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Moss Survives 9 Months in Space Vacuum
- r721 11mo agoBetter source: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2025/nov/20/moss-spores-survive-outside-international-space-station-iss https://www.theguardian.com/science/2025/nov/20/moss-spores-...
- GeorgeWoff25 11mo ago[flagged]
- r721 11mo ago^ This account frequently comments in OP account's posts: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45992902 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45992902 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45963351 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45963351 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45953724 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45953724 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45943338 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45943338 UPD Archived comment: https://archive.is/tW6SZ https://archive.is/tW6SZ
- schrodinger 11mo agoand vice versa: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45976597 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45976597
- throw10920 11mo agoEmail the mods - they (and voting ring detectors) don't catch everything, so this may fly under their radar unless you contact them.
- adrian_b 11mo agoLink to the research article: https://www.cell.com/iscience/fulltext/S2589-0042(25)02088-7 https://www.cell.com/iscience/fulltext/S2589-0042(25)02088-7 The link provided in The Guardian is broken.
- hparadiz 11mo agoI always wonder what would happen if you put a fully enclosed glass terrarium in space. How would it fair. Not big either. Grape fruit sized.
- Mistletoe 11mo agoIf it was in the sun it would be incinerated and in the shade it would freeze right?
- nine_k 11mo agoThe other side would radiate, losing the heat. Earth, being in a similar position, is neither incinerated nor refrigerated, though different sides of it can be hot or cold.
- 0_____0 11mo agoEarth has the benefit of a thermal mass that's at least a couple times larger than your average terrarium.
- nitwit005 11mo agoEverything exposed to the sun will heat up until the energy it emits balances out the incoming energy. Being a larger mass just means an object will take longer to heat up.
- cma 11mo agoDepending on how rich in internal radioactive sources of heat it isn't scale free with mass. Larger masses of the same makeup will reach different thermal equilibrium since the surface area grows at a slower rate than the internal heat production from decay which scales with mass. I don't know if it is significant, but tidal sources of heat might not scale the same either.
- 11mo ago
- ordu 11mo agoSo... Now we have a way to commit an act of biological terrorism on the whole Milky Way? Just get a hundred of tons of moss spores to space and accelerate them in all direction to spread them all over Milky Way. It is somehow a very satisfying thought. Maybe I'm a born terrorist deep down, and just didn't get the chance to become one?
- Rooki 11mo agoIs it 100% certain that's not how they got here in the first place?
- esseph 11mo agoGoldilocks theory is pretty interesting
- hatmanstack 11mo ago[flagged]
- askvictor 11mo agoIt's pretty difficult to accelerate hundreds of tons (or even a lot less than that) of stuff out of the gravity well of the Sun. Let's start by terrorising things a bit closer to home (the moon, Mars)
- hyghjiyhu 11mo agoA bootstrap station that can turn asteroids or space dust into probes sounds like a solution for that.
- lukan 11mo agoMy definition of terrorism was always more in the lines of destroying life, not spreading it. Life might be very rare, even possible that life only developed here .. then our job might be exactly this, find ways to spread life.
- 11mo ago
- zkmon 11mo agoAny idea that Earth-bound life need to migrate to outside of Earth, is a stupid sales talk, good for selling fiction stories. Any research work in this direction is purely to protect the jobs, work and funding.
- nathias 11mo agoand yet, it dies after 1 week when I bring it in as a houseplant
- HackerBarrel 11mo ago[dead]
- symbolicAGI 11mo agoOne wonders where else in the solar system moss from Earth may have taken hold. Spores and such could be making the journey randomly from gravity well to gravity well.
- r721 11mo agoA mechanism by which this could happen: >A Martian meteorite is a rock that formed on Mars, was ejected from the planet by an impact event, and traversed interplanetary space before landing on Earth as a meteorite. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martian_meteorite https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martian_meteorite
- the-mitr 11mo agoFred Hoyle with Chandra Wickramasinghe have posited mechanisms for such events in their model of Panspermia
- andrewflnr 11mo agoMoss requires quite a bit of liquid water to actually reproduce, since (IIRC) their sperm need to swim around to mate. So we're left with, like, maybe Europa, if there's enough light and enough water gets into the surface via cracks? I doubt there's enough light under the surface, even if you found a moss species that can survive being totally submerged in whatever saltwater hellscape is under there. Basically there are still going to be huge problems for moss anywhere besides Earth. They already mostly stick to wet environments here.
- kineticdaffodil 11mo agoWe should shoot life towards any planet in the solar system..
- galangalalgol 11mo agoFulfilling our purpose as an rna based von Neumann machine.
- tokai 11mo agoEarth is already exchanging material with other bodies constantly. So there is a chance that it is already happening.
- mason_mpls 11mo agoprobably not to mars, europa, ganymede, or enceladus though
- shevy-java 11mo agoFinally we know how to expand into the universe - just send that moss out there! I always thought this was peak exo-earth evolution though: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4SK0cUNMnMM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4SK0cUNMnMM
- netbioserror 11mo agoWould be interesting to see what sorts of motile creatures could descend from mosses in a few hundred million years.
- IAmBroom 11mo agoMoss sperm are already motile.
- bilsbie 11mo agoLet’s put this on mars asap
- Rattays 11mo ago[dead]
- 1970-01-01 11mo agoBut how does it taste? Safe to assume in 1000 years we'll have moss farms thriving in orbit.
- measurablefunc 11mo agoNo one even knows complex societies are going to survive 2C of warming.
- usrnm 11mo agoComplex societies definitely will survive. Probably, not the same societies that we have today, but I see no problem with that.
- asacrowflies 11mo agoBold claim withno real backing. This mass extinction might be the great filter. Seeing people dismiss it so flippantly and arrogantly is astounding .
- measurablefunc 11mo agoIt can't be any other way. Each generation is composed of optimists & so optimism is hereditary.
- Alex04 11mo ago[flagged]