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Antarctic fungi survive Martian conditions on the International Space Station
- jupp0r 3y agoSubmission title is misleading (and not the article title). Fungi did not survive in space outside the ISS, but in a pressurized environment designed to be similar to the surface of Mars.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- throwaway8877 3y agoI wonder then how possible it is that some of the spores got settled in Mars and we have already contaminated Mars with Earth fungi.
- jupp0r 3y agoThe equipment that has been sent to Mars has been sterilized in cleanroom conditions. Interplanetary contamination is something that space agencies take super seriously.
- fluoridation 3y agoFungi have metabolisms similar to those of animals. They eat dead biomass, breathe oxygen, and drink water. Mars is a dead planet with a CO2-rich atmosphere and no liquid water. Even if a spore got transported there, it would not be able to germinate.
- anonymouskimmer 3y agoMars does indeed have liquid water, and a chance at more of it: https://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2024-01-18/massive-deposits-of-water-ice-discovered-on-the-equator-of-mars.html https://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2024-01-18/massive-d... : In 2018, Mars Express located a large lake of liquid water under the Martian polar ice. https://web.archive.org/web/20210902121223/https://earthsky.org/space/mars-ice-is-dusty-and-could-melt-study-says/ https://web.archive.org/web/20210902121223/https://earthsky.... : There is a chance that this dusty and dark ice might melt a few centimeters down. And any subsurface liquid water produced from melting will be protected from evaporating in Mars’ wispy atmosphere by the overlying blanket of ice. Is it likely that Fungi would end up in the right places on Mars, and even then grow in these conditions? Probably not. But worth investigating given what is known of psychrophilic fungi. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11157-016-9395-9 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11157-016-9395-9 : Fungi are able to grow and survive at low temperature and exist widely in polar and non-polar habitats. These cold regions are known for very low temperature, high ultra violet-B radiation, frequent freeze and thaw cycles and low water and nutrient availability.
- fluoridation 3y agoGiven what is known of fungi in general, there's no need to investigate it. Fungi and animals can't thrive in extremely low oxygen concentrations. Some species are especially hardy and are able to survive extreme conditions, but none are able to sustain their biological processes without oxygen.
- anonymouskimmer 3y agoAnaerobic fungi exist. If they exist in the gut they're capable of existing elsewhere. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33193229/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33193229/ The main user of oxygen is the mitochondria, and even some non-anaerobic fungi can survive fine after losing their mitochondria.
- quatrefoil 3y agoI'm a bit perplexed about experiments like that. I get it why we did a lot of this in the early years of the Space Age to validate our assumptions about the hazards of outer space. Then, there was some scientific curiosity about how certain life forms, such as complex plants or insects, might adopt to near-zero gravity. This was a bit harder to justify in practical terms, but interesting and hard to replicate by other means. But what's the objective with this test? We can easily recreate similar conditions (pressure, temperature, illumination) here on Earth. So what have we learned to justify the cost? I'm not trolling, it's a sincere question.
- BurningFrog 3y agoThe one thing we can't replicate on Earth is low gravity.
- quatrefoil 3y agoSure, but there's no reason to suspect that low gravity does anything interesting to fungi, of all things; and there's ample evidence that it doesn't from previous experiments, intentional and not. Other comments cite instances of the crews dealing with mold on the ISS.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- kleiba 3y agoUnsurprisingly - I've seen similar stuff many times in various sci-fi horror movies.
- axxl 3y agoSomeone's going to make this comment when time travel is invented.
- kleiba 3y agoOh, it has been invented already. I specifically came back in time to make the above comment...
- aspenmayer 3y agoWe’re all living in John Titor’s world. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Titor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Titor
- datadeft 3y agoOur current understanding it that you can only travel forward in time. Could you explain how to do it backward?
- johnchristopher 3y agoReminds me of Warren Ellis Super god comics: https://i.pinimg.com/736x/a8/9c/a5/a89ca5a914ff4574548862af4ea210d2.jpg https://i.pinimg.com/736x/a8/9c/a5/a89ca5a914ff4574548862af4...
- lawlessone 3y agoI recall in one of the Asimovs Foundation books there was a fungus like substance that forced the crew to fly close to a star to kill it off.
- marcellus23 3y agoThat doesn't sound like Foundation to me. Are you sure it was from that series?
- jusuhi 3y agoMisleading title. It wasn't just "outside". It was a controlled experiment with Mars-like conditions, unlike space directly outside the ISS.
