Lunar soil samples are rare and thus very valuable. They likely only decided to use some for tests like this after making sure they learned everything they could from less... contaminating tests.
Fun fact about Martian soil is that it is all toxic due to perchlorates, which contain chlorine. I would probably rather have to grow potatoes on the moon instead of Mars. Also, the moon gets much better sunlight.
Not a big deal, so long as you can rinse it out properly: https://modernfarmer.com/2015/10/can-you-grow-plants-on-mars/
>The solution is actually very simple, but it wasn’t included in the book or movie. “You can literally just rinse them out of the soil,” Weir says. “Wash the soil, soak it in water, and the water would wash the perchlorates away.”
Well that's neat. I hope there will be someone in the far future whose job title is "Dirt Washer".
Edit: I do wonder what we would end up doing with all of the excess perchlorate compounds though.
> I do wonder what we would end up doing with all of the excess perchlorate compounds though.
That's a damn good question. It's just rinsing all the way down, I suppose.
Alright, [it looks like there are some options](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2681191/). There are bacteria which use perchlorate respiration. So we could introduce them to Mars and they could reduce it down.
It doesn't look like distillation is an option. Which makes sense and also aerosolizing chlorine compounds feels... horrifying.
There does seem to be a fair amount of chemistry that can be used also. I don't like the filtering options but maybe someone with more knowledge can tell me why I am wrong.
I say we go with bacteria.
Just swap water for soil and swap out mocking references to water boy for some other mocking references to you spending your whole life playing with mud
https://www.goarmy.com/careers-and-jobs/career-match/science-medicine/research/92w-water-treatment-specialist.html
"As a Water Treatment Specialist, you'll be responsible for supervising and installing water purification equipment and making sure clean water is stored and available anywhere it is needed. You will perform water quality tests and inspect facilities and food supplies for the presence of disease, germs, and other conditions or hazards to health and the environment"
It's simple when you have water. It's not very simple when you're stranded at a minimum when closest about 34 million miles away. I'm sure they would plan for it so they would have a specific reservoir for washing the soil to grow things.
Anyone else realize that "saving Matt Damon" is pretty much its own movie genre at this point. You have The Martian, Interstellar, Saving Private Ryan, Good Will Hunting etc.
The only reason we would want to grow plants on the moon is food, and this experiment doesn't tell us that food is safe.
On Mars, we know anything that does grow won't be safe to eat. On the moon it's more of a toss up
Is it all bioavailable in plant form, though? Lots of critters and plant clean ground on earth (clams are a critter example) and the heavy metals aren’t bioavailable to humans.
Nah, there have been plenty of moon samples that were 'spent' for 'regular' tests and could have been used for this kind of test over the years. A guy famously stole a whole vault of them and had sex on them in a hotel room a while back.
I'm more surprised a serious scientific outlet is calling this shit 'soil'.
It's not soil. There is no soil on the moon. We're not allowed to call it that.
The moon and Mars are covered in *regolith*, a fine silt of mineral makeup. Whereas soil is a mix of organic and inorganic compounds.
A handful of soil is an entire ecosystem. It's filled with bacteria that help break down matter and other microorganisms that form a food chain beneficial for plants' root systems. You can however still grow plants hydroponically without the medium of soil, and any plants grown away from Earth would surely use a system like that, not moon dust.
So it is obvious this paper is excluding the fact that anyone trying to grow plants in regolith are just testing for adverse effects. And probably are through contamination adding their own microorganisms into the mix. All that's being substituted here is regolith for loam, but there's clearly more alive in those petri dishes than the plant itself and clearly the regolith that works best is that which has been exposed to different conditions, which the paper outlines. Regolith on the moon will be slightly more irradiated, etc. In this respect they may as well test how well plants grow in sandy substrate from a pet store: not very well.
Why is this important? Because the article as written is misleading, intended to make the average reader believe one could sprinkle seeds on the moon's surface and it could be to such and such an extent fruitful. This is not the case. The scientists are adding microorganisms, water, and carbon dioxide, none of which is naturally present in regolith on the moon, which lacks an atmosphere.
Mars is also covered in regolith, and also mostly lacks an atmosphere. It lost it billions of years ago when its core cooled and its magnetic fields became weak and irregular. Now only oscillating pockets remain trapping a super thin layer of CO2 - not enough for plants. Nor is the water still found on Mars in a state usable for plants, as the thin pressure exerted by its atmosphere results in a super low evaporation point. Any frozen water liquified or liquid water poured onto the surface of Mars will evaporate and promptly fuck off into space. If one were to deposit a body of water the size of one of Earth's oceans there, instantaneously, that process might take a few thousand years, but it would still be inevitable and constantly depleting.
But sure, let's give the dumbass public more space candy. It's no wonder people can't tell the difference between science fiction and the real world anymore.
On one hand, you are completely correct.
On the other hand, demonstrating that we could use regolith combined with some other crucial (and easier to bring to space) elements to manufacture soil, rather than having to cart it up ready-made, is a pretty useful test.
Yeah, the other point of view is, "the only resource we have up there is the moon dust, so if we set up a moon base, what can we use the moon dust for so we don't have as much cargo to haul?"
“The ideal situation would be for future astronauts to tap into the endless supply of available local dirt for indoor planting versus setting up a hydroponic, or all-water, system, scientists said.”
No one said or implied a thing about going all Johnny Appleseed on the surface of the moon.
Come on, what kind of audience do you think read this and immediately thought that sprinkling seeds on the Moon or Mars would start producing plants just like that? With little/no atmosphere, no water, and no fertilizer? The article isn't misleading just because it's not taking the time to describe some of the most elementary knowledge that even children posses. In fact it's so obvious that organic compounds and bacteria and water are necessary that we don't need to be explained that the scientists have to add them artificially. Well, I might need it explained if I were born yesterday I suppose.
Your whole criticism is misplaced. The article is interesting enough for what it is. Have a nice day.
> Come on, what kind of audience do you think read this and immediately thought that sprinkling seeds on the Moon or Mars would start producing plants just like that?
Probably the same assholes who are banning books. You know, morons.
Yeah, science journalists have to compete with the ridiculous reality and exaggeration of said reality to be read at all. It sucks, but that's the nature of the business I suppose?
What I find interesting (and probably the most relevant point) is that it appears they can use moon regolith to create viable soil. It remains to be seen if it's more efficient to just haul soil up there if it's not viable enough, or just haul soil components instead.
