Mars, Water, and Life

On March 3, 2020 By teachingcyborgIn Research, Research Ethics, STEM and SocietyLeave a comment

“Mars tugs at the human imagination like no other planet. With a force mightier than gravity, it attracts the eye to the shimmering red presence in the clear night sky.”
John Noble Wilford

It seems like everything associated with space has a Mars focus. NASA’s plan to return to the moon has a Mars association. Scientists are receiving a nearly continuous string of data about Mars from orbiters, landers, and rovers. NASA is planning on sending astronauts to Mars for research, and SpaceX is planning to colonize the red planet.

When we think of Mars, we think of a dry radiation banked world.

This March 27, 2015, view from the Mast Camera (Mastcam) on NASA's Curiosity Mars rover shows a site with a network of prominent mineral veins below a cap rock ridge on lower Mount Sharp. https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/mars/images/index.html — This March 27, 2015, view from the Mast Camera (Mastcam) on NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover shows a site with a network of prominent mineral veins below a cap rock ridge on lower Mount Sharp. https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/mars/images/index.html

However, we know that Mars once looked very different. Exploration has shown that Mars was warmer with a thicker atmosphere and flowing water. Martian rovers discovered much of this evidence. Opportunity found hematite a mineral of iron that forms in water. Opportunity also discovered gypsum, a calcium sulfate mineral usually created by the evaporation of water. Opportunity also found evidence of clay minerals that form in water.

The rover Spirit found environments that suggest active hot springs and warm neutral (pH) water, environments that are highly conducive to life as we know it. The existence of these features and minerals tells us that water once flowed freely above and below the Martian surface. (https://mars.nasa.gov/mer/mission/science/results/)

The scientific evidence shows that liquid water once flowed on the surface of Mars. How does this tell us that the plant was warmer with a thicker atmosphere? Water can exist in three phases solid, liquid, and gas. Two physical properties affect the phases of water, temperature, and pressure. We know that below specific pressures (about ten mbar), water can only exist as a solid and gas.

Additionally, above a specific pressure (about 100 kbar), water can only exist as a solid. Temperature has similar effects on water. Scientists mapped out the results of pressure and temperature water, producing a triple point diagram.

The triple point diagram tells us for there to have been flowing water on Mars. The plant had to be warmer with a higher pressure. Higher pressure means a thicker atmosphere since the thickness of the atmosphere determines atmospheric pressure. Therefore Mars was once a wet, warmer world with a thicker atmosphere.

All this scientific evidence means is that Mars once had all the ingredients necessary for life liquid water and energy either from the sun or from hot springs. Hot springs are a great source of energy for life. If you have ever been to an area rich geothermal activity, you have likely seen hot springs with multicolored patterns. Like the Grand Prismatic Spring in Yellowstone.

This picture shows the different colors of the Grand Prismatic Spring. A corner of Grand Prismatic Spring-1.jpg By Tigerzeng on 19 August 2017, 18:07:47. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.

Microorganisms produce the colors. (The Science Behind Yellowstone’s Rainbow Hot Spring) Everyplace on earth where we have water and energy, we have found life. Therefore, we know that Mars once had all the ingredients to support life as we know it. Additionally, we know that there are life forms like Tardigrades, also known as water bears, that can survive in extremely harsh environments.

Scanning electron micrograph of an adult tardigrade (water bear). By the Goldstein lab – tardigrades This image, which was originally posted to Flickr, was uploaded to Commons using Flickr upload bot on 28 September 2009, 13:40 by Tryphon. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.

In 2007, scientists exposed Tardigrades to the vacuum and radiation of space. When the tardigrades returned to earth, many of them revived and reproduced.

All of this might lead you to ask why NASA hasn’t looked directly for life on Mars. NASA has looked for life on Mars. NASA’s first successful Martin landers Viking 1 and Viking 2 carried experiments to look for life on Mars. These experiments incubate samples of Martian soil with organic nutrients and water. The experiment then examined the containers holding the soil to see if they produced gas consist with life (Viking lander biological experiments).

At first, scientists thought they had uncovered proof of life on Mars. However, there were inconsistencies between different experiments. The scientific consensus was that the observations were the result of naturally occurring chemicals in the soil. However, Gilbert V. Levin principal scientist on the Viking lander Labeled Release experiment thinks they did find life. In the Scientific America article I’m Convinced We Found Evidence of Life on Mars in the 1970s, he lays out the argument.

