[HN Gopher] Will plants grow on the moon?
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Will plants grow on the moon?
Author : dnetesn
Score : 61 points
Date : 2024-11-05 14:49 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (worldsensorium.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (worldsensorium.com)
| cratermoon wrote:
| Spoiler: this experiment is not going to try to grow plants in
| the lunar regolith. The "growth chamber" will be a hydroponic set
| up. The focus will be on the effects of unfiltered sunlight and
| all the various forms of radiation that are not present on earth
| because of the atmosphere.
| eric-hu wrote:
| I am curious about how regolith would act as a growing medium.
| sampo wrote:
| Plants grow, but not very well.
|
| https://www.nasa.gov/humans-in-space/scientists-grow-
| plants-...
| Syonyk wrote:
| I'll be _very_ surprised if plants from Earth can tolerate the
| sort of high radiation environment that is the moon (or space in
| general, outside the magnetically shielded and atmospherically
| shielded bubble that is Earth).
|
| We tend to forget that the sun is an incredibly powerful and
| quite unshielded fusion reactor purring away, pushing 1000W/m^2
| through our atmosphere. It's about 1400W/m^2 at 1AU (outside the
| Earth's sheltering fields and such) - and most of that difference
| is some really nasty, ionizing stuff. To the best of my
| knowledge, the moon is rather outside the Earth's magnetic
| shielding influence.
|
| But things will certainly be learned in the process!
| retrac wrote:
| Some forms of life can tolerate remarkable levels of ionizing
| radiation, though I doubt anything terrestrial would survive a
| pass through Jupiter's radiation belts unshielded.
|
| It has been suggested that some fungi can extract useful energy
| from radiation: https://www.rsb.org.uk/biologist-
| features/eating-gamma-radia...
| RajT88 wrote:
| We just have to figure out how to make Tardigrades gigantic
| and then farm them for meat.
|
| (I feel like this must have been a Futurama plot, and mist
| have ended poorly)
| 77pt77 wrote:
| Riding giant domesticated tardigrades on the moon is the
| future I want.
| bregma wrote:
| "Gi'yup little Tardy! We gotta git these dogies to
| Copernicus before sundown, and that's only two weeks
| away!"
| itishappy wrote:
| The Problem with Popplers
|
| Season 2, Episode 18
|
| https://futurama.fandom.com/wiki/Popplers
| dexwiz wrote:
| I don't know the exact levels, but radiation+plants doesn't
| always equal death. Plant genomes tend to be much larger to
| animal genomes, and much more copies of specific genes.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_gardening
| hinkley wrote:
| Clerestory at the north and south poles where the sun shines
| basically all the time.
|
| Don't let any light in directly, only reflected light.
| mrec wrote:
| I read the complete short stories of Arthur C. Clarke recently
| and one of the things that really struck me was that several of
| the early stories (long before NASA) had lunar-native plants
| growing wild on the Moon. For a hard SF writer I found that
| extraordinary; you forget just how much the speculative consensus
| has changed within quite a short period.
|
| In a similar vein, several of the early stories seem convinced by
| the evidence for psionics...
| WillAdams wrote:
| Before the advent of cell phones it seemed expedient to have
| telepathy for quick communication --- that said, Heinlein did
| predict them in his novel _Space Cadet_ (though they don't make
| more than a brief appearance).
| james_marks wrote:
| For those that don't understand Clarke's relation to cell
| phones:
|
| https://web.mit.edu/m-i-t/science_fiction/jenkins/jenkins_4..
| ...
| technothrasher wrote:
| Clarke had a pretty interesting progression from belief in many
| paranormal claims to hard core skeptic over his lifetime, and
| similarly from pantheist to atheist.
| 77pt77 wrote:
| Also progression from gay to pedophile.
|
| https://www.thefreelibrary.com/It+doesn%27t+do+any+harm+...m.
| ..
|
| There is so much corroborating evidence it's an almost
| certainty.
