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Fungus at Chernobyl absorbs nuclear radiation via radiosynthesis

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Re: Fungus at Chernobyl absorbs nuclear radiation via radiosynthesis

#31

Post by barbegal »

I am skeptical that this fungus absorbs radiation significantly more than the equivalent amount of water would. The paper [1] isn't very clear about possible inaccuracies in the results and I don't understand why this experiment hasn't been repeated down on Earth. The mass attenuation coefficient of the fungus is 0.234 cm^2/g at 100MeV whereas water is 0.0166 cm^2/g according to this paper [2].

[1] https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.16.205534v1....

[2] https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a278139.pdf

Edit: I made a mistake in this comment, see child comment for correction.

Re: Fungus at Chernobyl absorbs nuclear radiation via radiosynthesis

#32

Post by seesawtron »

barbegal wrote: post #31

I am skeptical that this fungus absorbs radiation significantly more than the equivalent amount of water would. The paper [1] isn't very clear about possible inaccuracies in the results and I don't understand why this experiment hasn't been repeated down on Earth. The mass attenuation coefficient of the fungus is 0.234 cm^2/g at 100MeV whereas water is 0.0166 cm^2/g according to this paper [2]. [1] https://www.biorxi…

>> it could be shown that the melanized fungus C. sphaerospermum can be cultivated in LEO (Low Earth Orbit), while subject to the unique microgravity and radiation environment of the ISS.

I believe this "small scale" experiment was meant as a "proof of concept" to illustrate the idea whether this could be done in house in adverse conditions (unlike Earth's conditions) and could be a potential long term solution for radiation attenuation. I would hope that these somewhat promising results would allow them to conduct a large scale experiment.

Re: Fungus at Chernobyl absorbs nuclear radiation via radiosynthesis

#33

Post by dogma1138 »

garmaine wrote: post #21
jonplackett wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And they just found an ocean on Ceres. Is that in the book?

No, much of the economic backdrop of the book involves transporting water to Ceres.

Yep but in the show in the first episode it was “fixed” the protestor says that Ceres used to have plenty of water until the inners stripped it for themselves.

Re: Fungus at Chernobyl absorbs nuclear radiation via radiosynthesis

#35

Post by trenchgun »

dogma1138 wrote: post #6
jonplackett wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And they just found an ocean on Ceres. Is that in the book?

No, but the existence of water on Ceres was retconned in the show, now it’s again not accurate since while we discovered it has water between the book and the show we didn’t knew that it had that much water.

That is hilarious.

Re: Fungus at Chernobyl absorbs nuclear radiation via radiosynthesis

#37

Post by searchableguy »

DetroitThrow wrote: post #22
mulmen wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This happened in a demo at work recently. I couldn't follow along, the robot voice was just too distracting. In that case I think it was someone insecure in their English skills, which I guess I can understand. I would rather they just do their best and we will make it work. Most of my coworkers are ESL anyway. If it's really a problem just ask someone else to do the voiceover. The robots are not anywhere close to go…

>In that case I think it was someone insecure in their English skills, which I guess I can understand. I would rather they just do their best and we will make it work. Most of my coworkers are ESL anyway. I think at this point, I can discern even the thickest of accents if the person were to talk slow because of my (awesome) ESL coworkers, but I'm not sure the average person from my city would be able to do the same…

ESL = English as a Second Language.

Re: Fungus at Chernobyl absorbs nuclear radiation via radiosynthesis

#38

Post by ordu »

vffhfhf wrote: post #11

It used melanin to convert radiation to energy. Damn. We are so much alike. Its kinda funny every living organism in the earth is kinda related to us humans and we to them. Earth is just a biosphere.

I attended a course of neurophysiology, and the most stunning thing I've found was that all (or maybe almost all, I don't remember clearly) the neurotransmitters used by a human's neurons exist in a single cellular organisms, even in prokaryotes. Serotonin, glutamat, dopamin and others could be found in bacteria, so bacteria had all the chemistry needed for a central neural system hundreds of millions years ago, and nevertheless it took hunderds of millions years ago to build Einstein's brains.

Re: Fungus at Chernobyl absorbs nuclear radiation via radiosynthesis

#39

Post by orthoxerox »

jorvi wrote: post #18
vffhfhf wrote: post #11

It used melanin to convert radiation to energy. Damn. We are so much alike. Its kinda funny every living organism in the earth is kinda related to us humans and we to them. Earth is just a biosphere.

Fungi and animals actually have a common ancestor, protista. It's not exactly my area of expertise, but I believe that the way a fungus grows its tendrils and communicates over it is much like our nervous system. Here[0] is a fancy graphic that succinctly displays how the kingdoms of life are categorized. [0] https://biologydictionary.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Tre...

Protista is a paraphyletic group of single-celled eukariotes. However, animals and fungi are each other's closest multi-cellular living relatives. Animals are closer to other holozoa, and fungi are closer to other holomycota, but both are equally distant from, for example, Amoebozoa, which includes many other protists.

Re: Fungus at Chernobyl absorbs nuclear radiation via radiosynthesis

#40

Post by barbegal »

barbegal wrote: post #31

I am skeptical that this fungus absorbs radiation significantly more than the equivalent amount of water would. The paper [1] isn't very clear about possible inaccuracies in the results and I don't understand why this experiment hasn't been repeated down on Earth. The mass attenuation coefficient of the fungus is 0.234 cm^2/g at 100MeV whereas water is 0.0166 cm^2/g according to this paper [2]. [1] https://www.biorxi…

Reading the paper again, I made a mistake in my comment above. The mass attenuation coefficient was at 10keV not 100MeV. Water has a mass attenuation coefficient of about 5cm^2/g at 10keV.

Table 1 [1] in the paper shows the true comparison with water at 100 MeV where it can be seen that there is not a large difference. On a weight basis stainless steel outperforms the fungus.

[1] https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.16.205534v1....

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