Whether or not NASA found life what is true as Dr. Levin said: “Inexplicably, over the 43 years since Viking, none of NASA’s subsequent Mars landers has carried a life-detection instrument to follow up on these exciting results.” that NASA has not sent any other direct life sensing experiments to Mars. Now I will freely admit I have a hard time understanding how life could exist on the Martian surface. The environment on Mars is hostile to life in all ways. However, even just a little way below the surface that starts to change. After all, dirt is good at blocking radiation.

In the article Life on Mars? It’s pointed out that some scientists think Mars might still harbor life. “At a February conference in the Netherlands, an audience of Mars experts was surveyed about Martian life. Some 75 percent of the scientists said they thought life once existed there, and of them, 25 percent think that Mars harbors life today.”

You might ask the question, “If there is or was life on Mars, let’s get there as fast as we can so we can study it.” If there is still life on Mars, what we could learn from it is unknowable. Studying the life on Mars might change our understanding of biology and medicine in ways we can’t imagine.

So, we want to get to Mars. There is a distinctive difference between dedicated research and colonization. Colonization will have a direct impact on the Martian environment. We will have to create large areas for food productions and the mining of resources. While much of the waste products produced will likely be recycled, some of it will get into the environment. Because of the waste products and modifications of the environment, the colony will disrupt possible Martian life, potentially leading to the loss of valuable information. Lastly, it will be imposable to keep a living growing colony biologically sealed from Mars-based microorganisms. Which could prove dangerous?

Long before we ever consider colonizing Mars, we need to know whether life existed or still exists on Mars. If life exists on Mars, we need to conduct research using carefully designed research outposts that protect both the astronauts and the Martian life. We need to discuss and decide what conditions need to meet before colonization can happen. If we are not careful when it comes to Mars, we will end up doing things before we have decided if we should.

Lastly, why aren’t teams of students and professors proposing life find experiments to NASA? If enough teams think about and design experiments, we might come up with something that works.

Thanks for Listing to My Musings
The Teaching Cyborg

But Will It Be a Mammoth?

On February 19, 2020 By teachingcyborgIn Research, Research Ethics, STEM and SocietyLeave a comment

“The dawn of the era of cloning is a little like splitting the atom, with enormous prospects for evil and enormous prospects for good.”
Glenn Bucher

Ice is central to the story of the Woolly Mammoth. The last ice age drove the evolution of Woolly Mammoths. One of the driving factors in the extinction of Woolly Mammoths was the loss of ice at the end of the last ice age. Finally, ice in the form of permafrost might let Woolly Mammoths walk the earth again. Permafrost “is a permanently frozen layer at variable depth below the surface in frigid regions of a planet (such as earth).” Some permafrost dates to the last ice age.

The Woolly Mammoth has become the poster child for the cloning of extinct animals. Most of the Woolly Mammoths became extinct around 11,000 years ago at the end of the last ice age. However, a group of Woolly Mammoths survived until about 4000 years ago on Wrangel Island in the arctic ocean. Rising water separated Wrangle island from the rest of northern Russia around the time the rest of the Mammoths died out. (The Last Wooly Mammoths Died Isolated and Alone)

When some Wooly Mammoths died, they got frozen in the permafrost, which preserved the mammoths. In 2013 Scientists found a 10,000 years old Wooly Mammoth so well preserved it started to bleed when it thawed. (Preserved Woolly Mammoth with flowing blood found for first time, Russian scientists claim)

Preserved mammoth remains have led to scientists thinking that they might clone the Wooly Mammoth. The reason frozen mammoths might make cloning possible is DNA, more specifically the preservation of DNA. Scientists hope that viable cells or DNA can be derived from the frozen mammoths and used to clone living mammoths. Currently, scientists are researching three methods to clone the Wooly Mammoth.

The first technique is nuclear transfer. In this method, scientists would inject a mammoth nucleus into a host egg, which would give rise to a mammoth embryo. Second, scientists are hoping to fertilize elephant eggs with mammoth sperm. The fertilization would produce a half-mammoth half-elephant hybrid. The hybrids would then be bread together over several generations to create a full mammoth. Lastly, scientists have sequenced the Woolly Mammoth genome. With this information, scientists plan to use CRISPER to edit mammoth genes into elephant DNA. Scientists would then use the engineered cells to produce mammoths.