| gardaani wrote:
| Chinese already did a similar experiment few years ago and the
| result was that "plants can grow on the moon despite the intense
| radiation, low gravity, and prolonged intense light"
|
| https://phys.org/news/2023-10-china-tiny-farm-moon.html
| Syonyk wrote:
| > _Over the next eight days, this payload conducted a vital
| experiment where it attempted to grow the first plants on the
| moon._
|
| The plants survived eight days before freezing, but important
| questions also include things like "How does the radiation
| impact their seed viability in future generations?"
|
| I'll grant that they didn't immediately die, but neither would
| I have expected that from an ionizing environment. Just a lot
| of weird quirks in lifecycle.
| Suppafly wrote:
| You can keep something alive for a week in a terrarium
| basically anywhere, I'm not even sure their result is
| interesting if it weren't for the fact that it was on the
| moon.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| We do need to prove basic assumptions on the fairly likely
| chance that they won't pan out.
| seanw444 wrote:
| > if it weren't for the fact that it was on the moon.
|
| If it weren't for the entire reason they did the experiment
| in the first place?
| throw88888 wrote:
| Ionized radiation is dangerous to mammals because of the
| potential DNA damage that we are so bad at repairing.
|
| Plants on the contrary tolerate much more damage. To the
| point that we develop new species by bombarding seeds with
| ionized radiation.
| dhosek wrote:
| I read about an effort to do this in the 1950s (IIRC, it
| was in _Pawpaw: In Search of America 's Forgotten Fruit_ by
| Andrew Moore, but I could be wrong about that) and as I
| remember it, most of the radiated seeds were either sterile
| or produced deformed offspring.
| realce wrote:
| Did they expose the seeds or the plant that produced
| them?
| CapitalistCartr wrote:
| Atomic gardens:
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_gardening
| readyplayernull wrote:
| + artificial selection by robots, could be a way to
| generate environment adapted organisms.
| fsckboy wrote:
| > _we develop new species by bombarding seeds with ionized
| radiation_
|
| "yes, no problem, because _what could go wrong!?_ Another
| slice of care-not cake, pls "
| pixl97 wrote:
| Honesty the biggest what could go wrong is things like
| vegetables will stop producing the useful large fruits we
| eat if we're trying to grow things for food.
| bregma wrote:
| On the contrary: the ones that washed up on the shore of
| Gilligan's Island were unusually large.
| itishappy wrote:
| While it sure sounds straight out of some 50s horror
| movie, I have a feeling the consequences here are pretty
| insignificant. The mutant tomatoes I've harvested and
| eaten from my garden have been quite tasty. Any
| particular fears in mind?
| fsckboy wrote:
| "having a feeling" plus anecdata is not a long term
| longitudinal study.
| evilduck wrote:
| What's the difference between atomic gardening and
| regular selective breeding performed under the giant ball
| emitting ionizing radiation that we have overhead half
| the day except the rate at which mutations occur? Plants
| with terrible nonviable mutations might be entirely
| sterile even if we like them, plants with viable but
| undesirable mutations we won't propagate into another
| generation. It seems akin to modern GMO efforts with a
| shotgun instead of a scalpel, but it did work.
|
| Plants also handle mutations differently, creating burls
| and cavities and whatnot instead of it taking over the
| entire existing plant like cancer does in animals. You're
| unlikely to generate a Plants vs. Zombies scenario here.
| fsckboy wrote:
| irradiating seeds without irradiating the consumers of
| seeds creates an opportunity for one-sided evolutionary
| advantage. see Gojira
| jajko wrote:
| This is what nature keeps doing for billions of years -
| we have constant background radiation, some stuff from
| sun which still gets through, and lets not forget about
| everybody's favorite cosmic rays. The most energetic
| particle we detected had energy of baseball ball thrown
| at 100kmh. I'd say this is the main fuel of whole
| evolution of life on Earth, on top of drastically
| changing environments.
|
| You can't build 100% radiation-shielded environment,
| anywhere. Neutrinos just don't care that much about
| obstacles (and interact very weakly with target, but they
| still do in small numbers, that's how we detect them).
| fsckboy wrote:
| on the scale that nature does it, the consumers of plants
| also evolve.