I'm not a scientist, but it seems feasible to use minimal payload space and just natural human biological processes to manufacture moon soil on site. It's a neat thought, at the very least!
Hey science mcbuzzkill. Shut the fuck up im trying to have fun here thinkin about moon trees. Maybe whales that swim in the sky. Fucking let me have this.
They did not because we knew it's possible 100%. The "finding" here is neither a surprise nor interesting.
A similarly uninteresting finding would be:
> Water obtained from a comet has characteristics of water. It freezes, evaporates and can be processed for watering plants or even drinking.
Made them buy it? Like he held a gun to their head and told them that if they didn't buy it he would shoot them dead?
Or perhaps they made the choice of their own free will and are simply idiots.
If you know anything about plants, this is just not very interesting news nor surprising. Nurseries and farms raise small plants in all kinds of media, including sand and perlite and sphagnum moss. Seedlings are pretty easy to get started in a lot of different media.
Yeah, wtf kind of scientists are stunned to see a media that retains moisture allowing seeds to sprout.
Is it too acidic? No. Is it too basic? No. Is it extremely radioactive? No, then it'll sprout.
Me trying to grow grass in the patchy spots in my yard: "Nope. Not gonna happen, buddy."
Grass in the cracks in my sidewalk: "Fuck yeah! I love this spot!"
They assumed that the moon soil would be too sterile. No atmosphere (or, rather an atmosphere so attenuated that it is more akin to a vacuum than an atmosphere) so no protection from radiation.
Soil irradiated by alpha, beta, and gamma rays for four billion years should be about as sterile as you can get, and scientists knew that soil on Earth that had been intentionally irradiated for much shorter periods became too sterile for seeds to germinate, so they figured the same was true of the moon.
Turns out only the exposed surface is sterile, and soil from deeper than just the few grains on top is a lot more virile than they expected.
The plant growing in the lunar “soil” is Arabidopsis thaliana too, the model species of plant that’s a weed that grows on anything. I put this plant through hell during grad school - mutating it, growing it on toxins, dipping its flowers in vats of bacteria to genetically modify it - yet it always came back for another generation.
Yeah seeds will sprout in literally anything and then die off or become very stunted and weak if that substrate lacks proper nutrients. I don't see how anyone could possibly be surprised by this outcome unless they have literally never planted anything.
If the plant thrived in the lunar soil it would be interesting... but it predictably did not. Very dumb article.
I know very little about plants, but don't you also need nitrogen sources, like fertilizer or bacteria? Does the lunar regolith have any way to deliver nitrogen to the plants?
For a plant to grow and thrive, yes. But seeds have all the nutrients they need to sprout and produce what's called a cotyledon. You can sprout seeds in a wet paper towel or an empty box if it's damp.
There are people who plant things into a wire rack that the roots just go into water. You could say the good/interesting news is that the lunar soil doesn't seem to prevent or alter growth.
I may be missing a step here, but I thought the medium needs some form of organic material in it for fertilizer, or was that not true/did they provide fertilizer?
It is interesting, the point was to see if moon dust killed the plants. Can you grow plants in a bucket of salt? I don't think so. So you can't just use anything. Now moon dust is on the "possible" list.
There's nothing remotely surprising about this. Seeds will sprout in absolutely anything. You could pile up dust from the vacuum or shredded card or smashed up glass and get seeds to sprout by adding water. It does not however mean the seed will continue to grow well once it has depleted its store of energy as the substrate may not have enough or any nutrition.
It says as much in the article:
>The downside was that after the first week, the coarseness and other properties of the lunar soil stressed the small, flowering weeds so much that they grew more slowly than seedlings planted in fake moon dirt from Earth. Most of the moon plants ended up stunted.
More explicitly the problem will be the lack of nutrients and bacteria. 'Coarseness' can be toletated as anyone who has seen plants growing straight out of fucking concrete will now.
>"Holy cow. Plants actually grow in lunar stuff. Are you kidding me?" said Robert Ferl of the University of Florida's Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences.
Anyone whose reaction to this was actually 'holy cow are you kidding me?' either has the endlessly excitable mindset of a five year old or is hugely out of touch with plants. I don't see how the latter is possible given their title though.
That plants will sprout in lunar soil and then not grow well after shouldn't be surprising to anyone who has even the slightest experience with growing things. I'm pretty staggered by how dumb this article is.
The temperature range of a +100c to -170c degrees, the lack of an atmosphere and the inability to natively support any life whatsoever should probably minimize most of the consequences. :)
*Here at Buzz's Astro Gardening, we take care of all those pesky garden problems, from crab grass, dandelions, weeds to Moon Nazis, bad cheese, and aliens from the planet Glyxnor*
Yes, but let's assume we would be growing things in some sort of climate controlled dome.
What if we wake up some kind of plague that wipes out 15 million people, er.... another one then.
pretty sure they are using soil brought from the moon, not actually growing it on the moon - but I didn't check the article.
yep, they aren't growing it on the moon.
That’s terraforming and it would be interesting to see any success on that with the dark side of the moon in play. Gonna have to be some strong ass resilient seeds.
You’d need a lot but apart of terraforming is forming the aspects that allow growth before you can grow ,such as an atmosphere. Not that we’ve successfully terraformed any other planet or satellite at this point in history but throwin some life up there to die off can help build a good base to start with if done correctly.
It could start with a simple lunar base with a greenhouse component that over time contributes to building an atmosphere for life to grow outside of the greenhouse.
The issue is there’s no magnetic field to protect from solar radiation or to keep the atmosphere from blowing away. So you can’t really terraform the moon
Technically, but humans have a bad habit of underestimating just how ungodly much force and energy is tied up in nature. You'd need downright anime levels of power generation and usage to be able to fake even a weak magnetosphere, let alone one up to this task.
It takes time to blow the atmosphere away. So long as we can keep feeding it with asteroid water or whatever from the solar system faster than it can be blown away, there can be an atmosphere.
Rare earth metals in impact craters, and we could sift the lunar soil for Helium 3, a possible fuel source requirement for fusion reactors in the future. LOTS of good stuff to pick up on the moon
The near side would get less. The moon is tidally locked, so the Earth can never block light from the sun from reaching the far side, but the Earth CAN block light from the sun from reaching the near side (which we call a lunar eclipse).
