a hypothetical *nix process at /sbin/mattd
- kbenson 10y agoIf this were Reddit we could keep this going until we had a meme about Matt Damon running in the background of movies, and a whole corpus of images where he's been photoshopped to be doing just that. Now I'm kind of regretting this conversation isn't on Reddit.
- petrikapu 10y agoOn video there were liquid water. I didn't know such exist in mars.
- pavel_lishin 10y agoPotatoes don't exist on Mars, either. But if we're going there, and bringing potatoes, we'll either be bringing water, or distilling it there.
- _rpd 10y ago> we'll either be bringing water, or distilling it there Probably just melting some of the more than five million cubic kilometers of water ice that has been identified at or near the surface of modern Mars ... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_on_Mars https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_on_Mars
- Mz 10y agoIf you google "water on Mars," you come up with recent research saying, yeah, there is water there, such as: https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-confirms-evidence-that-liquid-water-flows-on-today-s-mars/ https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-confirms-evidence-th...
- torechudi 10y agoCash Me Ousside Instagram Hack Danielle Bregoli Memes http://blog.goo.ne.jp/visulsign/e/69ae454c00e36c4bf2bc51050d155515 http://blog.goo.ne.jp/visulsign/e/69ae454c00e36c4bf2bc51050d...
- u801e 10y agoThey didn't mention whether they tried to simulate the radiation levels plants would experience on Mars in their experiment. I don't know whether that would change the results.
- JohnJamesRambo 10y agohttps://www.newscientist.com/article/dn22520-mars-is-safe-from-radiation-but-the-trip-there-isnt/ https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn22520-mars-is-safe-fr... I didn't know the answer so I googled it. Apparently it isn't that high. "Readings from NASA’s Curiosity rover suggest radiation levels on the Red Planet are about the same as those in low Earth orbit, where astronauts hang out for months on the International Space Station."
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- devoply 10y agoAdd magnetic field at Lagrange point.
- guelo 10y agoI think this article is wrong about the temperature. There is little information available but here is the original press release http://cipotato.org/press-room/blog/indicators-show-potatoes-can-grow-mars/ http://cipotato.org/press-room/blog/indicators-show-potatoes... From what I can gather they used soil from some Peruvian desert and increased the CO2 in the chamber. But there is no mention of simulating the -80F night temperatures typical on Mars.
- Shorel 10y agoI'm pretty sure Martians measure temperature in Celsius.
- techthroway443 10y agoYou say that now. Wait til they colonize!
- gregschlom 10y ago0 degrees Celsius being the freezing temperature of water at sea-level atmospheric pressure, that doesn't make much more sense either :-)
- komali2 10y agoWhy not? That's just one of the ways to measure the "constant" 0 degrees Celsius. What that temperature is doesn't change just because you're at different air pressure. You don't say "water boils at 100 degrees celsius at every altitude," you say "huh neat water boils at different temperatures at different altitudes."
- the8472 10y agotechnically it's defined as 0.01°C being the triple point of water. And since the solid-liquid boundary in the phase diagram[0] is relatively stable across wide pressure ranges that means that 0°C being the melting point is not just true at a single pressure value. [0] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/08/Phase_diagram_of_water.svg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/08/Phase_di...
- david-given 10y agoFrom the article: "The box mimics the day-night patterns of Mars, as well as its temperature, air pressure and atmospheric composition." Wait, really? They're growing plants in what's practically a vacuum and at subzero temperatures? Really? That seems... stupendously unlikely... to me. Not that I wouldn't love to be wrong, mind. Anyone have a link to actual data? Everything linked to is just press fluff. Update: Actual articles on growing plants at very low pressure: https://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2004/25feb_greenhouses/ https://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2004/2... --- at 1/10 of an atmosphere, plants' metabolic balance gets screwed up and they go into drought response and die, no matter how much water is actually available. http://online.liebertpub.com/doi/abs/10.1089/ast.2009.0362 http://online.liebertpub.com/doi/abs/10.1089/ast.2009.0362 --- but lichen's probably fine.
- amelius 10y agoPerhaps they bred the plants to have better low-pressure resistance?
- stormbrew 10y agoIt sounds from the original press release [1] like they significantly enrich the soil to make up for that. [1] http://cipotato.org/press-room/blog/indicators-show-potatoes-can-grow-mars/ http://cipotato.org/press-room/blog/indicators-show-potatoes...
- stcredzero 10y agoOn the Cody's Lab YouTube channel, Cody did expose potato plants to Martian atmospheric pressure for short periods of time. Apparently, potato plants can survive a decompression event, so long as you get them back to an Earthlike environment promptly. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8VPvBr4ppU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8VPvBr4ppU I doubt they could survive extended exposure, though.
- sandworm101 10y agoAnd 'survive' is something far different than 'grow'.