|
| I can't believe what I'm being asked to argue here, it's
| "environmentalism" and "public health" and "anti big X"
| all rolled up into one. I'm on the other sides of all
| those issues, so I wish you'd all get back in your lanes.
| mjfl wrote:
| yeah plants tend to be polyploid which helps with
| robustness to radiation damage.
| hammock wrote:
| Have we tried the same with animals?
| perihelions wrote:
| That same lander (Chang'e 4) also measured the radiation dose
| rate on the moon. It's about 2.6x that of the ISS. Doesn't
| account for solar particle events, which they didn't encounter
| any.
|
| https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aaz1334 ( _" First
| measurements of the radiation dose on the lunar surface"_)
|
| - _" LND measured an average dose equivalent of 1369 mSv/day on
| the surface of the Moon."_
| jbverschoor wrote:
| No plants, just mold or fungus.. It's made of cheese.
| wakahiu wrote:
| Do such kinds of experiments confound our search for
| extraterrestrial life? Mars and moon missions could introduce
| tiny life forms, that could be released into the environment.
| Some of these are extremely hardy (such as tardigrades) which
| could then start proliferating when conditions are right.
| ravenstine wrote:
| They'd definitely muddy the water, but wouldn't genetics
| confirm whether a life form is from Earth? (assuming other life
| even has anything resembling our form of genetics)
| sulam wrote:
| No, not least because the panspermia hypothesis says that DNA
| is in fact not originally from Earth.
| accrual wrote:
| Yep! There is very real concern about accidentally introducing
| Earth life on others moons and planets, and then "discovering"
| the introduced life instead of actual native life.
|
| As you mentioned with tardigrades, there are life forms and
| bacteria that could possibly survive a long duration flight
| through the vacuum of space, then proliferate once it reaches
| the surface somewhere.
|
| This is usually guarded against by various sterilization
| techniques applied to the spacecraft before launch, and there
| is a discipline dedicated to ensuring these events don't
| happen:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetary_protection
| evilduck wrote:
| Mars, Earth and the Moon are close enough neighbors that rocks
| which could harbor life are already exchanged between them
| during impact events.
|
| Life found in deep granite rock on Earth:
| https://academic.oup.com/femsre/article/20/3-4/399/516507
|
| This recent one even discusses Mars being the origin of life
| and seeding Earth (panspermia) https://www.sciencedaily.com/rel
| eases/2024/10/241003123543.h....
|
| Mars rocks found on Earth: https://www.space.com/mars-
| meteorites-on-earth-mystery Mars rocks being plausible
| candidates for harboring life:
| https://www.planetary.org/articles/nasa-discovers-mars-rock-...
|
| I think reasonable caution by space agencies is wise but it
| also could have already happened a billion years ago. If we
| want to survive as a species or lineage of species beyond the
| Sun enveloping the Earth we will also need to deliberately
| establish viable life on other planets and even other solar
| systems at some point, previous historical records of ancestral
| life or present planetary sterility be damned. Life seems too
| rare in the universe for it to go down with the ship, we should
| make an effort to duplicate this experiment even if humanity
| doesn't make it.
| sampo wrote:
| People have been growing plants in space stations since 1982. I
| don't see how growing plants in an isolated greenhouse on Moon
| would be much different.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plants_in_space#Space_station_...
| zokier wrote:
| > The response of plants to microgravity on the International
| Space Station is known, but "we know ... almost nothing about
| how they and other organisms respond to partial gravity," she
| says.
|
| > How they will respond to intense lunar radiation is perhaps
| the biggest question currently--the International Space Station
| orbits within the Earth's magnetic field, and so it is exposed
| to much lower radiation levels than the lunar surface
| jmyeet wrote:
| There are a bunch of challenges to growing stuff on the Moon. The
| low gravity, the lack of defense from ioizing radiation that we
| have on Earth and, perhaps most importantly, the day/night cycle.
