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Study: Potatoes can grow on Mars

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Re: Study: Potatoes can grow on Mars

#101

Post by ajmurmann »

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.…

To me "hot" starts at 80F and "cold" around 40F. When cooking I frequently care about temperature relative to the boiling point when deciding what temp to set the oven or water bath to.

Re: Study: Potatoes can grow on Mars

#102

Post by grondilu »

> It was a pleasant surprise to see that potatoes we've bred to tolerate abiotic stress were able to produce tubers in this soil,

Did they really produce tubers? That'd be impressive, but the video only shows "initial plant growth".

Re: Study: Potatoes can grow on Mars

#103

Post by malandrew »

ColanR wrote: post #62
stcredzero wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the Cody's Lab YouTube channel, Cody did expose potato plants to Martian atmospheric pressure for short periods of time. Apparently, potato plants can survive a decompression event, so long as you get them back to an Earthlike environment promptly. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8VPvBr4ppU I doubt they could survive extended exposure, though.

So does this mean the environment was only partially simulated? It sounds like we're assuming Martian potatoes will be grown in pressurized environments.

I reckon there is value in only partially simulating the environment and grow lots of potatoes at scale. Take those potatoes that succeed and breed them and repeat. With every iteration, change the environmental conditions to better simulate Mars. Over successive generations, I reckon we can get to potatoes (and other plants) that fair well.

The big question is how you optimize this process to assist evolution in moving faster.

Re: Study: Potatoes can grow on Mars

#104

Post by adrianN »

malandrew wrote: post #103
ColanR wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So does this mean the environment was only partially simulated? It sounds like we're assuming Martian potatoes will be grown in pressurized environments.

I reckon there is value in only partially simulating the environment and grow lots of potatoes at scale. Take those potatoes that succeed and breed them and repeat. With every iteration, change the environmental conditions to better simulate Mars. Over successive generations, I reckon we can get to potatoes (and other plants) that fair well. The big question is how you optimize this process to assist evolution in mov…

It will need many generations before you have a plant that can live in a natural martian environment. I don't think you'll be able to get much nutrition out of it anymore.

Re: Study: Potatoes can grow on Mars

#105

Post by frozenport »

malandrew wrote: post #103
ColanR wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So does this mean the environment was only partially simulated? It sounds like we're assuming Martian potatoes will be grown in pressurized environments.

I reckon there is value in only partially simulating the environment and grow lots of potatoes at scale. Take those potatoes that succeed and breed them and repeat. With every iteration, change the environmental conditions to better simulate Mars. Over successive generations, I reckon we can get to potatoes (and other plants) that fair well. The big question is how you optimize this process to assist evolution in mov…

Near impossible, on Earth there are no plants in most of Antarctica. And that has more water than Mars. There is no solution that matches all the constraints.

Re: Study: Potatoes can grow on Mars

#106

Post by sigmaprimus »

sandworm101 wrote: post #24
stcredzero wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the Cody's Lab YouTube channel, Cody did expose potato plants to Martian atmospheric pressure for short periods of time. Apparently, potato plants can survive a decompression event, so long as you get them back to an Earthlike environment promptly. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8VPvBr4ppU I doubt they could survive extended exposure, though.

And 'survive' is something far different than 'grow'.

Even saying they are growing doest mEan they will work, I've peeled many potatoes and they grow eyes if left long enough...in the dark too!

Re: Study: Potatoes can grow on Mars

#108

Post by mhenr18 »

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).

It's more that you can't tell the difference between 30C and 30.5C. No one ever forecasts temperatures using decimal degrees here in Australia.

You only need decimals for highly accurate measurements, but at that point you'd need decimals for Farenheit as well.

> You tell Europeans

Erm, how about the rest of the world?

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