- 082349872349872 3y agosee also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lichen#Ecological_interactions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lichen#Ecological_interactions
- verisimi 3y ago[flagged]
- MicolashKyoka 3y agoif a protomolecule ever comes to be, it's going to be some sort of fungi-based lifeform.
- belter 3y agoTell me about it ....
- plonk 3y agoIs that an Expanse reference or does the word mean something else in biology?
- andrewflnr 3y agoIt definitely doesn't mean anything in real science.
- MicolashKyoka 3y agoit is! but I meant the idea of it, ie self-replicating biological programs that could be hurled through space and be used for terraforming.
- yanko 3y agoThere is controversial opinion that previous space station MIR was abandoned due to deadly fungi plague spread all over the station
- ceejayoz 3y agoThat's on the inside, though. The ISS has to mitigate mold as well. https://newspaceeconomy.ca/2023/03/29/mold-in-space-the-hidden-danger-astronauts-face/ https://newspaceeconomy.ca/2023/03/29/mold-in-space-the-hidd... has a picture of a wall panel covered in the stuff after astronauts hung damp workout clothes out to dry.
- Loughla 3y agoThat just makes sense. A sealed environment full of human would tend towards fungus.
- ratg13 3y agoThis was on the outside https://www.permaculturenews.org/2017/03/27/aggressive-fungus-found-growing-outer-space/ https://www.permaculturenews.org/2017/03/27/aggressive-fungu...
- ceejayoz 3y agoNo, it wasn't. That's the author misreading their source; see the second paragraph. Nothing in that article supports the first paragraph's assertion.
- ratg13 3y agoI actually hadn't heard of this before and googled it and this was the first article that came up. Thank you for the correction.
- sitkack 3y agoWell it was made out of plywood. Unless they made the wood poisonous to all life, it is also food. And humans basically exhale the rest of what fungi need to thrive. Space is not all that inhospitable to life. There are strong theories that after major cataclysms on earth, rocks in space with life attached then reseeded earth when they came back down.
- lawlessone 3y agoI've heard on panspermia in relation to Earth. But what are the odds an asteroid hitting Earth has already seeded life elsewhere in the solar system?
- hnarn 3y agoReminds me of a really interesting video Kurzgesagt posted recently: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=JOiGEI9pQBs https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=JOiGEI9pQBs
- JumpCrisscross 3y agoThe habitable epoch, when "the cosmic microwave background (CMB) had a temperature of 273–373 K (0–100 °C), allowing early rocky planets (if any existed) to have liquid water chemistry on their surface and be habitable, irrespective of their distance from a star," has always fascinated me [1]. Space itself was room temperature. Our universe would seem to them like the universe on the verge of heat death does to us. To my knowledge, I don't know of any fiction that explores this setting--it's on my bucket list to write. [1] https://lweb.cfa.harvard.edu/~loeb/habitable.pdf https://lweb.cfa.harvard.edu/~loeb/habitable.pdf
- samplatt 3y agoI'm having troubles following the math on that paper. If the beginning of the Habitable Epoch was 10-17MY after the big bang, when was the end?
- hnarn 3y agoNot strictly an answer to your question regarding the math, but the video I linked above does mention an estimate for how long the period might have been.
- fnordpiglet 3y agoWhy does an asteroid have to hit the earth? Life is constantly being shed from the upper atmosphere into space right now. As we travel through space we leave a plume of life behind us. Certainly almost none of it survives, but almost isn’t none, and a lot of life spreads as hardened spores that can withstand extreme conditions until more favorable conditions present and they “wake up.”
- mackman 3y agoWhile I'm sure space truffles are going to be overpriced I am excited to see those little pigs doing EVAs in their little piggy space helmets.
- stephenr 3y agoSurely the helmet will prevent them from sniffing out the spruffles?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- jimmytucson 3y agoIt’s my understanding that fungi eat dead organic matter. So what did these fungi eat and was it included in the “Mars-like” environment?
- gravelc 3y agoSome fungi require dead organic matter for survival - necrotrophs. Many dont (e.g. yeast)
- emporas 3y agoIt is saprophytic if i am not mistaken. Saprophytic means: it eats dead plants. Necrotroph means: it kills a plant, and then eats the dead plant. I have heard the term saprophytic many times, always related to fungi, but it's the first time i have heard the term necrotroph. My browser's spell correction underlines it with red like a word not spelled right. It is probably a new term.
