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Study: Potatoes can grow on Mars

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Re: Study: Potatoes can grow on Mars

#91

Post by kbenson »

taneq wrote: post #82
kbenson wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If 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.

You can fix that, you know.

Yeah, but I'm not one to force conversations. Maybe I can gently steer it the next time a Matt Damon relevant post comes up in gifs, assuming I get there before it's swamped in comments.

In the meantime, I guess I could make some gifs. Because that's a much better use of my time than research, learning, or taxes...

Re: Study: Potatoes can grow on Mars

#92

Post by astrodust »

ars wrote: post #90
astrodust wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, you're right about calorie vs. Joule. That is a bit rough around the edges. > For temperature Fahrenheit is the better scale. Yeah, no. It's a stupid system. It's not even calibrated properly. 100° was supposed to be body temperature. They got it wrong. 0° was the lowest temperature they could measure at the time because that's when mercury froze. That's so useful! I really want to know if the mercury I carry aro…

> That is a bit rough around the edges. Correct. It would be one thing if Celsius is somehow tied into the rest of the SI units, but it is not, which means we can replace it. > It's not even calibrated properly. Who cares if they got the calibration of Fahrenheit wrong, at the end of the day it's more usable than Celsius for humans. 0 Fahrenheit is the temperature when it's really cold outside, 100 is when it's hot.…

> It's not that hard to remember 32 for ice. With Celsius you need to deal with negative temperatures all the time, and worse, the size of the degrees is too coarse.

Well, the whole world manages to deal with °C and only America and a handful of backwater countries insist on using °F.

"Too coarse" is absurd. People just measure to the nearest 0.5°C if you want to get all fussy, but that's not normally the case. It's 12° out? Wear a jacket. 12.0 vs. 12.5° isn't going to change that.

It keeps the numbers smaller. Temperatures here flop between -40°C and +40°C, so the numbers never get large. Meanwhile in the US you see temperatures of 100°F all the time as well as negative ones like -30°F. It's a much wider spread for no real reason.

I hope you know the only reason America didn't get with the program and metricize like it was fully intending to do in the early 1980s is because Reagan was an asshole.

Re: Study: Potatoes can grow on Mars

#93

Post by option_greek »

cmdr2 wrote: post #89
clinton wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems that this short story was originally published in an old science fiction magazine (that my local library doesn't stock). Was wondering if it also made its way into a compilation of some sort. Google hasn't turned up anything for me yet.

Is this the story? http://www.young-adult-books.com/read/buy-jupiter-and-other-... (link says "buy", but looks like the entire story is on that page)

Thanks for the link! Apparently 'Buy Jupiter' it self is a story (so all the stories on the page are free)

Re: Study: Potatoes can grow on Mars

#94

Post by ars »

averagewall wrote: post #84
ars wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That has nothing to do with temperature. You can keep metric and use Fahrenheit with very little change. And you got your units wrong anyway: "To heat one cubic centimetre of water up 1°C takes 1 Joule" - you mean 1 calorie, not 1 Joule. Change Celsius to Fahrenheit and only calorie changes, and since it's anyway not part of SI it makes little difference. Joule is the main energy unit, and it's not tied to Celsius at…

A difference in temperature has the same numerical value in both degrees C and K. Often differences in temperature are all we're interested in so C is often interchangeable with K. If you use Fahrenheit, then you lose that easy relationship unless you also use Rankine for absolute temperature. But nobody, not even Americans, has even heard of Rankine so it would be a far bigger challenge to get anyone to use that tha…

> A difference in temperature has the same numerical value in both degrees C and K.

I know, I used them basically interchangeably in my post.

> unless you also use Rankine

If people used Fahrenheit more often they would use Rankine more often as well (and yes, I was aware of it before this discussion).

> which would be joules in SI

Joules is a unit of energy, not temperature. You need to multiply by entropy to get temperature.

