4 ms·

I did some basic calculations to compare the energy in the radiation vs the energy required to grow 10% extra. - If we assume they are working in the reactor w

I did some basic calculations to compare the energy in the radiation vs the energy required to grow 10% extra. - If we assume they are working in the reactor we get radiation levels of something like 1 mGy/hour. But we can prop this up to mabye 500 mGy/hour since i dont know how they grew their culture - That leads to 0.05 J of extra energy per gram of microbial bio material. - Energy needed to grow 1g of microbial biomaterial ≈ 3.15 kJ 10% of that is 315 J per gram The result is that: The amount of radiation energy available is 4 orders of magnitude too small to power even a 10% growth boost. Edit: updated with more accurate estimations.

engine_y 10mo ago
There's another parameter worth considering - how efficient is it to convert sunlight vs. gamma radiation into biologically usable energy. What if for some reason gamma radiation changes the equilibrium constants for ADP --> ATP?
- aeonik 10mo ago
  Another hypothesis to test would be if the radiation is being used as a catalyst somehow. E.g. Could be denaturing something else, unlocking a previously inaccessible energy source. Possibly some radiochemistry creating a new food source for the fungus too.
vintermann 10mo ago
Yeah, from that it sounds like the main advantage of this mold is that it gets some compensation from all that deadly radiation, and thus does better than mold which doesn't.
kalaksi 10mo ago
I'm not sure where you're going with this, but since they have actually researched how it grows, I think it's more likely your calculations/assumptions are incomplete. For example: > Energy needed to grow 1g of microbial biomaterial based on what? Edit: Maybe you meant that radiation alone wouldn't be enough for that growth, so there'd be other components that it's helping with.
- reliablereason 10mo ago
  Initially i asked a AI for standard values but here is a proper source: - Negentropy concept revisited: Standard thermodynamic properties of 16 bacteria, fungi and algae species ( https://arxiv.org/abs/1901.00494 https://arxiv.org/abs/1901.00494) > Maybe you meant that radiation alone wouldn't be enough for that growth, so there'd be other components that it's helping with. Yes. Clearly it grew as it grew, but the question is what drove/powered the growth.
  - i_cannot_hack 10mo ago
    > Initially i asked a AI for standard values Don't do this, and don't then share the resulting numbers as fact publicly without disclosing you just asked a chatbot to make up something reasonable sounding. If the chatbot refers to a source, read the source yourself and confirm it didn't make it up. If the chatbot did not refer to a source, you cannot be sure it didn't make something up. The property measured in the source you linked, "enthalpy of formation", is not the same as the energy required to grow 1g of biomatter. One clue of this is that the number in the paper is negative, which would be very strange in the context you requested (but not in the context of the paper). For the curious: "A negative enthalpy of formation indicates that a compound is more stable than its constituent elements, as the process of forming it from the elements releases energy" You're feeding yourself (and others) potentially inaccurate information due to overconfidence in the abilities of LLMs.
    - reliablereason 10mo ago
      If i understand that correctly the "energy required to grow" would be bigger than the "enthalpy of formation"? I hear you. It was really just food for thought.
      - i_cannot_hack 10mo ago
        > If i understand that correctly the "energy required to grow" would be bigger than the "enthalpy of formation"? They are almost completely unrelated concepts. The enthalpy of formation from the paper is the free useable energy that would be generated if you assembled all the molecules in the biomatter from the constituent atoms. E.g. the energy that would be released if you took pure hydrogen and pure oxygen and combined it into 1 gram of water. But the fungi takes in water from the environment to grow, it does not make it's own water from pure hydrogen, and it certainly does not generate any free energy from growing larger. With some margin for error in my understanding, since I'm not a chemist (but neither are you, and neither is the chatbot). > It was really just food for thought. It was more poison than food, since you just parroted randomly generated misinformation from the chatbot and passed it of as authentic insight.
once_inc 10mo ago
Add in some evolutionary strategies, and you have the recipe for a good sci-fi book: a fungus in Chernobyl rapidly outpaces its competitors due to its ability to absorb radiation. Each iteration grows and reproduces faster, until it is so blindingingly fast that it begins to outpace the output the fuel rods produce. The world rejoices as this fungus is perfect for cleaning up nuclear waste products, until we realize that it evolved to function outside of Chernobyl and begins to eat everything it can reach. Mankind launches into a desperate struggle for survival as the fungus lays waste to large swathes of land.