So, we have preserved mammoths, that scientists think they can use to clone the Wooly Mammoth. Why would we clone a Wooly Mammoth? There are two fundamental reasons to clone a Wooly Mammoth. One, we can get scientific information about mammoths from the clones. Two, we want to see Wooly Mammoths walking around. These two reasons are not mutually exclusive.

However, there are problems with cloning mammoths for scientific research. Specifically, the only scientific reason to clone the mammoths is so we can learn something we can’t learn from the genomic sequence. Can any of the three cloning methods teach us how a real mammoth lived? The first method of nuclear transfer cloning doesn’t work. It turns out that mammoth nuclei from a 28,000-year-old mammoth named Yuka were injected into mouse eggs (Signs of biological activities of 28,000-year-old mammoth nuclei in mouse oocytes visualized by live-cell imaging). Scientists hoped that the mouse eggs would activate the mammoth nuclei and repair the DNA. The mammoth nuclei did activate, but the DNA repair failed. The scientists concluded, “the results presented here clearly show us again the de facto impossibility to clone the mammoth by current NT technology.”

The second method using mammoth sperm to fertilize an egg will have the same problems as nuclear transfer. Essentially a sperm cell is simply a way to transfer a nucleus into an egg cell. Even if scientists could get nuclear transfer cloning or sperm fertilization to work, this will not produce a full mammoth.

To understand why these cloning technics will not produce a full mammoth it’s necessary to understand some cell biology. All multicellular animals are eukaryotes, and eukaryotic cells contain multiple membrane-bound organelles. One organelle is the mitochondria, which have DNA and are inherited only from the mother. Therefore, nuclear transfer or sperm fertilization will not produce mammoth mitochondria. Thus, with these two techniques, the “mammoth” will never have mammoth mitochondria.

That leaves CRISPR mediated genetic engineering. Using CRISPR, scientists would take a cell and use CRISPR to engineer mammoth genes into the cell. According to the Woolly Mammoth page on the Revives and Restore project site, the genome of the Woolly Mammoth is 99.96% identical to the Asian elephant. Mammoth produced by genetic engineering, will be an engineered Asian elephant, there will always be some modern Asian elephant DNA. While some modern DNA might not seem important, it will be imposable to rule out that modern DNA is affecting the mammoths’ biology.

There is one last problem with cloning a Wooly Mammoth for science. Even if we clone a Wooly Mammoth, we will not have a prehistoric mammoth. Mammoths like living elephant relatives were likely intelligent and social creatures. Modern elephants learn how to be an elephant from the members of their herd. Since we don’t have any living mammoths, we will produce a mammoth that acts like an elephant.

It is unlikely; we will ever produce a 100% biological mammoth. Additionally, no matter what we do, we will never produce a mammoth that behaves like a prehistoric mammoth. Therefore, the only real reason to create a Woolly Mammoth would be to see one walk around. We should ask ourselves, “Is that a good reason to clone a mammoth?” Additionally, the first few mammoth embryos would have to be gestated by Asian elephants, which is an endangered species. Is it justifiable to use Asian elephants to produce mammoths when every Asian elephant birth is vital for their species?

There is a lot of information scientists can learn from the Woolly Mammoth. I am not convinced scientists can learn anything from a “Woolly Mammoth” clone. Maybe there is a question I am missing, if there is, I would love to hear it from one of the scientists. I must admit if I had the opportunity to see a Woolly Mammoth walking around, I probably would. However, is that a good enough reason to clone one? I can’t help but think a discussion about cloning the Woolly Mammoth would make an excellent addition to a scientific ethics course.

Thanks for Listing to My Musings
The Teaching Cyborg

How Many Times Do We Have to Say Something for It to Be True?

On February 10, 2020 By teachingcyborgIn Research, UncategorizedLeave a comment

“A typewriter is a means of transcribing thought, not expressing it.”
Marshall McLuhan

There is more to good writing than sitting down and typing. Almost all writing requires research of some kind. The question is, when have you done enough research? How I conduct research often depends on what I’m writing. I tend to research my blog posts as I write them.

However, even research can cause problems, is the information in your reference correct? Previously I wrote about two commonly cited studies that are either miss represented or didn’t exist, Do You Know If Your References Are Biting You? In my last blog post, Should We Care About Grammar and Structure?, I talked about grammar and its impact on readability. Specifically, the effect of two spaces vs. one space after the period.

