
Fungus at Chernobyl absorbs nuclear radiation via radiosynthesis - karimford
https://www.technologynetworks.com/applied-sciences/videos/chernobyl-fungus-eats-nuclear-radiation-via-radiosynthesis-338464
======
barbegal
I am skeptical that this fungus absorbs radiation significantly more than the
equivalent amount of water would. The paper [1] isn't very clear about
possible inaccuracies in the results and I don't understand why this
experiment hasn't been repeated down on Earth. The mass attenuation
coefficient of the fungus is 0.234 cm^2/g at 100MeV whereas water is 0.0166
cm^2/g according to this paper [2].

[1]
[https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.16.205534v1....](https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.16.205534v1.full)

[2]
[https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a278139.pdf](https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a278139.pdf)

Edit: I made a mistake in this comment, see child comment for correction.

~~~
barbegal
Reading the paper again, I made a mistake in my comment above. The mass
attenuation coefficient was at 10keV not 100MeV. Water has a mass attenuation
coefficient of about 5cm^2/g at 10keV.

Table 1 [1] in the paper shows the true comparison with water at 100 MeV where
it can be seen that there is not a large difference. On a weight basis
stainless steel outperforms the fungus.

[1]
[https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.16.205534v1....](https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.16.205534v1.full#T1)

~~~
Hnrobert42
Maybe it’s because you have to ship stainless steel from Earth. Maybe the mass
of the fungus can be grown from CO2 from respiration. The carbon originally
coming from food, which has to be shipped up. Lots of maybes, but you know,
maybe...

~~~
dnautics
> Maybe the mass of the fungus can be grown from CO2 from respiration.

That's not a thing. Fixing carbon to a usable form [0] using "general
biological energy source" to the carbon pool is extremely difficult (there are
only four and a half, counting c3 vs c4 as a half, pathways known) and
requires complex machinery to achieve.

[0] assimilating carbon dioxide in general is not difficult, even humans do it
but it does not enter the general carbon pool and is effectively only
transiently converted out of CO2, and net does not contribute to biomass.

~~~
lowdose
Zeolites can do this.
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeolite](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeolite)

------
YeGoblynQueenne
>> Scientists are thinking of shielding astronauts and space objects with a
layer of this radiation-absorbing protective fungus.

This reminds me of Adam Stone's discovery in Cordwainer Smith's _Scanners Live
in Vain_ [1]:

SPOILER ALERT SPOILER ALERT SPOILER ALERT SPOILER ALERT SPOILER ALERT

 _Adam Stone has basically discovered that the radiation that causes the Great
Pain of Space not only affects life, it is absorbed by it. So, surrounding
yourself with other living creatures will prevent you from feeling the pain
yourself. He eventually settles on building a shield out of live oysters,
since they lack any central nervous system to experience pain with._

[https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Literature/ScannersLi...](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Literature/ScannersLiveInVain)

END SPOILER ALERT

_____________

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scanners_Live_in_Vain](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scanners_Live_in_Vain)

~~~
Method5440
Interesting - how haven’t I heard about that story? I immediately thought
about how Rick covers his outpost in screaming Mortys so that the galactic
government can’t detect him. Morty pain as anti-Rick is a strange, appealing
and disturbing thought... they’re effectively oysters soaking up the pain of
the universe.

------
burtonator
There's simply no way that this type of fungus could absorb enough radiation
simply because it's not dense enough.

If you want to absorb radiation you have to block it which means it has to
come into contact with matter.

The only way you can do this is to have either a smaller volumetric amount of
something that's dense (lead, gold, uranium, etc) or a LARGE amount of
something less dense (water, concrete, etc).

If you're just talking about an organic organism, sure, it can use the
radiation BUT you'd need to have a MASSIVE amount of it in terms of volume and
weight.

Simply put, the fungus itself is sparse when looking at it from a subatomic
perspective. Most of the radiation passes right through it.

~~~
chongli
I think the whole framing of this discussion is inappropriate. The interesting
thing about this fungus is that it can use the radiation as an energy source
to sustain life. The fact that we can’t use the fungus as some kind of miracle
lightweight radiation shield is missing the point.

Here we have a life form that has adapted to make use of a very unusual (on
earth’s surface, anyway) energy source. That should not be taken for granted.
It’s an amazing demonstration of the adaptability of life. It also warrants a
deeper investigation into how this ability works and how it came about by
evolutionary processes.

~~~
eloff
Agreed, lead blocks radiation quite well. I don't know why anyone would care
about that property in a fungus. What is fascinating is that life evolved a
novel energy pathway here, this is like photosynthesis but with gamma
radiation. I'd love to know more about it.

~~~
0xdeadb00f
> I don't know why anyone would care about that property in a fungus.