- Andrex 10mo ago
  This lines up with a book idea I've had for like 20 years. Crazy! Don't wait to write sci-fi I suppose! Life may catch up, haha.
  - rrr_oh_man 10mo ago
    Idea is nothing, execution is everything. Just write it if you want to.
    - Cthulhu_ 10mo ago
      I had a similar thought, ideas are cheap. Loads of people are like "I have this GREAT idea for an app, I just need a developer to build it!"... as if the idea on its own has value. Unfortunately and / or fortunately thanks to AI tech, anyone with an idea can now throw it at an AI and see it materialise.
    - toast0 10mo ago
      Also, doesn't matter if it's been done before either. Lots of very popular books are quite similar to books published before them. Sci-Fi is not immune. There's all sorts of memes about SciFi films that borrowed ideas and motifs from earlier works... but often when you did, it comes out that the earlier works also borrowed those pieces.
    - Andrex 10mo ago
      I will write it one day. Right now other more fully-formed creative projects are taking precedence. I do know that when I write it it'll be a different take, because it'll be my voice and perspective and a synthesis of the media that makes me, me. But as they say, writing is hard. :) My parent comment deals more with the idea that some fantastical sci-fi ideas or inventions become less fantastical the longer you sit on them. The idea for a touch-based slate computer in TNG was pretty cool! Now everyone has a tablet, and that took only about 20 years. I don't believe other literary genres have this unique problem. If I came up with a Game of Thrones-esque fantasy story, I wouldn't need to worry about the worldbuilding becoming "outdated." (Maybe in esoteric cases like dinosaurs not having feathers before we discovered that they do, etc.)
deleted 10mo ago
[deleted]
credit_guy 10mo ago
I also did some back of the envelope calculations. Here's what I got: the radiation level just 1 meter away from the "elephant foot" (the solidified molten core), at the time of the accident was about 1000 times lower than the solar irradiation. At 100 meters it was 10 million times lower (because of the inverse square law). Now, the radiation from the elephant foot has decreased significantly. I couldn't find a recent estimate, but I would expect it to be at least 100 times lower. So at 100 meters from the elephant foot, the radiation level is a billion times lower than what you get from the sun. There's no way any organism can "feed" on that.
- deleted 10mo ago
  [deleted]
- Retric 10mo ago
  > Here's what I got: the radiation level just 1 meter away from the "elephant foot" (the solidified molten core), at the time of the accident was about 1000 times lower than the solar irradiation. At 100 meters it was 10 million times lower (because of the inverse square law). No, the elephants foot isn’t a point source at its surface. To use an extreme example going from 1m away from the sun to 100m away from the sun doesn’t result in a 10,000x drop off in energy density. Instead the exponential drop-off occurs relative to the center of the sun because energy is coming from any point on the surface visible to that location. A similar principle applies with the elephants foot, though the geometry is more complicated.
  - credit_guy 10mo ago
    I treated the elephant foot as a point source. It’s a back of the envelope calculation. Maybe I’m off by a factor of 10, but I’m not off by a factor of one million.
    - Retric 10mo ago
      I mean if your benchmark was “at the time of the accident” then you’re off by more than a factor of a million. The often quoted 80 to 100 grays per hour was eight months after formation and it had gotten way less radioactive by then. Decay heat which all comes from radioactivity was ~1% of full reactor output for a few days. ~10,000 kW or so from a fairly compact object which is why it was still melting through concrete. As to a point source, if you’re making an approximation use the center of the object and your 100m distance calculation would be corrected by about 25x. Though obviously the building itself provides shielding.
PatronBernard 10mo ago
Sources dude...
Retric 10mo ago
> That leads to 0.05 J of extra energy per gram of microbial bio material Over what timeframe? If that’s 0.05 J per hour and “the researchers found that fungi that faced the galactic cosmic radiation for 26 days grew an average 1.21 times faster” 26 * 25 / 21% and the numbers don’t look that unreasonable.
- reliablereason 10mo ago
  I calculated over 5 days. Which was just a guess. But i focused on the 10% mentioned. That said time could be factored out if you did everything properly.
zamalek 10mo ago
Right, it could be a lack of competition in the direction of the reactor. It's a giant petri dish for anything able to withstand radiation.