It would be one thing if the unit for temperature was based on the SI units, fine. But it's not - it's completely arbitrary, and since that is the case you might as well use the more usable Fahrenheit.

If I were doing it I would redefine it such that 1 joule of energy applied to 1 gram of water = 1 new-degree. (Right now it's 4.2 joules.) That would make the temperature scale less coarse, which is good. Then make absolute zero -1000 new-degrees.

Re: Study: Potatoes can grow on Mars

#95

Post by personjerry »

That 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".

Re: Study: Potatoes can grow on Mars

#96

Post by ars »

astrodust wrote: post #92
ars wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That is a bit rough around the edges. Correct. It would be one thing if Celsius is somehow tied into the rest of the SI units, but it is not, which means we can replace it. > It's not even calibrated properly. Who cares if they got the calibration of Fahrenheit wrong, at the end of the day it's more usable than Celsius for humans. 0 Fahrenheit is the temperature when it's really cold outside, 100 is when it's hot.…

> It's not that hard to remember 32 for ice. With Celsius you need to deal with negative temperatures all the time, and worse, the size of the degrees is too coarse. Well, the whole world manages to deal with °C and only America and a handful of backwater countries insist on using °F. "Too coarse" is absurd. People just measure to the nearest 0.5°C if you want to get all fussy, but that's not normally the case. It's…

I'm onboard for metric - just not for temperature.

Just because you manage to deal with C doesn't make it better.

Do you see the parallels? You tell Americans all the benefits of metric, they don't care. You tell Europeans all the benefits of Fahrenheit, they don't care.

People don't want to change.

> It keeps the numbers smaller.

No, it doesn't. You need 3 digits since you need the decimal (-20.5).

Re: Study: Potatoes can grow on Mars

#98

Post by mythrwy »

nikdaheratik wrote: post #35
guelo wrote: post #8

I 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... 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.

Potatoes, especially sweet potatoes have been cultivated at high altitude for centuries in South America. You are probably right about -60C being too low, but if they provide some shelter potatoes could handle very low overnight temperatures without needing the amount of climate control that other crops would need. Which is one reason why they are looking at this crop.

Sweet potatoes aren't even closely related to standard potatoes though. They are related to a morning glory where as standard potatoes are related to the tomato.

Re: Study: Potatoes can grow on Mars

#99

Post by astrodust »

ars wrote: post #96
astrodust wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's not that hard to remember 32 for ice. With Celsius you need to deal with negative temperatures all the time, and worse, the size of the degrees is too coarse. Well, the whole world manages to deal with °C and only America and a handful of backwater countries insist on using °F. "Too coarse" is absurd. People just measure to the nearest 0.5°C if you want to get all fussy, but that's not normally the case. It's…

I'm onboard for metric - just not for temperature. Just because you manage to deal with C doesn't make it better. Do you see the parallels? You tell Americans all the benefits of metric, they don't care. You tell Europeans all the benefits of Fahrenheit, they don't care. People don't want to change. > It keeps the numbers smaller. No, it doesn't. You need 3 digits since you need the decimal (-20.5).

I can't think of a weather station that uses decimals, the forecasts and current temperature reports are almost always whole numbers. My Nest thermostat goes to the closest 0.5°C because I guess why not, but even that seems overkill. Most systems go to the nearest whole degree.

Decimals are only for those who are making a fuss over nothing unless they're doing something that requires precision, like chemistry or in rare cases cooking.

There's no benefits to Fahrenheit. If you want to argue they're both arbitrary, fine, but the entire world uses °C, so get with the program.

Re: Study: Potatoes can grow on Mars

#100

Post by nanomonkey »

clinton wrote: post #76
Terr_ wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That reminds me of an Asimov story, "Founding Father", involving ecosystem change on a planet by stranded astronauts.

Best places to find a copy these days?

https://archive.org/details/Galaxy_v24n01_1965-10 page 165 of Galaxy magazine
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