Today in 2020, the style guides say to use one space after the period. When I was in school, the teachers taught us to use two spaces. When did the rule about spacing at the end of the sentence change? To answer that question, I will probably need a library, since I don’t own every version of every style guide published.

Several articles did explain why the rule changed while searching for when I ran into the same why argument repeatedly. An article from the Atlantic, Why You Should Never, Ever Use Two Spaces Between Sentences, sums it up nicely.

“To accommodate that machine’s (typewriter) shortcomings, everyone began to type wrong. … Monospaced type gives you text that looks “loose” and uneven; there’s a lot of white space between characters and words, so it’s more challenging to spot the spaces between sentences immediately. Hence the adoption of the two-space rule–on a typewriter, an extra space after a sentence makes text easier to read.”

Therefore, the only reason we used double-spacing at the end of a sentence is because of typewriters. Typewriters used monospaced fonts, which produced variable spacing inside of words and sentences. Because of the variable spacing, people used two spaces at the end of the sentence to enhance readability.

Now, if the typewriter and its monospaced font are the sources of double-spacing, then the appearance of double-spacing should correlate with the rise and fall of the typewriter. According to A Brief History of Typewriters, Pellegrino Turri built the first functional typewriter in 1808. Commercial typewriter production begins in the 1870s. The end of the typewriter came about with the advent of the word processor, first, as a standalone device and then as a program on every personal computer. IBM invented the term word processor in the 1960s. By the 1990s–2000s, the typewriter had been almost entirely replaced by the computer. Therefore, the commercial lifespan of the typewriter is about 130 years.

Now let’s look at style guides if the argument about one space versus two spaces is correct. Before and after the lifespan of the typewriter, we should see the rule is for a single space. According to The History and Art of Printing, written in 1771. The author Philip Luckombe states the rule about spacing after periods is “Another rule that is inculcated into beginners, is, to use an m quadrat after a Full-point:” (page 396) An m quadrat is a larger space.

The print shop at the University of Chicago published the first Chicago Manual of Style in 1906; a pdf copy is available here. According to the Chicago Manual rule 245 on page 83 “A standard line should have 3-em space between all words not separated by other punctuation points than commas,” With regards to periods the 1906 Chicago Manual states “an em-quad after periods, and exclamation and interrogation points, concluding a sentence.” 3-em is shorthand for 1/3 of an em space. Therefor the Chicago Manual calls for three spaces after a period.

The above examples show for 100 years before, and at least 36 years after the advent of the typewriter, style guides were recommending multiple spaces at the end of the period. One could argue that for most of the formalized history of typesetting, the preference has been for multiple spaces after the end of a sentence. Therefore, the argument that typewriters were the reason for double spacing is not valid. Double spacing existed because typographers felt it made for an improved reading experience.

Why the rule changed from one space to two is not clear. One common argument is a single space is cleaner. As Farhad Manjoo states, “A page of text with two spaces between every sentence looks riddled with holes; a page of text with an ordinary space looks just as it should.” The problem with the idea about holes is that it has been well-known as a potential problem for a long time.

Again, in The History and Art of Printing, the author talks about the possibility of producing a text that looks full of holes. “but at the same time, they (young typesetters) should be informed, not to do it (use multiple spaces at the end of a sentence), where an author is too sententious, and makes several short periods in one paragraph. In such case the blanks of M-quadrats will be contemptuously called Pigeon holes; which, and other such trifles, often betray a compositor’s judgment,” (pages 396-397) Specifically spacing is something authors expected trained typesetters to be aware of and correct.

In Two Spaces – an Old Typists’ Habit? the author blames technology and cost savings, specifically, the linotype and the teletypesetter. These two pieces of machinery allowed publishers to hire typists to replace typesetters. I find arguments concerning the impact of cost and the loss of skilled expertise much more compelling than the typewriter.

One thing I think the typewriter and early word processors did was confuse people about the separation of content and layout. The content of a piece of writing is in its words and grammar. The layout is dependent on the item printed and the audience. It used to be a common practice to publish science fiction stories in multiple monthly parts in magazines. Later, these stories were put together and published as books. The layout between the two publications’ magazines and books was different while the content was identical.

With the creation of things like CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) and variable layouts, people again realize that content is independent of the layout. The independence of layout from content led to the realization that publishers should structure the layout to the publication type and use. These realizations will likely open the door to future style guide built around research and skilled practice, not cost savings.