engine_y 10mo ago

There's another parameter worth considering - how efficient is it to convert sunlight vs. gamma radiation into biologically usable energy. What if for some reason gamma radiation changes the equilibrium constants for ADP --> ATP?

aeonik 10mo ago
Another hypothesis to test would be if the radiation is being used as a catalyst somehow. E.g. Could be denaturing something else, unlocking a previously inaccessible energy source. Possibly some radiochemistry creating a new food source for the fungus too.

vintermann 10mo ago

Yeah, from that it sounds like the main advantage of this mold is that it gets some compensation from all that deadly radiation, and thus does better than mold which doesn't.

kalaksi 10mo ago

I'm not sure where you're going with this, but since they have actually researched how it grows, I think it's more likely your calculations/assumptions are incomplete. For example: > Energy needed to grow 1g of microbial biomaterial based on what? Edit: Maybe you meant that radiation alone wouldn't be enough for that growth, so there'd be other components that it's helping with.

reliablereason 10mo ago
Initially i asked a AI for standard values but here is a proper source: - Negentropy concept revisited: Standard thermodynamic properties of 16 bacteria, fungi and algae species ( https://arxiv.org/abs/1901.00494 https://arxiv.org/abs/1901.00494) > Maybe you meant that radiation alone wouldn't be enough for that growth, so there'd be other components that it's helping with. Yes. Clearly it grew as it grew, but the question is what drove/powered the growth.
- i_cannot_hack 10mo ago
  > Initially i asked a AI for standard values Don't do this, and don't then share the resulting numbers as fact publicly without disclosing you just asked a chatbot to make up something reasonable sounding. If the chatbot refers to a source, read the source yourself and confirm it didn't make it up. If the chatbot did not refer to a source, you cannot be sure it didn't make something up. The property measured in the source you linked, "enthalpy of formation", is not the same as the energy required to grow 1g of biomatter. One clue of this is that the number in the paper is negative, which would be very strange in the context you requested (but not in the context of the paper). For the curious: "A negative enthalpy of formation indicates that a compound is more stable than its constituent elements, as the process of forming it from the elements releases energy" You're feeding yourself (and others) potentially inaccurate information due to overconfidence in the abilities of LLMs.
  - reliablereason 10mo ago
    If i understand that correctly the "energy required to grow" would be bigger than the "enthalpy of formation"? I hear you. It was really just food for thought.
    - i_cannot_hack 10mo ago
      > If i understand that correctly the "energy required to grow" would be bigger than the "enthalpy of formation"? They are almost completely unrelated concepts. The enthalpy of formation from the paper is the free useable energy that would be generated if you assembled all the molecules in the biomatter from the constituent atoms. E.g. the energy that would be released if you took pure hydrogen and pure oxygen and combined it into 1 gram of water. But the fungi takes in water from the environment to grow, it does not make it's own water from pure hydrogen, and it certainly does not generate any free energy from growing larger. With some margin for error in my understanding, since I'm not a chemist (but neither are you, and neither is the chatbot). > It was really just food for thought. It was more poison than food, since you just parroted randomly generated misinformation from the chatbot and passed it of as authentic insight.

once_inc 10mo ago

Add in some evolutionary strategies, and you have the recipe for a good sci-fi book: a fungus in Chernobyl rapidly outpaces its competitors due to its ability to absorb radiation. Each iteration grows and reproduces faster, until it is so blindingingly fast that it begins to outpace the output the fuel rods produce. The world rejoices as this fungus is perfect for cleaning up nuclear waste products, until we realize that it evolved to function outside of Chernobyl and begins to eat everything it can reach. Mankind launches into a desperate struggle for survival as the fungus lays waste to large swathes of land.