- wongarsu 3y agoIn the context of these experiments the fungi don't really have to do anything in this Mars-like environment, except surviving. Many fungi can do that quite well by going in a dormant state. If you want to take these results to extrapolate whether there could be living and "thriving" fungi on Mars right now: there are radiotrophic fungi that can extract energy from ionizing (and possibly non-ionizing) radiation. There could also be fungi capable of chemosynthesis, the production of sugar and amino acids using oxidation reactions as a fuel source.
- joshuamcginnis 3y agoThe fungi used were lichenous and affixed to mars-like and moon-like substrata, not unlike the stone-like environments they were originally sourced from in Antarctica.
- arisAlexis 3y agoCan someone ELI5 the significance of this for non space scifi geeks ?
- VerminOctopus1 3y agoSome fungi can survive the conditions of space, which is pretty incredible. I think that’s basically it.
- jancsika 3y ago> Some fungi can survive the conditions of space, which is pretty incredible. It is literally incredible, and the title is misleading. The fungi was in some kind of box that was filled with a lot of CO2, a little O2 and H2O, and other stuff to simulate the atmosphere on Mars. That box was then placed outside the space station. It wouldn't survive if it was just growing in space, outside the space station. Believe me, I'm outside of it right now and it is not going to be fun[1]. 1: I'm about to start doing my taxes-- blecch-- here on Earth, which is technically outside of the space station.
- Sharlin 3y agoIf even some hardy Earth organisms can survive (the article doesn't say anything about it, but this was almost certainly survival in a dormant desiccated state rather than being metabolically active doing fungus things) Martian conditions, it slightly raises the odds that whatever microbial life Mars may have once hosted may still exist in protected, hard-to-reach spots – possibly hundreds of meters beneath the surface like a surprising amount of Earth life. It also slightly raises the odds that genetically modified fungi and lichen might be able to metabolize and grow on Mars at least if suitably protected, which may have implications on astronaut food and oxygen production as well as, much more speculatively, terraforming. Further, it has implications on planetary protection – the measures we take to avoid accidentally infesting other worlds with Earth life.
- joshuamcginnis 3y agoLichens found in extreme environments on Earth (rocks in Antarctica) were sent to space and exposed to the elements. Some survived.
- lgkk 3y agoI would like to believe we were put here by a super advanced species so they could observe what we do for their entertainment and research purposes. Why else would people for example keep ant colonies in their home or grow kits? Hopefully we are not alone and they come back soon. I have many questions.
- brnt 3y agoI don't think ants want their kid 'owner' to come back soon to see how they struggle when it floods the nest. For science.
- ithkuil 3y agoOur ants may have many questions too but we don't seem to understand whether they even have questions and we may not even know how to start engaging with them to answer them. Surely they don't seem to respond to our level of intelligence, so we should adapt to their level in order to tell them something they can understand. But if we achieve that, will the ants really perceive us as a higher level of intelligence? We would clearly stumble our way to approximate a communication channel the best possible way with them and use the feedback to learn how to get better at communicating, but that may take a lot of effort on our side because we may always assume we "bottomed out" their intelligence level and that's pointless to continue probing. I now ask you to imagine an analogy with a species that is as smarter, bigger, more powerful and radically different from us as we are to ants.
- rwallace 3y agoBe careful what you hope for. For all we know, the answer might be, "Sorry, human, I'd love to chat, but I need to get your dish cleaned and racked up to dry before they close the lab for the eon. Now, how do you get the childproof cap off this bottle of antineutronium..."
- arcosdev 3y agoThe fungi of Yuggoth!
- davedx 3y agoMisleading title
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago@dang
- dang 3y ago(@dang is a no-op - the only way to get reliable message delivery is hn@ycombinator.com - but fortunately someone did that)
- dang 3y agoSubmitted title was "Fungi survives outside international space station". I've changed it to the article title now. I assume that's a fix? Submitters: "Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize." - https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- chuckhend 3y agoMy bad. It's still a very interesting read!
- lupire 3y agoFlagged submitter's editorialized false title.
- crazygringo 3y agoHow do you flag a title? Flagging an article doesn't do anything about the title, but kills virtually all further discussion if it's no longer on the front page -- which doesn't seem desirable.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- dang 3y agoFixed now. Thanks!
- ceeam 3y agoThe ISS is well within the Earth magnetic shield for starters. Almost no radiation, compared to real outer space.
- thejackgoode 3y agoIs that why they sent Scott Kelly for a year up there and then compared him to his twin?
- EasyMark 3y agodidn't they do that to test the effects of being in space for a long time on general health, dna status? See how much bones degrade, if blood chemistry stays the same, etc.
