This Plant Is So Extreme That Scientists Think It Could Grow On Mars : ScienceAlert

Algae are among the most important soil-forming plants on Earth, transforming barren rocks into fertile soil, and now a team of scientists suggests that these non-vascular plants could do the same on Mars.

if we were He should Introducing life from Earth to our red neighbor is another question – we don’t have a good track record on this on our planet.

but if We decided it would be worth tinkering with the soil on Mars to create a second home for us Earthlings, and environmental scientist Xiaoshuang Li and his colleagues at the Chinese Academy of Sciences have come up with a candidate they think could do the job.

The surface of the Earth was once completely inhospitable to life, but that didn’t stop a group of organisms called Mosses – which today include algae, liverworts, and century plants – have torn themselves from the fertile safety of the oceans in search of new horizons.

The success of these terrestrial pioneers depended on their ability to harness and digest nutrients that seeped from or flowed over rocks, surviving in conditions so hostile that other organisms would turn to dust. But as they spread across the rocky confines of the Earth, they created soil, paving the way for other, less hardy life forms to gradually tread on dry land.

This genetic ability continues to serve algae around the world, and researchers believe we could harness their innate talents to colonize Mars, laying the foundation for other, less permanent life forms, such as crops.

Unlike the delicious forest mosses you might imagine, which are much easier to grow than their ancestors, Centricia caninervis This company is committed to maintaining an extremely frugal lifestyle. It thrives in the deserts of China and the United States, as well as the glaciers of the Pamirs, Tibet, the Middle East, Antarctica, and the Arctic regions.

the Gurbantungut Desert In northwest China is the center of S. Caninerviswhich grows more abundantly here than anywhere else in the world, despite temperatures ranging from -40°C to 65°C (-40°F to 149°F) and relative humidity of up to 1.4 percent.

Lee and his colleagues tested this moss—and paid off. S. Caninervis Stepping out of your unusually spacious comfort zone is not easy.

In a laboratory, they tested plant responses to and recovery from severe drought, prolonged freezing (-80°C for 3 or 5 years, and -196°C for 15 or 30 days), and radiation (at doses ranging from 500 to 16,000 micrograms). G), and Mars-like conditions at the Planetary Atmosphere Simulation Facility (PASF) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

In the Mars simulation, the plants were exposed to pressures of about 650 pascals (Pa), similar to the 680–790 Pa on Mars. At night, the temperature was -60°C, and during the day, it was 20°C, equivalent to conditions on Mars at tropical to mid-latitudes. They also simulated the atmospheric gas composition and ultraviolet radiation levels to be closer to those on Mars.

It was drought, for S. Caninervisa walk in the park. In the bitter cold, she shrugged. All the frozen plants regenerated after thawing, with the plants that had dried out before freezing recovering much faster than their wet counterparts.

Faced with radiation levels of 50 grays that would kill humans, S. Caninervis He didn’t blink. At 500 gray, his growth seemed to accelerate.

Algae that had been dehydrated and then exposed to Mars-like conditions were able to act as if nothing had happened after just 30 days of recovery. Their dehydrated counterparts took a little longer to recover, but they were still alive to tell the tale.

“Although there is still a long way to go to create self-sufficient habitats on other planets, we have demonstrated the great potential S. Caninervis “As a pioneer plant for growth on Mars,” researchers say. He writes.

“Looking ahead, we anticipate that this promising algae will be transported to Mars or the Moon to further test the potential for plant colonization and growth in outer space.”

Even if algae on Mars turns out to be a terrible idea, the fact that S. Caninervis Sustainable agriculture is a great way to turn completely barren lands into “living skin,” even after surviving under these harsh conditions, which gives us some hope for life on our planet, which seems more resilient than we sometimes imagine.

This research was published in Innovation.