Andrex 10mo ago
This lines up with a book idea I've had for like 20 years. Crazy! Don't wait to write sci-fi I suppose! Life may catch up, haha.
- rrr_oh_man 10mo ago
  Idea is nothing, execution is everything. Just write it if you want to.
  - Cthulhu_ 10mo ago
    I had a similar thought, ideas are cheap. Loads of people are like "I have this GREAT idea for an app, I just need a developer to build it!"... as if the idea on its own has value. Unfortunately and / or fortunately thanks to AI tech, anyone with an idea can now throw it at an AI and see it materialise.
  - toast0 10mo ago
    Also, doesn't matter if it's been done before either. Lots of very popular books are quite similar to books published before them. Sci-Fi is not immune. There's all sorts of memes about SciFi films that borrowed ideas and motifs from earlier works... but often when you did, it comes out that the earlier works also borrowed those pieces.
  - Andrex 10mo ago
    I will write it one day. Right now other more fully-formed creative projects are taking precedence. I do know that when I write it it'll be a different take, because it'll be my voice and perspective and a synthesis of the media that makes me, me. But as they say, writing is hard. :) My parent comment deals more with the idea that some fantastical sci-fi ideas or inventions become less fantastical the longer you sit on them. The idea for a touch-based slate computer in TNG was pretty cool! Now everyone has a tablet, and that took only about 20 years. I don't believe other literary genres have this unique problem. If I came up with a Game of Thrones-esque fantasy story, I wouldn't need to worry about the worldbuilding becoming "outdated." (Maybe in esoteric cases like dinosaurs not having feathers before we discovered that they do, etc.)

deleted 10mo ago

[deleted]

credit_guy 10mo ago

I also did some back of the envelope calculations. Here's what I got: the radiation level just 1 meter away from the "elephant foot" (the solidified molten core), at the time of the accident was about 1000 times lower than the solar irradiation. At 100 meters it was 10 million times lower (because of the inverse square law). Now, the radiation from the elephant foot has decreased significantly. I couldn't find a recent estimate, but I would expect it to be at least 100 times lower. So at 100 meters from the elephant foot, the radiation level is a billion times lower than what you get from the sun. There's no way any organism can "feed" on that.

deleted 10mo ago
[deleted]
Retric 10mo ago
> Here's what I got: the radiation level just 1 meter away from the "elephant foot" (the solidified molten core), at the time of the accident was about 1000 times lower than the solar irradiation. At 100 meters it was 10 million times lower (because of the inverse square law). No, the elephants foot isn’t a point source at its surface. To use an extreme example going from 1m away from the sun to 100m away from the sun doesn’t result in a 10,000x drop off in energy density. Instead the exponential drop-off occurs relative to the center of the sun because energy is coming from any point on the surface visible to that location. A similar principle applies with the elephants foot, though the geometry is more complicated.
- credit_guy 10mo ago
  I treated the elephant foot as a point source. It’s a back of the envelope calculation. Maybe I’m off by a factor of 10, but I’m not off by a factor of one million.
  - Retric 10mo ago
    I mean if your benchmark was “at the time of the accident” then you’re off by more than a factor of a million. The often quoted 80 to 100 grays per hour was eight months after formation and it had gotten way less radioactive by then. Decay heat which all comes from radioactivity was ~1% of full reactor output for a few days. ~10,000 kW or so from a fairly compact object which is why it was still melting through concrete. As to a point source, if you’re making an approximation use the center of the object and your 100m distance calculation would be corrected by about 25x. Though obviously the building itself provides shielding.

PatronBernard 10mo ago

Sources dude...

Retric 10mo ago

> That leads to 0.05 J of extra energy per gram of microbial bio material Over what timeframe? If that’s 0.05 J per hour and “the researchers found that fungi that faced the galactic cosmic radiation for 26 days grew an average 1.21 times faster” 26 * 25 / 21% and the numbers don’t look that unreasonable.

reliablereason 10mo ago
I calculated over 5 days. Which was just a guess. But i focused on the 10% mentioned. That said time could be factored out if you did everything properly.

zamalek 10mo ago

Right, it could be a lack of competition in the direction of the reactor. It's a giant petri dish for anything able to withstand radiation.