- pixelesque 3y agoNote that while the cultures were outside the Space Station, they were in containers simulating the conditions of Mars, so it doesn't seem like they were in the vacuum of Space itself, unless I've missed something in the article?
- seabass-labrax 3y agoI think you're right: the atmosphere inside the container was artificial and intended to be equivalent to the atmosphere on Mars, with natural light from the Sun allowed to pass into the container through filters which also emulated the conditions on Mars.
- dotancohen 3y agoIf I'm not mistaken Mars' atmospheric is pressure is less than 1% of the Earth's atmospheric pressure. That is a lot closer to a vacuum than it is to Earth conditions.
- hannasanarion 3y agomore like 4%, but yeah.
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago> Mars' atmospheric is pressure is less than 1% of the Earth's atmospheric pressure 0.0060 atm (0.6%), to be exact [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Mars https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Mars
- KronisLV 3y agoFollowing that link, I stumbled upon these two: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_escape https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_escape https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Future_of_Earth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Future_of_Earth What an interesting, but harrowing existence to be a part of. I don't expect humanity to last that long, but even if we did, then those would be quite the obstacles.
- oh_my_goodness 3y ago"Survives" appears in the original title but ... “The most relevant outcome was that more than 60% of the cells of the endolithic communities studied remained intact after ‘exposure to Mars’, or rather, the stability of their cellular DNA was still high,” highlights Rosa de la Torre Noetzel from Spain’s National Institute of Aerospace Technology (INTA), co-researcher on the project.
- fbdab103 3y agoIt only takes a single success to propagate a species. Sustained with a food source, presumably you could select for a new species which can survive the radiation and near vacuum.
- smusamashah 3y agoWhy does we go through so much trouble to not let mars etc get polluted by life from earth, why don't we just send a bug chunk of hardcore life forms like this fungi and others on the red planet etc and go back later to see how they are fairing? What are we trying to find or learn that life from earth will permanently remove the chance of?
- ufo 3y agoFor starters it becomes harder to find martian life. The earth life could kill the martian life before we get a chance to find it. Also, if the experiments detect signs of life, we won't be able to know if it's from martian life or from the earth life we brought along.
- eganist 3y ago> What are we trying to find or learn that life from earth will permanently remove the chance of? Species prove to be invasive all the time on earth when exposed to new ecosystems or environments, and usually that's at the expense of many potential discoveries about the life forms that are replaced. Seeding the universe with life from our planet may make sense as a survival strategy, but there's no ceiling to the knowledge we can glean from life thats different from our own. In short: we don't know what we don't know, and the gains from such knowledge could be endless.
- smusamashah 3y agoSo one of the things we are trying to learn is if there are other type of life forms than what we know from earth. What if do find something, there are no big size living things there but if did find some microbial Mars/X native life form, will we just let that be? Won't we still try to put ourselves there anyway? that's what we do on current planet being top of the food chain.
- throwup238 3y agoYeah the whole safety dance is a bit of a farce. Everyone is willing to play along with the ethical considerations now because there's currently zero value to the Moon and Mars but if we had the technology and industrial capacity to start sending thousands of colonists, those rules would probably be discarded with much haste.
- urza 3y agoWell of course it does.
- tecleandor 3y agoBy the way, this article should be tagged (2016) The paper, from 2015: https://doi.org/10.1089%2Fast.2015.1324 https://doi.org/10.1089%2Fast.2015.1324
- tagami 3y agoFrom 2016...
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- nvahalik 3y agoAre they affected by radiation?
- ThinkBeat 3y agoI am no biologist; I am unclear about the terms here. Let say I have a piece of bread that has mold on it. I leave it alone, the mold grows and consumes more of the bread. The mold / fungi is "alive" in that it is growing and consuming. Let us say that the fungi here was from moldy bread. They shoot it into space, stuff it inside the lab and expose it to the same environment. Does survival then mean that it keeps eating more of the bread while the experiment is taking place, so when they look at it afterwards there is a lot more of it? But 40% of it has died? Or does it mean that the cells making up the mold are entirely dormant but is the DNA structure has remained intact for 60% of the mold and the hypothesis is that if you brought it back to earth it would start "being alive", growing, eating again? >The most relevant outcome was that more than 60% of the cells of the endolithic communities studied remained intact after ‘exposure to Mars’, or rather, the stability of their cellular DNA was still high,”
- stephenitis 3y agoArm chair guessing here. If they were spores, they would test to see if the spores were viable. If it was the mycelium body they would see if it was still viable to grow.
- ThinkBeat 3y agoIt would be interesting if a later report talked about attempting to grow them again.