For now, we should use one space (I’m sure I will fail at that) because that is what the style guides say. Not because we no longer use typewriters. Lastly, repetition never makes something true.

Thanks for Listing to My Musings
The Teaching Cyborg

PS: If you are interested in pursuing this question further. There are several other articles about the typewriter not being the reason for two spaces at the end of the sentence. One of them Why two spaces after a period isn’t wrong (or, the lies typographers tell about history) uses several of the same sources as I do. However, the author goes into much greater depth.

Additionally, the author seems to have answered the original question that sent me down this rabbit hole. The eleventh edition of the Chicago Manual of Style published in 1949 was the first edition to adopt the single space rule. Another good article about the typewriter not being the source of the two-space rule is One or two spaces after a period? How about three?

Should We Care About Grammar and Structure?

On February 1, 2020February 10, 2020 By teachingcyborgIn Research, Textbook1 Comment

“Every language has a grammar, a set of rules that govern usage and meaning, and literary language is no different. It’s all more or less arbitrary of course, just like language itself.”
Thomas C. Foster

I have written a lot about textbooks, ten blog posts. Perhaps it is more accurate to say the I have written about the confluence of textbooks, modern technology, and educational practices. What is a textbook, what should a textbook be, is education or business driving the design of textbooks, do textbooks still have a place in modern education, and should textbooks be digital or physical?

Lately, I have been thinking about grammar and typography with respects to writing and communication. I try and pay attention to grammar when I write. I am by no means a grammar expert. I am much more concerned with making sure my arguments and points get across then I am with perfect grammar. I own a copy of Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation, I like the book; however, if it were not for grammar checkers, I would be hopeless when it comes to commas.

I have been thinking a lot about grammar, typography, and layout lately. Mostly because of the humble period. More precisely, the number of spaces used after the period. When I was in school, my teachers taught, it would be more accurate to say abusively drilled into us that you always used two spaces after the period. Today it would appear that most style guides suggest using one space after a period. The only exception being the American Psychological Association (APA). However, this seems to have changed with the release of the 7^th addition APA standards.

While the argument about double vs. single spaces is old, I have encountered it several times while recently doing research. I wondered when the period rule changed. Surprisingly I can’t find a date or even decade. In a lot of the articles about one space or two, the authors focused on explaining how the spacing was the result of “technology.” I will come back to the technology (typewriter) argument in another blog post.

The argument about two spaces or one comes down to readability. Specifically, how does spacing affect readability? It turns out there is little actual research looking at the effect of the number of spaces after the period on readability. A paper published in April of 2018 Are two spaces better than one? The effect of spacing following periods and commas during reading concludes, two spaces. Yes, I said a paper one. However, the evidence is currently 100% on the side of two. More research is needed.

What I found most interesting, however, was an article from the Atlantic The Scientific Case for Two Spaces After a Period A new study proves that half of people are correct. The other is also correct. After explaining what the article says, the author “explains” why the work is not valid or relevant. I’m not quite sure whether the author is arguing for irrelevancy or invalidity. The author concludes, “The standard comes down to aesthetics, tradition, conservation of paper and space—basically, the fact that reading is an act of much more than information delivery.”

The author goes on to talk about how people can read sentences without spaces. He says, “Thai and Chinese are typically written without spaces between words.” He is in fact correct, people have a tremendous ability to and comprehend regardless of word structure. For example, take the common sentence “Thequickbrownfoxjumpsoverthelazydog.” Or this version “Th qck brwn fx jmps vr th lzy dg.” Or even “7h3 qu1ck br0wn f0x jump5 0v3r 7h3 l4zy d06.” Chance is you can read all these variations.

So, let’s ask since you can read these sentences, does that mean we should write this way? Think about how much paper we would save if we left out all the vowels. According to article Vowel Compressibility And The Top 5000 Words In English on average, 31.45% of all characters are vowels. Plugging the textbook Concepts of Biology from the open textbook library into Microsoft Word, we find that Concepts of Biology is 599 pages long with 253,113 words and 1,601,952 characters. Doing a little math on Concepts of Biology, the textbook has an average of 2674.4 characters per page. Using 31.45% of all characters are vowels, there are 503,813.9 vowels in Concepts of Biology. If we left out all the vowels Concepts of Biology would be 188.4 pages shorter. That’s a lot of savings.

