Thursday, December 5, 2013
The Great Sriracha Famine Begins
Wednesday, December 4, 2013
National Novel Writing Month (how it all ends)
There has been an exciting new biological discovery
inside the tomb of the Chernobyl reactor. Like out of some B-grade sci
fi movie, a robot sent into the reactor discovered a thick coat of black
slime growing on the walls. Since it is highly radioactive in
there, scientists didn’t expect to find anything living, let alone
thriving. The robot was instructed to obtain samples of the slime, which
it did, and upon examination…the slime was even more amazing than was
thought at first glance.
This slime, a collection of several fungi actually,
was more than just surviving in a radioactive environment, it was
actually using gamma radiation as a food source. Samples of these fungi
grew significantly faster when exposed to gamma radiation at 500 times
the normal background radiation level. The fungi appear to use melanin, a
chemical found in human skin as well, in the same fashion as plants use
chlorophyll. That is to say, the melanin molecule gets struck by a
gamma ray and its chemistry is altered. This is an amazing discovery, no one had even suspected that something like this was possible.
Aside from its novelty value, this discovery leads to
some interesting speculation and potential research. Humans have
melanin molecules in their skin cells, does this mean that humans are
getting some of their energy from radiation? This also implies there
could be organisms living in space where ionizing radiation is
plentiful. I’ve always been a big panspermia
proponent, the idea that life did not originate on Earth but is
actually common in the cosmos. Organisms that can live in space
certainly gives more credence to this idea.
Possibly this could also be used to create plants or
mushrooms that could grow in space, serving as a food source for space
travellers. Maybe these fungi could be modified and used somehow to
clean up radiation contaminated environments. There’s quite a few of
those, in fact the disposal of radioactive waste is still a huge and
unsolved problem. Now the fungi couldn’t actually eat the radioactive
isotopes, I’m not saying that, but if they can live in radioactive
environments they might be used to somehow scour out or concentrate the
radioactive isotopes in such a way as to facilitate their clean up.
Imagine, there’s fallout from a nuclear accident and
what do the guys in suits do? They show up, spray mushroom spores over
everything, and a few weeks later the mushrooms are harvested and
disposed of while the contaminated area is now radiation free. It would
certainly be useful, the picture at the top shows the still abandoned
town of Priyat, Ukraine. It was built to house the workers at the
Chernobyl nuclear power plant, and was evacuated within hours of the
accident.
An excellent story about the Chernobyl disaster and Pripyat is at the Ghost Town link.
Just be aware that, no, Elana didn’t actually ride her motorcycle
through the radiation contaminated zone, that was poetic license on her
part. (Motorcycle enthusiasts have motorcycled across Europe hoping to
duplicate her tour, only to be told by the guards that that motorcycles
are not allowed in the contaminated zone.) The pictures and descriptions
are accurate though, some of the images are incredibly poignant. Just
think, a whole town where the inhabitants fled without warning, leaving
all of their possessions behind.
Fortunately the Chernobyl reactor was an old and
unsafe design, only one other reactor in the world was built the same
way. It was right here in Berkeley, a research reactor built on campus
in the fifties. It was sagely decided to quietly shut it down after
Chernobyl; while it couldn’t have had an accident on the scale of
Chernobyl, the locals were a little concerned anyhow. In fact it was a
block away from my favourite burrito place, yikes.
(The above image was released into the public domain by its author. Credit: Jason Minshull.)