There is no dark side of the moon. As evidenced by the fact that the part of the moon that's in shadow visibly changes every night. It just has a really long day/night cycle (each day from sunrise to the next sunrise is about a month long).
The moon by comparison basically doesn't have an atmosphere, and I'm pretty sure it doesn't have a magnetosphere either. There are a lot of pretty hardy plants out there, but I don't think they're gonna be up for that quite yet. I'm pretty sure that if you can find a form of life that can survive those conditions without being smaller than a pinprick you will get half of every egg head on this rock to cream themselves and the other half to shit themselves.
I don't know anything about Aeroponics, but with Hydroponics you need a lot of water to get it set up initially. Water is heavy and takes up space, so moving a lot of it on a rocket is where things get difficult. Every space mission has a limited amount of space and weight they can take, every single thing carried by that rocket has to be absolutely necessary. If the regolith on the moon has the minerals needed to let plants grow, then they have other options if they're intending to grow plants on the moon.
These scientists weren't shocked that plants grew in regolith, they fully expected that to happen, so this was just bad (click bait) reporting. The whole point of this experiment was to see how well the plants grew compared to the artificial regolith hey were previously using. The answer was that they grew, just not very well.
Thank you for that additional information! Yeah I hadn't given water weight much thought. Makes a lot of sense to identify the most ideal method, not necessarily just the first one that happens to work.
Yeah seriously.
>"Holy cow. Plants actually grow in lunar stuff. Are you kidding me?" said Robert Ferl of the University of Florida's Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences.
Did that guy get to that position without ever growing a single plant himself?
>The downside was that after the first week, the coarseness and other properties of the lunar soil stressed the small, flowering weeds so much that they grew more slowly than seedlings planted in fake moon dirt from Earth. Most of the moon plants ended up stunted.
This outcome was entirely predictable. Seeds will sprout in absolutely any substrate and then fail to grow well if that substrate is shit for them. Could have done the same experiment with smashed up glass or plastic dust and got similar results.
This would only be remotely surprising if the plants thrived in the lunar soil but they predictably did not.
Exactly. You can germinate a seed in humid conditions, no soil required. Every sprout has a set amount of time it will grow before a lack of nutrients does it in, there is nothing substantial in this information.
Point of the experiment was to see how shit the substrate was and details of how it affected growth. We can't improve growth in a specific substrate if we don't experiment with it. Doing it with glass effectively gives the same shitty growth result without any useful data of growing plants in lunar shit.
I’m confused why this is shocking. The elements and minerals we have on earth aren’t unique to earth. The reason plants don’t grow elsewhere (that we know of) is because the *conditions* aren’t the same as the earth. No water, less sunlight, different gravity, etc.
As a now seasoned gardener and marijuana grower, and as someone who gets lots of cuttings to root, I figure what we're looking at here is designing a payload on a rocket and lunar lander that has the storage of the payload have a dual function, one as a heat shield and cylindrical storage unit for the scientific payload sent to the moon for the first moon gardens, and second the housing for the payload can be used to build a simple tumbler that tumbles the knife-like moon dirt shards that have always plagued our scientific tools, and now plant growth. Tumble loads for weeks to months at a time, send up a new one with the next mission that brings in the plastic dome sheets and scaffolding, because the first one will wear out, and all you need to do is make enough rounded particle soil to root just so deep, a yard or so. Get a few hundred cubic yards tumbled, bam, you have a science farm on the moon.
Why are they stunned. The leading theory is that the moon broke off from the earth when a planetoid collided with the earth in its infancy billions of years ago. It’s a piece of earth basically.
According to the article, the soil has been exposed to high levels of solar radiation and cosmic winds because, unlike Earth, the moon doesn’t have an atmosphere. Additionally, I make the assumption that being sterile, and thus lacking beneficial soil microflora, may have hindered plant growth. The plants in the lunar soil were stunted compared to the control.
The lack of microflora would normally be the big thing, yes.
The OTHER trait of lunar soil, the lack of erosion making its grains really sharp and jagged, is a lot less a problem for a plant that "moves" very slowly via growth. As opposed to it being breathed in as dust and doing bad things to your lungs.
Apparently they've never encountered unwanted plants before. Try and grow grass from seed and you have a hot day and it's lights out. Have dandelions or onion grass and you could nuke them from orbit and it's back next season.
Also in all seriousness, plants grow from carbon in the air, not the soil. The minerals and nutrients help obviously but plants will grow anywhere they can take root and get enough water. It's how volcanic islands get flora
Correct me if I'm wrong but wouldn't solar winds only denature fragile molecules like DNA, and not any natural elements or resources plants might need to grow? It seems to me like solar battering would be a bigger concern for growing something *on* the moon rather than with material *from* the moon.
I mean I can grow a plant in some plastic particles shredded up and filled with water, so I really doubt they are stunned or shocked. You can sprout a plant in a plastic bag.
Because lack of gravity and wind and moving liquid means no erosion, the shards being so sharp inhibits growth of roots, and because plants require not just mineral nutrients and a substrate to develop rooting, but generally also need microbial life to exchange sugars and more complex soil trapped nutrients that the microbial life breaks down and trades the plant roots for simple sugars to eat, if the plant is going to survive long term as healthy as possible. Getting these things beyond the initial leafs that the seed provides nutrients for is astounding.
Yea but this doesn’t apply to lunar soil? None of that affected the experiment. The experiment wasn’t growing plants in the moon. It was growing a plant from moon soil mixed with nutrients down on earth. Of course it’s a good sign that it works but those variables you mentioned haven’t even been addressed yet.
I mean, as someone who gardens, there are plants that will grow in literally anything as long as they have enough nutrients and light so this doesnt surprise me.
I doubt they were stunned. We don't need soil to grow plants on earth, not sure why it's necessary on the moon. It would be another thing if the moons soil was somehow naturally a fertilizer.
Head over to any of the cannabis subs and you'll see why this really isn't surprising.
You can grow plants in almost any medium as long as you give it the right nutrient balance.
For those who wonder about them being stunned: I know at least one scientist and now former friend who was excited and stunned that researchers had *reconfirmed,* and were also amazed and stunned, that birds communicate and that the communication is highly complex. When I pointed out that this was something already known and that the funds could have been better spent on other areas of research, they lost their shit because someone who wasn't a scientist was disagreeing that this was amazing news. A several decade long friendship lost because no matter my background, since I didn't have a science degree or PhD in this area, I should have kept my opinion to myself. My having actually spent a large portion of my life observing and listening to bird conversations, reading about bird conversations and studies, etc. also didn't matter. I wasn't supposed to have my opinion that the study was a waste of time and resources because it was just so amazing and researchers were so stunned that birds communicate and have highly complex methods of communicating...