Let’s take our question further. This paragraph comes from page 15 of Concepts of Biology,

“Crl Ws nd th Phylgntc Tr

Th vltnry rltnshps f vrs lf frms n rth cn b smmrzd n phylgntc tr. phylgntc tr s dgrm shwng th vltnry rltnshps mng blgcl spcs bsd n smlrts nd dffrncs n gntc r physcl trts r bth. phylgntc tr s cmpsd f brnch pnts, r nds, nd brnchs. Th ntrnl nds rprsnt ncstrs nd r pnts n vltn whn, bsd n scntfc vdnc, n ncstr s thght t hv dvrgd t frm tw nw spcs. Th lngth f ch brnch cn b cnsdrd s stmts f rltv tm.”

or if we are going to embrace the idea that spacing and vowels don’t matter and you can still comprehend the meaning then we can write the paragraph like this,

“CrlWsndthPhylgntcTr

Thvltnryrltnshpsfvrslffrmsnrthcnbsmmrzdnphylgntctr.phylgntctrsdgrmshw
ngthvltnryrltnshpsmngblgclspcsbsdnsmlrtsnddffrncsngntcrphyscltrtsrbth.
phylgntctrscmpsdfbrnchpnts,rnds,ndbrnchs.Thntrnlndsrprsntncstrsndrpn
tsnvltnwhn,bsdnscntfcvdnc,nncstrsthghtthvdvrgdtfrmtwnwspcs.Thlngthfch
brnchcnbcnsdrdsstmtsfrltvtm.”

Can you read either of the previous paragraphs? It’s posable you can, it’s also possible you can’t. Try and read the paragraph; here is the paragraph as it appears in the book.

“Carl Woese and the Phylogenetic Tree

The evolutionary relationships of various life forms on Earth can be summarized in a phylogenetic tree. A phylogenetic tree is a diagram showing the evolutionary relationships among biological species based on similarities and differences in genetic or physical traits or both. A phylogenetic tree is composed of branch points, or nodes, and branches. The internal nodes represent ancestors and are points in evolution when, based on scientific evidence, an ancestor is thought to have diverged to form two new species. The length of each branch can be considered as estimates of relative time.”

Was your understanding correct, could you read the paragraph? Even if you could read the paragraph, can you honestly say we should write this way? When it comes to communication and writing, one of the most important things I ever learned was the idea, “It is not your audience’s job to figure out what you are trying to say, it is your job to make sure they can understand it.”

Therefore, if you are trying to communicate, you should use anything that makes it easier for your audience. While it is true that your readers don’t need two spaces to read your sentences if it makes it easier on your reader, no matter how small, shouldn’t you do it? As writers, it is our responsibility to do everything; we can improve our writings readability. Next time you want to stick rigidly to a rule, ask yourself, are you doing it for you or your audience? If you are writing a textbook, remember its already hard to learn something new, make sure your writing makes it as easy as possible.

Thanks for Listing to My Musings
The Teaching Cyborg

Building Build, Thyself

On January 24, 2020 By teachingcyborgIn Research, STEM and Society, STEM EducationLeave a comment

“Good buildings come from good people, and all problems are solved by good design.”
Stephen Gardiner

Years ago, when I was in graduate school, an IT technician was repairing the lab internet. He asked me, “So when will we be able to grow cars?” The first thing that popped into my mind was how complex a modern car is. According to Toyota, a modern car is made up of 30,000 parts if you count down to the bolts. Electric vehicles don’t have as many “parts” according to an article in Handelsblatt Today, an electric car has 200 parts while a gas or diesel car has more than a 1000 parts. I answered, “It will be quite some time before we can grow a car. There is still a lot of work to do.”

It might seem strange to ask “about growing cars”; however, writers fill science fiction with the unbelievable. In the television show Earth: final conflict, the alien Taelons grew buildings. The Leviathans are living spaceships in the television series FarScape. While a science fiction show is not the best barometer for what is possible, it’s not a measure of the imposable either. When the television show Star Trek debut in 1966, most of the technology seemed imposable. However, a lot of “Star Trek” technology exists now. Google translate, while not perfect, makes a passable universal translator. We also have handheld communicators (cell phones) and tablet computers. There is even a subset of 3D printers that focus on food (the replicator.)