My thought would be the possibility of it being cheaper to produce than lead,
possible to farm it. That could mean a more lightweight material for insulated
suits and stuff along those lines.

~~~
TheOtherHobbes
It's unlikely to be much use for shielding for reasons the top comment
explains.

The real reason to care is because it's an interesting - almost textbook -
example of evolution operating in a challenging environment.

~~~
0xdeadb00f
> It's unlikely to be much use for shielding for reasons the top comment
> explains.

I did read the comment - I know it can't be used for that. I only said that as
a more generic response to "I don't know why anyone would care" about this
property being found in a fungus - a statement which seemed to lack any
imagination imo.

> The real reason to care is because it's an interesting - almost textbook -
> example of evolution operating in a challenging environment.

This is true! Good point.

------
qubex
What’s astonishing is not the ability to block radiation (after all, biology
will always defer to chemistry first, and physics second—there’s no way
biology can come up with something that exceeds the capabilities of its
substrates) but rather life’s way of rapidly adapting to make use of whichever
energy source it can find to eke out an energy budget to thrive on.

P.S. Who else heard Dr Ian Malcom say “ _Life... finds a way_ ” in their head?

~~~
raven105x
On the contrary, I’d argue that most “life” (in the sense of our Eucledian
definition of it) relies on exceeding the capabilities of its substrates via
emergent properties - at least from the perspective of our current infantile
understanding of the universe. Photosynthesis is so efficient because
electrons jump multi-molecule gaps due to quantum effects, as we’ve found only
a few years ago. The theory that most biological brains heavily leverage
quantum processes is rapidly gaining ground as well - we simply lack the
intelligence and processing capacity to design anything like it, since
compared to our current computational abilities, millions of years worth of
entropy may as well be an infinite amount.

Reductionism fails as completely as it does hilariously when it comes to
systems where the whole does indeed exceed the sum of its parts due to laws of
the universe we have yet to grasp. A much more sane approach is to think of
the matter something is comprised of as nothing more than a filter/transformer
for the entropy and environment it exists within. Life routinely harnesses
entropy whereas our current technology is so ass backwards it does little but
struggle against it (dendrites in batteries, for example). What science
considers to be degradation or wear and tear is the very process living things
rely on to exist - let that sink in.

~~~
gus_massa
> _Photosynthesis is so efficient because electrons jump multi-molecule gaps
> due to quantum effects, as we’ve found only a few years ago._

That's true, but is a short lived and very local effect.

> _The theory that most biological brains heavily leverage quantum processes
> is rapidly gaining ground as well_ [...]

No, there is only some handwaving. It's impossible to keep the quantum
coherence in a system that weight 1.5kg at 310K.

~~~
qubex
> _That’s true, but only local and short lived and very local effect._

And critically for my argument, photosynthesis works (less efficiently) even
when this effect is absent. It’s not a mystery ingredient that makes the whole
thing work.

------
gpuhacker
For a nonvideo source of info on this:

[https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.16.205534v1](https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.16.205534v1)

~~~
LockAndLol
And for a layman digestible version
[https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/radiation-
helps-f...](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/radiation-helps-fungi-
grow/) (from 2007)

~~~
danielheath
> digestible version

Ooh, was wondering if the fungi were good to eat /s

------
freeflight
Interestingly enough this resilience of fungus, and even mold [0], to
radiation has been a bit of a problem on the ISS [1].

[0]
[https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/06/190627121252.h...](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/06/190627121252.htm)

[1] [https://www.colorado.edu/aerospace/2019/11/01/mold-space-
nas...](https://www.colorado.edu/aerospace/2019/11/01/mold-space-nasa-grant-
study-space-station-fungus)

------
dogma1138
Protomolecule, not good.

~~~
jonplackett
And they just found an ocean on Ceres. Is that in the book?

~~~
dogma1138
No, but the existence of water on Ceres was retconned in the show, now it’s
again not accurate since while we discovered it has water between the book and
the show we didn’t knew that it had that much water.

~~~
trenchgun
That is hilarious.

------
einpoklum
Ok, but:

1\. Is it doable to maintain a 21-cm thick layer of fungus, at all, let alone
in space, for a prolonged period of time?

2\. Wouldn't it be easier/simpler to replicate this radio-synthesis mechanism
in a non-organic setting?

~~~
dogma1138
> Is it doable to maintain a 21-cm thick layer of fungus, at all, let alone in
> space, for a prolonged period of time?

Building a living wall isn’t hard, I have one with moss in my flat it does
wonders for air quality (even if not actual one just the smell/perception is
enough), fungus is easy to grow - feed it shit and keep it in the dark does
work.

> Wouldn't it be easier/simpler to replicate this radio-synthesis mechanism in
> a non-organic setting?

This is pretty much one the hardest things to do in science today, replicating
complex biological processes in a non-biological manner.

Insulin while being the first human protein to be synthesized today is still
created using biotechnology by using bacteria to manufacture it simply because
of how difficult it is to synthesize proteins.