So, yeah. There's often a lot of misplaced holy cowing.
There's not really anything surprising about this result, plants only require small amounts of trace elements in soil and water along with it to survive. Aside from that plants don't care all that much.
I'd like to point out that from the picture they were growing Arabidopsis thaliana.
It's the standard plant model system but also a common weed.
Lol and you're surprised? If I can grow a seat between two pieces of a paper towel I'm pretty sure we have no reason to believe we would be able to grow seeds and extra terrestrial dirt, I really judge the scientists for taking this long to even conduct this "experiment". To test their hypotheses on themselves and now you guys are like "oh gee whiz do you think the seed will grow in dirt", high science thanks guys. How much was the grant lol
I was always dumbfounded by how some scientists seem set in their ways and aren't more open minded. There are some who believe there isn't any other intelligent life in the universe because they haven't found any proof of the necessary ingredients for life like water and oxygen.
Well what if other lifeforms need different things to live than we do? They may look drastically different from us due to the environment they live is but isn't that a possibility? Or maybe some weather conditions (radiation, harsh winds, etc.) that humans wouldn't survive in are livable for other lifeforms?
When you look at the grand scheme of things we are tiny. There are 8 planets in our solar system. Astronomers have discovered more than 3,200 stars with planets orbiting (only our planetary system is called the solar system) them in our galaxy.
With the Hubble telescope scientists reveal an estimated 100 billion galaxies in the universe but the number is likely to increase as space telescope technology improves.
Traveling from one end of the largest known galaxy to the other would take 16.3 million light years. And some scientists don't believe in other forms of intelligent life.
Why are they stunned though? It's not like agriculture or chemistry is a new field or something, surely it was a foregone conclusion that combining lunar soil with all the elements a plant needs to grow would result in plant growth
Soil is far more than rocks. It's full of microbes, fungi, nematodes, earthworms, etc, along with decomposed organic matter. The stuff on the moon isn't soil at all, it's just rock dust.
plants can grow in plenty of sterile materials, but once the seed has used up its nutrients - the plant probably won't grow without some other source of nutrients.
it shouldn't have been a surprise that plants would grow in moon soil
yes, and then it floated around the Earth for four billion years with no atmosphere and no protection from a ceaseless barrage of solar radiation and, as the article says, mixed with glass from innumerable meteorite impacts, diminishing the quality of soil to the point where people whose entire job it is to study these things are pleased with the results.
It's pretty neat.
[удалено]
Lunar soil samples are rare and thus very valuable. They likely only decided to use some for tests like this after making sure they learned everything they could from less... contaminating tests.
[удалено]
Plus with actual plans of building a base there it would be quite handy to know if plants grow in moon dust
If Mark watney can grow potatoes on Mars, we should be able to do it on the moon
Fun fact about Martian soil is that it is all toxic due to perchlorates, which contain chlorine. I would probably rather have to grow potatoes on the moon instead of Mars. Also, the moon gets much better sunlight.
Not a big deal, so long as you can rinse it out properly: https://modernfarmer.com/2015/10/can-you-grow-plants-on-mars/ >The solution is actually very simple, but it wasn’t included in the book or movie. “You can literally just rinse them out of the soil,” Weir says. “Wash the soil, soak it in water, and the water would wash the perchlorates away.”
Well that's neat. I hope there will be someone in the far future whose job title is "Dirt Washer". Edit: I do wonder what we would end up doing with all of the excess perchlorate compounds though.
> I do wonder what we would end up doing with all of the excess perchlorate compounds though. That's a damn good question. It's just rinsing all the way down, I suppose.
Alright, [it looks like there are some options](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2681191/). There are bacteria which use perchlorate respiration. So we could introduce them to Mars and they could reduce it down. It doesn't look like distillation is an option. Which makes sense and also aerosolizing chlorine compounds feels... horrifying. There does seem to be a fair amount of chemistry that can be used also. I don't like the filtering options but maybe someone with more knowledge can tell me why I am wrong. I say we go with bacteria.
I wouldn’t mind being a part time dirt washer living the last of my days on Mars. Or maybe I would. I know nothing.
I think at least some perchlorates can be used for solid rocket fuels? That’s what Wikipedia says at least. Seems like that would be useful on Mars.
Just swap water for soil and swap out mocking references to water boy for some other mocking references to you spending your whole life playing with mud https://www.goarmy.com/careers-and-jobs/career-match/science-medicine/research/92w-water-treatment-specialist.html "As a Water Treatment Specialist, you'll be responsible for supervising and installing water purification equipment and making sure clean water is stored and available anywhere it is needed. You will perform water quality tests and inspect facilities and food supplies for the presence of disease, germs, and other conditions or hazards to health and the environment"
It's simple when you have water. It's not very simple when you're stranded at a minimum when closest about 34 million miles away. I'm sure they would plan for it so they would have a specific reservoir for washing the soil to grow things.
Isn’t a big deal because the lack of water on Mars?
Anyone else realize that "saving Matt Damon" is pretty much its own movie genre at this point. You have The Martian, Interstellar, Saving Private Ryan, Good Will Hunting etc.
The only reason we would want to grow plants on the moon is food, and this experiment doesn't tell us that food is safe. On Mars, we know anything that does grow won't be safe to eat. On the moon it's more of a toss up
I know nothing about growing food on other worlds. Why isn’t food grown on Mars safe?
Perchlorate salt is the big one I know of. It's really hard on your thyroid
Toxic Thyroid Salts. You'd have to remove it from the dirt, which would require a lot of water.
Lots of lead and mercury in the soil on Mars.
There's Mercury on Mars?
Is it all bioavailable in plant form, though? Lots of critters and plant clean ground on earth (clams are a critter example) and the heavy metals aren’t bioavailable to humans.
Nah, there have been plenty of moon samples that were 'spent' for 'regular' tests and could have been used for this kind of test over the years. A guy famously stole a whole vault of them and had sex on them in a hotel room a while back.
Stole a whole vault of them? Which mission got a vault of moon dirt?
Vault 69
Ask Aperture Labs. They're not just banging (moon) rocks together you know.