Technology tends to make truth out of our imagination. That technology is often driven by challenging scientific endeavors. One of the most complex scientific efforts currently being pursued is sending people to Mars. One of the biggest problems is providing astronauts with safe housing. Beyond the extremely thin atmosphere on Mars, the surface of the planet has two other significant issues, the temperature, and the surface radiation. The average daily temperature of Mars is -81° F (-63° C). While the average yearly surface radiation on Mars is eight rads, on earth, its 0.63 rads.

The surface of Mars is lethal to astronauts. Currently, the “best” idea for providing protective habitats for astronauts is to bury the habitat under several feet of Martian soil. The Martian soil would provide insulation and protect against radiation. However, burying the habitats would require large equipment so that the astronauts can move large quantities of soil. Alternatively, we could send prebuilt habitats with walls that are highly insulated and resistant to radiation. The exact thickness and weight of the habitats would depend on the material used.

The biggest problem with these ideas is the weight. Either the habitat or the equipment to build the habitat weighs a lot. It is both expensive and difficult to transport heavy objects. According to NASA, it currently costs $10,000 per pound to put an object into earth orbit.

So, what does science fiction technology, questions about growing cars, and visiting Mars have to do with each other? Well, science is again working towards making science fiction reality. NASA scientists are researching the possibility of using fungus (mushrooms) to grow buildings. When we think of fungus, especially mushrooms, what you generally picture is just a small part of the whole organism, the fruiting body. The fruiting body of the mushroom produces mushroom spores and allows the fungus to spread.

The bulk of the mushroom grows underground or inside a decaying log and is called the mycelium, which is a fibrous material composed of hyphae fibers. The idea is that engineers will seed lightweight shells with spores and dried food. Then when the structures reach their destination water, collected from the local environment would activate the spores, which grow filling the shell creating rigid, durable, and insulated buildings.

When the building is full-grown, withholding water and nutrients will stop the growth. Later if the structure is damaged, astronauts can add water and nutrients, and the building will repair itself. Using biologicals materials like funguses to build buildings would have an additional advantage for places like Mars. If you want to expand a building, add another shell filled with water and nutrients, the mycelium from the old structure will grow into and fill the new one.

The final advantage of biological buildings is that once they are no longer needed or reach the end of their life, they can be composted and used to either make new buildings or grow crops. Reusing the fungus as nutrients will reduce the production of waste materials and make the site more efficient.

Additionally, using techniques like CRISPR, the Mycelium could be engineered to secret natural resins or rubbers, turning them into complex composite materials. It is even possible that eventually, we could engineer the fungus to grow into specific shapes. Imagine a giant puffball mushroom engineered to grow into a hollow sphere 10-12 feet in diameter.

In addition to using fungus, other groups are exploring the use of other organisms to build buildings. A group out of the University of Colorado at Boulder has developed a method using cyanobacterium. The researchers’ mix cyanobacterium, gelatin, and sand together into a brick-shaped mold. The bacteria grow into the gelatin, where it uses light and CO₂ to produce calcium carbonate. The result is a rigid cement-like brick after all calcium carbonate is one of the components of cement.

Additionally, the bricks can heal themselves if cracked or even reproduce themselves if broken in half. The researches cut bricks in half placed half back in the mold with more gelatin and sand, and the bacteria reformed the brick.

While I don’t expect to be living in a house, I grew myself anytime soon. It is starting to look like science will again make science fiction a reality. While most of what scientists are developing is for use in resource-poor areas like the moon or Mars. We will see offshoots of this technology in use here on earth. For instance, the bricks created by cyanobacterium absorb CO₂ from the environment, unlike regular cement, which produces CO₂.

Additionally, the company Basilisk out of the Netherlands is already selling self-healing concrete, which uses calcium carbonate producing bacteria. For schools and universities, there is a tremendous research opportunity. While researchers have established the basic idea behind biological building materials, there is still a lot to learn. For example, there are large numbers of microorganisms that deposit minerals, which ones work best. Does a mix of multiple microbes work better than one? What is the most efficient sand size is it only one size or various sizes? This type of research that involves testing thousands of small permutations is perfect for undergraduate researchers and undergraduate classes.

I don’t know what effect all these biological materials will have on construction, but I’m sure it will be fascinating. Maybe next time someone asks me, “when will we grow cars?” I will tell them, “I’m not sure, but I can grow your garage.”

Thanks for Listing to My Musings
The Teaching Cyborg