- EGreg 10y agoBut can they grow in Martian soil? Its regolith is missing crucial nutrients, methinks. Otherwise, wow! The Martian's premise might actually be realistic!
- _rpd 10y agoIt's possible to grow potatoes hydroponically, so growing them in unprocessed Martian regolith is unlikely to be important until the number of Martians hits six figures.
- EGreg 10y agoSo you're going to bring your own soil everywhere? That's the unsustainable part. Terraforming would take thousands of years.
- nikdaheratik 10y agoHydroponically means "using water as a medium", so not bringing your own soil and depending on whether there's water available on Mars. You would still need to put nutrients in the water, but it would be a path to take until you get composting working.
- _rpd 10y ago> depending on whether there's water available on Mars Actually, we've recently confirmed that there are at least five million cubic kilometers of water ice on Mars ... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_on_Mars https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_on_Mars https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_on_Mars#Present_water_ice https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_on_Mars#Present_water_ic...
- _rpd 10y agoHydroponic farming doesn't use soil ... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydroponics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydroponics
- kesselvon 10y ago
- DoodleBuggy 10y agoHey, I read that book too.
- hossbeast 10y agoBut how do they simulate Martian gravity?
- _rpd 10y agoThey grew them under microgravity conditions in orbit, so they probably aren't going to have trouble coping with 2/5ths gravity.
- CobrastanJorji 10y agoThe box full of potatoes is falling from a great height with a fairly large parachute? That wouldn't really give the potatoes a very long time to demonstrate growth, though.
- disconcision 10y agojust enough time for them to think "oh no, not again" really
- azernik 10y agoWhy exactly did this experiment require a satellite? For biological purposes Martian gravity is probably closer to Earth gravity than to microgravity, and all the other conditions could be reproduced for cheaper and at larger scale in a ground laboratory. This smells of a publicity stunt to me.
- adrusi 10y agoMartian gravity is lower than earth gravity, and if the test was run in earth like gravity there could be concerns that that variable would have an effect. By conducting the experiment in lower gravity than Mars's, it's hard to doubt that martian gravity would pose a problem.
- piker 10y agoPractically speaking, honest question, how do we simulate lower gravity for extended periods other than orbit? Seems hard.
- TeMPOraL 10y agoTechnically, what you're doing in orbit is free fall ;). I've seen devices used to simulate microgravity in cell research. Devices like these: http://www.grimm-space-research.com/RPM/RPM.html http://www.grimm-space-research.com/RPM/RPM.html As far as I understand, the basic idea is to spin the sample in such a way that over time that the forces acting on it (including gravity) average out to 0. Apparently the processes they're interested in occur slowly enough that they behave as if in free fall.
- _rpd 10y ago> This smells of a publicity stunt to me. I don't know, some people are irrational about plants and farming. Sure we've grown all kinds of plants in orbit before, but maybe potatoes need to commune with the Earth in order to grow. Turns out that potatoes obey the laws of physics and chemistry as well.
- AdamTReineke 10y ago
- agconti 10y agois that you Mark Watney?
- wollstonecraft 10y agoNo mention of perchlorate.
- kumarski 10y agoImportant to understand this doesn't mean potatoes can grow in perchlorate soil.
- tenaciousDaniel 10y ago"If we can't get them out, we'll feed them out." - King Edward I, Braveheart
- vacri 10y agoPotatoes on Mars? Poland can into space!
- simonh 10y agoAnd Latvia! Except once on Mars we find potato is rock halucinated as potato due to starve.
- dnautics 10y agoI imagine one of the biggest challenges is removal of perchlorate salts from the regolith.
- personjerry 10y agoThat headline is not true. Because we don't actually have potatoes growing on Mars, there is a lot of information we could potentially be missing, like microbes we haven't discovered, effects of the radiation and little atmosphere, or (going for an extreme example here) a rabbit-like creature that we have never been able to detect yet, that eats the potatoes while we're not watching. What we've accomplished with this experiment is only to "Grow potatoes in the closest approximation to Mars setting that some scientists thought of".
- grondilu 10y ago> It was a pleasant surprise to see that potatoes we've bred to tolerate abiotic stress were able to produce tubers in this soil, Did they really produce tubers? That'd be impressive, but the video only shows "initial plant growth".
- wallace_f 10y agoIf anything can be grown on Martian soil--whether substantially nutritive or not--that can self-sustain and propagate on its own, I wonder if that is an avenue for terraformation.
- stefantalpalaru 10y ago> If anything can be grown on Martian soil Not so fast. Actual Martian soil has perchlorate and a pH of 8.3 .
- Tepix 10y agoHere's a relevant related link: https://www.reddit.com/r/Mars/comments/4ib9d9/never_freezing_passive_martian_greenhouse_no/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Mars/comments/4ib9d9/never_freezing... The post introduces a model of a passive (pressurized) greenhouse on Mars that manages moderate temperatures just using insulation and some soil and water for thermal inertia.