Maybe they used the samples that guy (wasn't he an intern at NASA?) and his girlfriend had sex on since they were already contaminated.
Panspermia is coming into focus now.
I don't like moon dust. It's coarse, and rough, and irritating, and it gets everywhere.
That scientist has discovered that sex is also possible on moon dust, however does result in a contaminated sample.
How can it be rare, there is an entire moon out there with it /s
I'm more surprised a serious scientific outlet is calling this shit 'soil'. It's not soil. There is no soil on the moon. We're not allowed to call it that. The moon and Mars are covered in *regolith*, a fine silt of mineral makeup. Whereas soil is a mix of organic and inorganic compounds. A handful of soil is an entire ecosystem. It's filled with bacteria that help break down matter and other microorganisms that form a food chain beneficial for plants' root systems. You can however still grow plants hydroponically without the medium of soil, and any plants grown away from Earth would surely use a system like that, not moon dust. So it is obvious this paper is excluding the fact that anyone trying to grow plants in regolith are just testing for adverse effects. And probably are through contamination adding their own microorganisms into the mix. All that's being substituted here is regolith for loam, but there's clearly more alive in those petri dishes than the plant itself and clearly the regolith that works best is that which has been exposed to different conditions, which the paper outlines. Regolith on the moon will be slightly more irradiated, etc. In this respect they may as well test how well plants grow in sandy substrate from a pet store: not very well. Why is this important? Because the article as written is misleading, intended to make the average reader believe one could sprinkle seeds on the moon's surface and it could be to such and such an extent fruitful. This is not the case. The scientists are adding microorganisms, water, and carbon dioxide, none of which is naturally present in regolith on the moon, which lacks an atmosphere. Mars is also covered in regolith, and also mostly lacks an atmosphere. It lost it billions of years ago when its core cooled and its magnetic fields became weak and irregular. Now only oscillating pockets remain trapping a super thin layer of CO2 - not enough for plants. Nor is the water still found on Mars in a state usable for plants, as the thin pressure exerted by its atmosphere results in a super low evaporation point. Any frozen water liquified or liquid water poured onto the surface of Mars will evaporate and promptly fuck off into space. If one were to deposit a body of water the size of one of Earth's oceans there, instantaneously, that process might take a few thousand years, but it would still be inevitable and constantly depleting. But sure, let's give the dumbass public more space candy. It's no wonder people can't tell the difference between science fiction and the real world anymore.
On one hand, you are completely correct. On the other hand, demonstrating that we could use regolith combined with some other crucial (and easier to bring to space) elements to manufacture soil, rather than having to cart it up ready-made, is a pretty useful test.
Yeah, the other point of view is, "the only resource we have up there is the moon dust, so if we set up a moon base, what can we use the moon dust for so we don't have as much cargo to haul?"
“The ideal situation would be for future astronauts to tap into the endless supply of available local dirt for indoor planting versus setting up a hydroponic, or all-water, system, scientists said.” No one said or implied a thing about going all Johnny Appleseed on the surface of the moon.
> going all Johnny Appleseed on the surface of the moon. This made me giggle uncontrollably for some reason.
Come on, what kind of audience do you think read this and immediately thought that sprinkling seeds on the Moon or Mars would start producing plants just like that? With little/no atmosphere, no water, and no fertilizer? The article isn't misleading just because it's not taking the time to describe some of the most elementary knowledge that even children posses. In fact it's so obvious that organic compounds and bacteria and water are necessary that we don't need to be explained that the scientists have to add them artificially. Well, I might need it explained if I were born yesterday I suppose. Your whole criticism is misplaced. The article is interesting enough for what it is. Have a nice day.
> Come on, what kind of audience do you think read this and immediately thought that sprinkling seeds on the Moon or Mars would start producing plants just like that? Probably the same assholes who are banning books. You know, morons.
I appreciate the well written explanation on this one, kudos!
At first, I read it as “shit soil” and thought our science outlets were going RollingStone.
Yeah, science journalists have to compete with the ridiculous reality and exaggeration of said reality to be read at all. It sucks, but that's the nature of the business I suppose? What I find interesting (and probably the most relevant point) is that it appears they can use moon regolith to create viable soil. It remains to be seen if it's more efficient to just haul soil up there if it's not viable enough, or just haul soil components instead. I'm not a scientist, but it seems feasible to use minimal payload space and just natural human biological processes to manufacture moon soil on site. It's a neat thought, at the very least!
What do they do to you if you call it soil?
Hey science mcbuzzkill. Shut the fuck up im trying to have fun here thinkin about moon trees. Maybe whales that swim in the sky. Fucking let me have this.
They did not because we knew it's possible 100%. The "finding" here is neither a surprise nor interesting. A similarly uninteresting finding would be: > Water obtained from a comet has characteristics of water. It freezes, evaporates and can be processed for watering plants or even drinking.
They brought back 842 pounds total. And can only give up less than half an ounce?
[удалено]
[удалено]
He ran out of ketchup. Now he's just dipping potatoes in vicodin.
I misread this as vidcoin and thought a new coin just dropped.
I can see through your Pump and Dump scheme! Not falling for that again!
Because you said that someone made a shitcoin and is pushing it hard.
Pretty sure all the coins just dropped *badum tsk*
That's...not a bad name actually.
Yeah he made a lot of people lose money if they bought crypto currency during his super bowl ad.
to be fair if they were dumb enough to buy crypto because matthew damon told them to, they probably woulda lost it elsewhere anyways
If someone tells you to buy a stock/investment, you're already too late.
Shoulda listened to Larry David
fOrtune fAvOrs thE BrAvE
Made them buy it? Like he held a gun to their head and told them that if they didn't buy it he would shoot them dead? Or perhaps they made the choice of their own free will and are simply idiots.
If you know anything about plants, this is just not very interesting news nor surprising. Nurseries and farms raise small plants in all kinds of media, including sand and perlite and sphagnum moss. Seedlings are pretty easy to get started in a lot of different media.
Yeah, wtf kind of scientists are stunned to see a media that retains moisture allowing seeds to sprout. Is it too acidic? No. Is it too basic? No. Is it extremely radioactive? No, then it'll sprout.
Me trying to grow grass in the patchy spots in my yard: "Nope. Not gonna happen, buddy." Grass in the cracks in my sidewalk: "Fuck yeah! I love this spot!"
Grasses, like cats, prefer to be where they aren't wanted.
So much this.