~~~
perl4ever
>Insulin while being the first human protein to be synthesized today is still
created using biotechnology by using bacteria to manufacture it

An interesting factoid I ran across is where citric acid comes from. I had
noticed inexpensive "lemon iced tea" had citric acid listed as an ingredient,
and vaguely thought perhaps it's called that just because the citrus source is
heavily processed.

Turns out, while citric acid was originally produced on an industrial scale
from fruit, circa WWI, due to shortages, Pfizer started making it using
microbes, specifically black mold.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citric_acid](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citric_acid)

~~~
dogma1138
Citric acid is used as a preservative and regulator in food so it will be
added even if the ingredients contain it naturally simply for consistency with
flavored drinks it’s even more common to basically break everything down to
their base chemical ingredients and then add them back in at the exact
amounts.

Overall pretty much anything that is naturally produced in plants and animals
will already be the most “efficient” way of doing that both due to natural
selection and both due to the fact that the process is easily scalable, heck
we still make rubber from the rubber tree because nothing else comes close to
that.

Chemistry is fucking hard and we don’t have anything close to the molecular
machinery that living organisms have to assemble complex molecules.

Chemistry in living things is like a robotic assembly line in a factory,
chemistry in manufacturing is throw stuff into a reaction chamber and stir it
until something happens.

------
vffhfhf
It used melanin to convert radiation to energy.

Damn.

We are so much alike.

Its kinda funny every living organism in the earth is kinda related to us
humans and we to them.

Earth is just a biosphere.

~~~
Erlich_Bachman
Well, we are as much alike as our consciousness/brain can manage to find a
pattern for. The consciousness compresses reality by finding patterns. As long
as we are able to understand some phenomenon, there will always be a pattern
that this understanding is serviced by, and we will be able to see some
relation between two different things through that pattern. In that sense,
everything we perceive will be connected in one way or another. In that sense,
everything is "one".

But does that say anything about the physical world, or rather about our own
brains, our consciousness and how it works? A matter of perspective. And of
how you define "real".

~~~
incidentnormal
Our ability to leverage those patterns underlies the success of our species,
so I would say they are probably quite real.

------
Tade0
Is the fungus edible?

~~~
bobhel
Here's the real question. Or, can it be made edible? Cultivating something
like this on Mars out in the open makes more sense than growing potatoes
indoors.

~~~
dogma1138
Even if it’s not directly edible it can be a source of amino acids and
proteins that could be then processed into something edible or be a source of
food for other things that provide better nutritional value to humans like
yeast.

The question is it going to be more cost effective than hydroponics.

------
tyingq
There's a movie plot that's fairly adjacent to this and even has pretty good
ratings:
[https://m.imdb.com/title/tt7425298/](https://m.imdb.com/title/tt7425298/)

------
ulmas
I'm actually surprised this cheaply written two paragraph article with no
references is being discussed here.

------
DeonPenny
This is one of the most nature finds a way things I've ever seen

~~~
acidburnNSA
It shouldn't be too surprising since the universe and earth have been and
remain naturally filled with radiation for billions of years. The heat that
keeps magma warm in the earth comes 50% from radioactive decay of uranium and
its daughters. Life today is based on plants and microorganisms absorbing
radiation emanating from a giant nuclear reactor in the sky.

This is just a twist on how it's always been done.

------
peter_d_sherman
Two words:

Mars Mission.

------
jbverschoor
It’s the Access Virus Ti3 Synthesizer

~~~
dkdbejwi383
Ah so that's why Access basically dropped off the face of the Earth, they were
trapped in the sarcophagus

------
adontz
Is not it how Godzilla works?

------
basicplus2
Why are so many videos using computer generated voice overs?

I find find it a real turn off.

~~~
wombatmobile
The videos are written, produced, generated and posted by autonomous GPT-3
bots. The first time any human became aware of this video was at the same time
you became aware of it, by following the link from HN.

Disclosure: This comment was written by an autonomous GPT-3 bot.

~~~
ionwake
Are there any public ally accessible gpt-3 AIs yet?

~~~
wombatmobile
What do you think is the difference between the way GPT-3 works and human
beings work?

~~~
speedgoose
Everything.

------
blickentwapft
You know where this leads?

The blob. A 1959s sci fi horror movie in which a radioactive fungus takes over
the world.

If not today then very soon.

~~~
ksaj
I think this speaks to a common fear of technology taking over and
incidentally/consequentially killing everyone. Like the Terminator series, and
many others as well. IRL you might recall the torrents of fearful articles and
posts about the world being consumed by a human-triggered black hole when they
started building the massive colliders. And every few years, someone predicts
AI will do us in. And HAARP killing us with bad weather and earthquakes. So
many examples abound.