|
| The Moon is tidally locked with EArth so the da/night cycle is 28
| days. Anywhere other than the poles and you'll have ~2 weeks of
| darkness every month. This affects how you can potentially
| generate power (ie it complicates solar power generation) but
| also plant growth. Ideally you want the plants to grow with
| passive light (ie light from the Sun) because that's "free". So
| any experiment should try and find out how plants do if they get
| 14 days of straight sunlight followed by 14 days of straight
| darkness.
|
| There are some plants you could grow in 14 days of sunlight even
| if nothing useful can survive the darkness (which, I believe, is
| unknown). You can spend energy to create light or you can use
| fiber optic cables to essentially passively pipe light around. I
| don't know if you can get the right wavelengths you need this way
| or if it's economically viable.
|
| As for radiation, it's less of an issue for plants but could
| still be an issue. It's worth finding out. But there are ways you
| can reduce this. You're going to need something transparent to
| get sunlight in. You can filter UV rays out to some degree
| depending on your material. You can even put water between the
| plants and the sun (ie a water tank between the plants and the
| Sun).
|
| Or if you can pipe sunlight around fiber optic cables you don't
| put your plaants on the surface at all. Your pressurize lava
| tubes instead.
|
| Or if energy becomes so ridiculously cheap that none of these are
| any problem at all.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Grow them in the lava tubes using mirrors to bounce the light
| around like the Egyptians used. Sounds like a fun game to be
| able to place the mirrors around the surface of the moon so
| that it still has light during the 2 weeks of darkness
| jmyeet wrote:
| I'm curious how feasible it is to put reflectors in orbit
| around the Moon to create/extend day cycles. I actually found
| some literature on this [1].
|
| [1]: https://hackaday.com/2024/04/03/space-mirrors-dreams-of-
| turn...
| dylan604 wrote:
| "This is an idea that's been around for a hundred years
| already,"
|
| It's kind of funny to me that "a hundred years ago" has
| finally gotten to the point that we're still talking
| technology/industrial age and doesn't seem so old now. When
| I was a kid, a hundred years ago was still cart & buggy and
| other low tech things as the most common which made it feel
| like a really long time ago.
| usefulcat wrote:
| > So any experiment should try and find out how plants do if
| they get 14 days of straight sunlight followed by 14 days of
| straight darkness.
|
| I would think the extreme cold would be an even bigger problem
| than the lack of light.
| jmyeet wrote:
| That's not necessarily a problem. Or at least it's a solvable
| problem.
|
| A surface greenhouse would be insulated. It would still lose
| heat to thermal radiation. I'm not sure of the rate. It may
| be manageable because when the Sun is shining, not only are
| you heating up but the plants themselves generate heat (ie
| it's a greenhouse).
|
| This may be another reason why you're better off growing
| plants underground because it lessens the temperature
| extremes.
|
| Otherwise things can be heated with waste heat or directly if
| required.
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| In a lecture I saw 10 years ago, Freeman Dyson advocated for
| teaching children to genetically engineer plants. He thought
| without the playful urge of children, we'd never be able to
| create "warm blooded" plants capable of surviving on asteroids
| and the moon. He pointed out that there is a greater surface area
| on the asteroid belt than all the planets.
|
| I still don't know how he'd deal with atmosphere, but I love the
| vision. And, I learned that there are some exothermic plants,
| like Skunk Cabbage, that can chemically regulate their body
| temperature.
|
| Like I said, I love the vision.
| hinkley wrote:
| Lots of carbon and oxygen in asteroids if you pick the right
| ones.
|
| Some of the carbonaceous ones have some nitrogen as well.
|
| The big trick with smelting in space will be capturing all of
| the dust and smoke instead of losing the stuff and creating
| navigational hazards.
| WillAdams wrote:
| Hal Clement envisioned a genetically engineered organism able
| to enclose water in outer space in his short story "Raindrop"
| --- collected in _Space Lash_ (originally published as _Small
| Changes_), it is a remarkable collection of short stories, many
| of which are still relevant today.
| aussieguy1234 wrote:
| To grow plants anywhere, its important to remember that soil is
| not required and they can be grown entirely in water. I've done
| it several times with Kratky method hydroponics and no soil at
| all.
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