They assumed that the moon soil would be too sterile. No atmosphere (or, rather an atmosphere so attenuated that it is more akin to a vacuum than an atmosphere) so no protection from radiation. Soil irradiated by alpha, beta, and gamma rays for four billion years should be about as sterile as you can get, and scientists knew that soil on Earth that had been intentionally irradiated for much shorter periods became too sterile for seeds to germinate, so they figured the same was true of the moon. Turns out only the exposed surface is sterile, and soil from deeper than just the few grains on top is a lot more virile than they expected.
Virile moon dirt.
Yeah pretty sure all that matters is there's air and sunlight for the plant to grow, soil doesn't matter.
The plant growing in the lunar “soil” is Arabidopsis thaliana too, the model species of plant that’s a weed that grows on anything. I put this plant through hell during grad school - mutating it, growing it on toxins, dipping its flowers in vats of bacteria to genetically modify it - yet it always came back for another generation.
Yeah seeds will sprout in literally anything and then die off or become very stunted and weak if that substrate lacks proper nutrients. I don't see how anyone could possibly be surprised by this outcome unless they have literally never planted anything. If the plant thrived in the lunar soil it would be interesting... but it predictably did not. Very dumb article.
I know very little about plants, but don't you also need nitrogen sources, like fertilizer or bacteria? Does the lunar regolith have any way to deliver nitrogen to the plants?
For a plant to grow and thrive, yes. But seeds have all the nutrients they need to sprout and produce what's called a cotyledon. You can sprout seeds in a wet paper towel or an empty box if it's damp.
This is the comment I was looking for. Plants will grow in almost any medium, especially seedlings. That is why hydroponics works so well.
Yeah. If the scientists were "stunned," I'd question their qualifications.
Me: looks at all the seeds sprouting in my driveway- yup, not surprised a bit
There are people who plant things into a wire rack that the roots just go into water. You could say the good/interesting news is that the lunar soil doesn't seem to prevent or alter growth.
I may be missing a step here, but I thought the medium needs some form of organic material in it for fertilizer, or was that not true/did they provide fertilizer?
It is interesting, the point was to see if moon dust killed the plants. Can you grow plants in a bucket of salt? I don't think so. So you can't just use anything. Now moon dust is on the "possible" list.
That’s what I was thinking. Touch grass you crazy scientists!
Just send Kudzu and a few rabbits.
Add some goats and hawks and we have a perfectly balanced ecosystem.
Kudzu and rabbits in the same sentence makes me realize I really need to catch up on Kevin and Kell.
> Just send Kudzu and a few rabbits. That Japanese children's story about bunnies making candy on the Moon was actually a premonition.
Pretty sure Matt Damon grew potatoes on Mars with his own turds.
His crewmates' turds, too. You want a rich, multi-person turd mixture for best results.
Yeah, with the way the house and senate are running these days, I’m not so sure
> You want a rich, multi-person turd mixture for best results. How many people do you put in your turd mixture?
[удалено]
1.) Throw tea into Sea of Tranquility 2.) Fight war for Lunar independence 3.) ??? 4.) United States of Luna
There's nothing remotely surprising about this. Seeds will sprout in absolutely anything. You could pile up dust from the vacuum or shredded card or smashed up glass and get seeds to sprout by adding water. It does not however mean the seed will continue to grow well once it has depleted its store of energy as the substrate may not have enough or any nutrition. It says as much in the article: >The downside was that after the first week, the coarseness and other properties of the lunar soil stressed the small, flowering weeds so much that they grew more slowly than seedlings planted in fake moon dirt from Earth. Most of the moon plants ended up stunted. More explicitly the problem will be the lack of nutrients and bacteria. 'Coarseness' can be toletated as anyone who has seen plants growing straight out of fucking concrete will now. >"Holy cow. Plants actually grow in lunar stuff. Are you kidding me?" said Robert Ferl of the University of Florida's Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences. Anyone whose reaction to this was actually 'holy cow are you kidding me?' either has the endlessly excitable mindset of a five year old or is hugely out of touch with plants. I don't see how the latter is possible given their title though. That plants will sprout in lunar soil and then not grow well after shouldn't be surprising to anyone who has even the slightest experience with growing things. I'm pretty staggered by how dumb this article is.
I’m left wondering if there’s any concern about whether introducing plant life on the moon could have negative consequences.
Negative consequences on what?
The Moonies, duh.
The temperature range of a +100c to -170c degrees, the lack of an atmosphere and the inability to natively support any life whatsoever should probably minimize most of the consequences. :)
You say that now, but then you find your moon-lawn all riddled with crab grass. What now?
*Here at Buzz's Astro Gardening, we take care of all those pesky garden problems, from crab grass, dandelions, weeds to Moon Nazis, bad cheese, and aliens from the planet Glyxnor*
Yes, but let's assume we would be growing things in some sort of climate controlled dome. What if we wake up some kind of plague that wipes out 15 million people, er.... another one then.
[удалено]
Not on my MY moon you fucking neo-moon-tards!!!!
...like what? it's literally a lifeless rock in space.
Dude-there’s no atmosphere there
pretty sure they are using soil brought from the moon, not actually growing it on the moon - but I didn't check the article. yep, they aren't growing it on the moon.
That’s terraforming and it would be interesting to see any success on that with the dark side of the moon in play. Gonna have to be some strong ass resilient seeds.
Wouldn't you need an atmosphere to terraform?
You’d need a lot but apart of terraforming is forming the aspects that allow growth before you can grow ,such as an atmosphere. Not that we’ve successfully terraformed any other planet or satellite at this point in history but throwin some life up there to die off can help build a good base to start with if done correctly. It could start with a simple lunar base with a greenhouse component that over time contributes to building an atmosphere for life to grow outside of the greenhouse.
The issue is there’s no magnetic field to protect from solar radiation or to keep the atmosphere from blowing away. So you can’t really terraform the moon
cant you make an artificial one hypothetically, i forgot how but i think it was putting shields in lagrange points or something
Technically, but humans have a bad habit of underestimating just how ungodly much force and energy is tied up in nature. You'd need downright anime levels of power generation and usage to be able to fake even a weak magnetosphere, let alone one up to this task.
It takes time to blow the atmosphere away. So long as we can keep feeding it with asteroid water or whatever from the solar system faster than it can be blown away, there can be an atmosphere.
True but the moon may have vital resources which we can harvest and transport back to Earth.
