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NASA Wants To Invade Mars With Glowing JellyPlants
namespan writes: "NASA and university researchers are looking into creating plants that emit a jellyfish-like glow as a signal of trouble, say, not enough water or oxygen or nutrients in the soil, say. The idea: send them to Mars and have them glow feedback at us about how they're faring on the red planet. They will, of course, have to compete with the radio-controlled plants mentined in an earlier slashdot story. And the Triffids." We've done several stories on glowing plants and animals in the past, but this seems to be a bit more useful and detailed.
...and a few months later they have you using PLANTS. Goddamn.
~
Disgruntled NASA engineer.
Its about time the USA stopped funding NASA and Astrology altogether.
He thinks this program was created by Miss Cleo who (according to him) was reading her tarot cards and predicted to him "Duh fayte of dee planitz iz inna yore handz tell dem at slashdot.org to call me now for my free psychic readin"
Want Root?
Would you please read the article before you post? I may be wrong, but it doesn't look like you did.... here's why I say that (really, I'm not trying to put up a flamebait post here!)
In the article, it does not talk about simply releasing plants into an uncontrolled environment on mars. Towards the end of the article the following appears: " The first wave of Martian plants envisioned by Ferl and his colleagues would sprout inside a very small and protected greenhouse. " So the first experiment doesn't have the kind of intentions that you are speaking of...
So how about the future, you might (and should) ask? Well, earlier in the article, the following quote was talking about future use of plants on mars as life support systems for human colonists: "Such life support systems on Mars will probably involve growing crop plants in Martian soil within specially designed greenhouses, says Andrew Schuerger, a manager of Mars projects with Dynamac Corporation at the NASA's Kennedy Space Center." Clearly the intent is, at first, to keep the plants in a controlled environment, and not allow them to range free.
While that's all well and good, you also said: " Let us get some humans on the planet and set up some expirements to test for life before we think about Mars agriculture." And your point may be reasonable, to some fearful extent, but it is also addressed in the article:
"Learning to grow plants on Mars will be an important precursor to humans living there. Future explorers will need oxygen, food, and purified water -- items too costly to ferry from Earth to Mars on a regular basis. But plants can help provide those essentials inexpensively and locally as part of a self-contained "bioregenerative" life support system."
So the idea you suggest, sending a manned mission, is exactly what this research is trying to facilitate.
Now, maybe I am wrong on this, or maybe I am reading too much into your comment, but I do agree with the general spirit of your point that we should be careful about importing non-martian native organisms into the Martin environment. A real worry, along those lines, is what happens if the plants in those enclosed environments do get released, and possibly what forseeable situations would lead to such a thing occurring?
I dunno, it just seemed that your worries could have either been explained better or resolved by closer examination of the article. Indeed though, as I said, I do agree that there is something to at least consider or worry about before we send plants to Mars.
All your planet are belong to us.
Seriously: with Earth, there is a significant pre-existing ecosystem we have to respect lest we screw up humanity's only (at the moment) life support system. With all other planets (and moons, and asteroids) in our solar system, there is not, thus we are free to mess with them as we please. Similar arguments apply if you invoke the "right" of ecosystems to exist unmolested: by and large, there ain't no ecosystems outside of Earth right now.
Granted, if we want to check to see if there is microbial life on other planets, we should do this before terraforming, but that's just a matter of dispatching the right probes while we're still determining how best to terraform. In fact, the data from said probes would probably be a useful step in the process of terraforming, since if life was detected, we would have the option of altering the native life to alter the planet rather than completely custom designing our own plant colonizers.
Seriously, has there been any convention on what is appropriate/inappropriate to do to Mars? Once it's infected, begins an unstoppable course if interferring with another world's development (or maybe they tried something like Chiu's magnetic rings and this is what happened to to their once lush planet, what with over population and all...) is there a RL Prime Directive?
-- .sig are belong to us!
All your
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
How in hell can sending glowing jellyfish to Mars have any possible payoff. Are these guys on crack ?
Well let's see. Such research could be used to produce crops on earth too. If they can engineer a plant that can live on mars it surely can live in the Sudan. Plants that glow when they are stressed, yep usefull in agriculture, let's you know when to water or whatever
Do the Americans think they OWN Mars ? Surely Mars is owned by the United Nations who entrust that nobody destroys it.
Nope, they don't thing they own mars, they think nobody owns mars. So who will stop them. According to UN treaty no govenrment body can own any other planet or moon
Finally is it just me who is struck by the sheer outrageous obscenity and waste - all this money spent on throwing things at Mars when there are many problems on Earth that are far more pressing: AIDS, War, Famine, lack of gun control in our inner cities, etc etc etc.
I wish this argument would go away. but here goes the counter
War: Nope, our tax dollars won't prevent that
Famine: Yep, spending money on genitically enginering these plants ccould sure benifit the worlds food supply
AIDS: Maybe more money could be spend on AIDS research, but it is very well funded probably to the point of diminisheing returns
Lack of gun control: Nope, NASA's money isn't going to make the legislative process any smarter
Its about time the USA stopped funding NASA and Astrology altogether.
That's Astronomy not Astrology
As x approaches total apathy I couldn't care less.
No! Don't do that! They might evolve into intelligent martians and come back to attack us! You'll never know how cosmo radition would alter their genetic structure. We have enough trouble to worry when will killer tomatos come and get us all!
Well this is certainly an interesting idea, and the greenhouse plan sounds fine, but if you want to grow plants on the martian surface you've got a LOT of problems to overcome (nearly zero air pressure, dry-ice cold temperatures, hardly any water, no magnetosphere to protect against cosmic rays, high UV, etc) No fancy reporter system is going to fix that. Try growing plants in antartica first.
One issue I had: the reporter gene is presumably GFP. GFP doesn't actually glow, it flouresces. If coupled to luciferase it could glow, but then you wouldn't actually need GFP because the luciferase itself produces light. Of course you could always just light them yourself with external UV, or the natural UV on mars may be enough on its own (during the day, anyway). Also, there are many variants of GFP that glow in different colors besides green, so you could use those to offer a richer set of reporter genes.
cryptochrome
---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?