The Milky Way Smells of Rum and Raspberries: … and Other Amazing Cosmic Facts by Jillian Scudder

Author:Jillian Scudder
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Icon Books Ltd
Published: 2022-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

Add in the perchlorate, though, and everything dies. Their mouse-ear cress gave up the ghost in less than five days, and the lettuce was gone in nine days. This table wasn’t in the researchers’ paper, but I can summarize their results of trying to grow plants in perchlorated soil, after a week of being in there:

Simulant Growth stage

Volcano dirt DEAD

Desert dirt DEAD

Custom-built dirt DEAD

Mars dirt, it seems, is not great for plants, bacteria, or the human thyroid.

Just what you want on a long mission from home: a malfunctioning thyroid, dust that can shred your lungs and corrode through materials, and a planet with a blacker thumb than any human who has bad luck with house plants.

* The potato, for instance, likes acidic soil. Sorry, Mark Watney of The Martian.

† Though Jim Green of NASA is quoted as saying: ‘If I had to eat asparagus for three years, I think I’d just take my helmet off and walk outside.’

‡ Looking at you, the appendix.

* This particular bacterium has a penchant for surviving clean rooms, and is therefore a persistent jerk of a bacterium. To be immediately killed by this experiment tells you something about exactly how bad for you this chemical environment is.

† It’s too bad. It’d really liven up a paper.

‡ Bleach. It’s just bleach. Do not inhale it. It will murder you.

§ Sodium hypochlorite, aka pool chlorine, is very bad for you.

¶ In five to eight days.

|| Yeah. This sounds like a bad idea, and for sure you should do this before you plant your seedlings.

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