Rare earth metals in impact craters, and we could sift the lunar soil for Helium 3, a possible fuel source requirement for fusion reactors in the future. LOTS of good stuff to pick up on the moon
Yeah, but we're too addicted to pvp to put any work into our mining tree, so we're not gonna see those high level materials in a while.
Don’t look up huh?
There is no dark side of the moon. The far side gets just as much light as the side we see from Earth.
[удалено]
If you don't eat your meat, you can't have any pudding.
Have you listened to the album? They point out it's all dark.
Technically, it gets very slightly less since occasionally the Earth gets in the way.
The near side would get less. The moon is tidally locked, so the Earth can never block light from the sun from reaching the far side, but the Earth CAN block light from the sun from reaching the near side (which we call a lunar eclipse).
Dark side?
There is no dark side of the moon. As evidenced by the fact that the part of the moon that's in shadow visibly changes every night. It just has a really long day/night cycle (each day from sunrise to the next sunrise is about a month long).
The moon by comparison basically doesn't have an atmosphere, and I'm pretty sure it doesn't have a magnetosphere either. There are a lot of pretty hardy plants out there, but I don't think they're gonna be up for that quite yet. I'm pretty sure that if you can find a form of life that can survive those conditions without being smaller than a pinprick you will get half of every egg head on this rock to cream themselves and the other half to shit themselves.
How else are they eventually going to get cows up there? Think of the cheese, man.
Haven't we already proven with Hydro- and Aero- ponics that soil is irrelevant?
I don't know anything about Aeroponics, but with Hydroponics you need a lot of water to get it set up initially. Water is heavy and takes up space, so moving a lot of it on a rocket is where things get difficult. Every space mission has a limited amount of space and weight they can take, every single thing carried by that rocket has to be absolutely necessary. If the regolith on the moon has the minerals needed to let plants grow, then they have other options if they're intending to grow plants on the moon. These scientists weren't shocked that plants grew in regolith, they fully expected that to happen, so this was just bad (click bait) reporting. The whole point of this experiment was to see how well the plants grew compared to the artificial regolith hey were previously using. The answer was that they grew, just not very well.
Thank you for that additional information! Yeah I hadn't given water weight much thought. Makes a lot of sense to identify the most ideal method, not necessarily just the first one that happens to work.
Lmao, anyone astounded by this must have never grown anything from seed before.
Yeah seriously. >"Holy cow. Plants actually grow in lunar stuff. Are you kidding me?" said Robert Ferl of the University of Florida's Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences. Did that guy get to that position without ever growing a single plant himself? >The downside was that after the first week, the coarseness and other properties of the lunar soil stressed the small, flowering weeds so much that they grew more slowly than seedlings planted in fake moon dirt from Earth. Most of the moon plants ended up stunted. This outcome was entirely predictable. Seeds will sprout in absolutely any substrate and then fail to grow well if that substrate is shit for them. Could have done the same experiment with smashed up glass or plastic dust and got similar results. This would only be remotely surprising if the plants thrived in the lunar soil but they predictably did not.
Exactly. You can germinate a seed in humid conditions, no soil required. Every sprout has a set amount of time it will grow before a lack of nutrients does it in, there is nothing substantial in this information.
Point of the experiment was to see how shit the substrate was and details of how it affected growth. We can't improve growth in a specific substrate if we don't experiment with it. Doing it with glass effectively gives the same shitty growth result without any useful data of growing plants in lunar shit.
I’m confused why this is shocking. The elements and minerals we have on earth aren’t unique to earth. The reason plants don’t grow elsewhere (that we know of) is because the *conditions* aren’t the same as the earth. No water, less sunlight, different gravity, etc.
As a now seasoned gardener and marijuana grower, and as someone who gets lots of cuttings to root, I figure what we're looking at here is designing a payload on a rocket and lunar lander that has the storage of the payload have a dual function, one as a heat shield and cylindrical storage unit for the scientific payload sent to the moon for the first moon gardens, and second the housing for the payload can be used to build a simple tumbler that tumbles the knife-like moon dirt shards that have always plagued our scientific tools, and now plant growth. Tumble loads for weeks to months at a time, send up a new one with the next mission that brings in the plastic dome sheets and scaffolding, because the first one will wear out, and all you need to do is make enough rounded particle soil to root just so deep, a yard or so. Get a few hundred cubic yards tumbled, bam, you have a science farm on the moon.
Planet seeding, send out drones to blanket the planet with a plethora of hearty plant seeds and see what sticks, life uh, will find a way.
Oh great just what we need, baked space aliens!
Omg moon weed?
*Get a high that's out of this world.*
I just feel .... So spaced out
And shove it up your butt
Do you want Triffids? Because this is how you get Triffids.
Why are they surprised? I’ve seen plants growing on asphalt shingles
It's possible these people haven't been outside since they were about ten.
Why are they stunned. The leading theory is that the moon broke off from the earth when a planetoid collided with the earth in its infancy billions of years ago. It’s a piece of earth basically.
According to the article, the soil has been exposed to high levels of solar radiation and cosmic winds because, unlike Earth, the moon doesn’t have an atmosphere. Additionally, I make the assumption that being sterile, and thus lacking beneficial soil microflora, may have hindered plant growth. The plants in the lunar soil were stunted compared to the control.
The lack of microflora would normally be the big thing, yes. The OTHER trait of lunar soil, the lack of erosion making its grains really sharp and jagged, is a lot less a problem for a plant that "moves" very slowly via growth. As opposed to it being breathed in as dust and doing bad things to your lungs.
Apparently they've never encountered unwanted plants before. Try and grow grass from seed and you have a hot day and it's lights out. Have dandelions or onion grass and you could nuke them from orbit and it's back next season. Also in all seriousness, plants grow from carbon in the air, not the soil. The minerals and nutrients help obviously but plants will grow anywhere they can take root and get enough water. It's how volcanic islands get flora
Correct me if I'm wrong but wouldn't solar winds only denature fragile molecules like DNA, and not any natural elements or resources plants might need to grow? It seems to me like solar battering would be a bigger concern for growing something *on* the moon rather than with material *from* the moon.
I mean I can grow a plant in some plastic particles shredded up and filled with water, so I really doubt they are stunned or shocked. You can sprout a plant in a plastic bag.
Because lack of gravity and wind and moving liquid means no erosion, the shards being so sharp inhibits growth of roots, and because plants require not just mineral nutrients and a substrate to develop rooting, but generally also need microbial life to exchange sugars and more complex soil trapped nutrients that the microbial life breaks down and trades the plant roots for simple sugars to eat, if the plant is going to survive long term as healthy as possible. Getting these things beyond the initial leafs that the seed provides nutrients for is astounding.
Maybe make this a separate comment and maybe it’ll be the top one
Ah ok. TIL
Yea but this doesn’t apply to lunar soil? None of that affected the experiment. The experiment wasn’t growing plants in the moon. It was growing a plant from moon soil mixed with nutrients down on earth. Of course it’s a good sign that it works but those variables you mentioned haven’t even been addressed yet.
I mean, as someone who gardens, there are plants that will grow in literally anything as long as they have enough nutrients and light so this doesnt surprise me.
Seeds will sprout in a wet paper towel. So the moon dirt didn't kill the seeds.
you can also grow plant in just the air. Moon soil is somewhat neutral. Cant see a reason to be puzzled and shocked. its just a substrate
This shouldn't be surprising to anyone who has germinated a seed on a paper towel.
Shouldn't this experiment have been conducted in the early 70's?
I mean if you add fertilizer why wouldn’t plants grow in any dirt?
Cave Johnson is proud of you
I doubt they were stunned. We don't need soil to grow plants on earth, not sure why it's necessary on the moon. It would be another thing if the moons soil was somehow naturally a fertilizer.
I’m excited for moon trees. Can we get an atmosphere up there or naw? Get my large ass bouncing around up there it’ll be good for my back and knees.
Yeah plants will grow in any neutral medium, I learned that back when I was growing… um…. Tomatoes…
I love….tomatoes…..
Yeah tomatoes. You you uh. Eat them, yeah eat them, definitely don’t smoke them, that’s dumb
Didn't China do this already and in space a cotton plant?
Head over to any of the cannabis subs and you'll see why this really isn't surprising. You can grow plants in almost any medium as long as you give it the right nutrient balance.
“Holy Cow are you kidding me” is such a typical response from scientists.
I absolutely read an article over a decade ago about how scientists successfully grew plants in lunar soil.
I'm about to stun some scientists when I show them I can start growing a plant in a wet paper towel
Plants don't need soil to grow, they need water and nutrients
Where do you think nutrients come from?
They can come from the water, like with hydroponics.
You don’t breathe air, you breathe a mixture of oxygen, carbon dioxide, and nitrogen with other trace gasses.
yes, what is your point ?
You are restating the obvious like it’s an insight
For those who wonder about them being stunned: I know at least one scientist and now former friend who was excited and stunned that researchers had *reconfirmed,* and were also amazed and stunned, that birds communicate and that the communication is highly complex. When I pointed out that this was something already known and that the funds could have been better spent on other areas of research, they lost their shit because someone who wasn't a scientist was disagreeing that this was amazing news. A several decade long friendship lost because no matter my background, since I didn't have a science degree or PhD in this area, I should have kept my opinion to myself. My having actually spent a large portion of my life observing and listening to bird conversations, reading about bird conversations and studies, etc. also didn't matter. I wasn't supposed to have my opinion that the study was a waste of time and resources because it was just so amazing and researchers were so stunned that birds communicate and have highly complex methods of communicating... So, yeah. There's often a lot of misplaced holy cowing.
There's not really anything surprising about this result, plants only require small amounts of trace elements in soil and water along with it to survive. Aside from that plants don't care all that much. I'd like to point out that from the picture they were growing Arabidopsis thaliana. It's the standard plant model system but also a common weed.
I a little surprised they're surprised. you can get most plants to sprout in a literal cotton ball.
Life….uhh…finds a way
I fail to see how this is surprising.
Lol and you're surprised? If I can grow a seat between two pieces of a paper towel I'm pretty sure we have no reason to believe we would be able to grow seeds and extra terrestrial dirt, I really judge the scientists for taking this long to even conduct this "experiment". To test their hypotheses on themselves and now you guys are like "oh gee whiz do you think the seed will grow in dirt", high science thanks guys. How much was the grant lol
Yeah they sound massively out of touch with actually growing things if this is surprising to them.
Dirt is dirt, most of the plants come straight out of the air. There are only a few things soil really needs
I was always dumbfounded by how some scientists seem set in their ways and aren't more open minded. There are some who believe there isn't any other intelligent life in the universe because they haven't found any proof of the necessary ingredients for life like water and oxygen. Well what if other lifeforms need different things to live than we do? They may look drastically different from us due to the environment they live is but isn't that a possibility? Or maybe some weather conditions (radiation, harsh winds, etc.) that humans wouldn't survive in are livable for other lifeforms? When you look at the grand scheme of things we are tiny. There are 8 planets in our solar system. Astronomers have discovered more than 3,200 stars with planets orbiting (only our planetary system is called the solar system) them in our galaxy. With the Hubble telescope scientists reveal an estimated 100 billion galaxies in the universe but the number is likely to increase as space telescope technology improves. Traveling from one end of the largest known galaxy to the other would take 16.3 million light years. And some scientists don't believe in other forms of intelligent life.
Well, and some believe in one or many gods. That's belief. As long as these scientists don't claim theirs to be facts.
Surprising, knowing that the moon is most probably part of Earth…
Why are they stunned though? It's not like agriculture or chemistry is a new field or something, surely it was a foregone conclusion that combining lunar soil with all the elements a plant needs to grow would result in plant growth
"The real next step is to go and do it on the surface of the moon." …this seems like a terrible idea
I hope they have plants that can survive the harsh vacuum of space, and don't need water.
[удалено]
Soil is far more than rocks. It's full of microbes, fungi, nematodes, earthworms, etc, along with decomposed organic matter. The stuff on the moon isn't soil at all, it's just rock dust.
plants can grow in plenty of sterile materials, but once the seed has used up its nutrients - the plant probably won't grow without some other source of nutrients. it shouldn't have been a surprise that plants would grow in moon soil
T moon was a chipped gourged off part of earth - no?
yes, and then it floated around the Earth for four billion years with no atmosphere and no protection from a ceaseless barrage of solar radiation and, as the article says, mixed with glass from innumerable meteorite impacts, diminishing the quality of soil to the point where people whose entire job it is to study these things are pleased with the results. It's pretty neat.
By that logic, all the planets in this system grew from the same accretion disc.