How to actually look like aliens?

Science-fiction writers since ancient times have put forward different versions of how will look like aliens from outer space. What images are not invented: intelligent reptilians to boulder on a silicon basis. But it is possible that the reality will surpass your craziest fantasies.

Charles Turik, researcher at National laboratory Savannah river and adjunct Professor of biological faculty of Clemson University in South Carolina: "the Work on studying the interaction of melanin with gamma radiation, in which the pigment manages to regenerate itself, gives hope for the development of future materials that can protect from radiation on the basis of entirely new principles. And in the future — almost perpetual power sources for converting ionizing radiation into electrical energy".

In the early 2000-ies, during one of the routine monitoring of the 4th unit of the Chernobyl NPP with the help of a robot, the inspectors found on the inner walls of the sarcophagus is a strange black plaque that did not exist before. Samples of the black plaque, taken by the robot, were sent to the laboratory, whence came the surprising results: upon closer inspection, this RAID was a living creature, namely, the mold Cladosporium sphaerospermum.

Radical black she gave the pigment melanin, the one which makes white people tan (and blacks — black). Scientists have raised the hypothesis that the fungus "tanned" with the same purpose as men — to protect from radiation, especially over the past fifteen years, scientists of the Kiev Institute of Microbiology and Virology. D. K. Zabolotny of NAS of Ukraine studied colonies of fungi with a high amount of melanin that live in the soil around the sarcophagus. However, in reality everything was much more surprising.

Chernobyl mushrooms

In 2007 a group of researchers from new York medical College. Albert Einstein under the guidance of Professor of nuclear medicine and radiochemistry Catherine Dadasheva published in the scientific journal PLOS One article "Ionizing radiation changes the electronic characteristics of melanin and enhances the growth of fungi mehanizirovannaya" with a truly sensational conclusion. Scientists experimented with a melanin-containing fungus Wangiella dermatitidis, Cryptococcus neoformans, and those same "Chernobyl" Cladosporium sphaerospermum and found that they not only resist the harmful effects of ionizing radiation, but grow under the effects of radiation much better than without it!

The increased levels of radiation 500 times caused a threefold acceleration of the biomass growth (compared to neobychainye neelaniram or fungi of the same species). A "Chernobyl" Cladosporium sphaerospermum showed an even more interesting effect: radiation accelerated their growth even in conditions when there was limited amount of nutrients. However, at first it was not clear learned whether the mold is to use gamma radiation as the plants light for photosynthesis (specifically, radiosintez), or just use the ionization energy to accelerate an ordinary heterotrophic nutrition.

Delicious radiation

Mold immediately began to mercilessly torment in many research laboratories, and it seems that scientists still managed to knock out her confession. Shows published in 2011 in the journal bioelectrochemistry is the study of the American National laboratory Savannah river "Gamma radiation interacts with melanin, changing its redox potential and produces an electrical current" is a tricky fungus is, apparently, still manages to use the energy of the radiation, although the details of the ongoing molecular processes are still unknown.

To the stars

If these findings are confirmed, then in addition to far-reaching consequences (and fundamental in biology and radiochemistry, and it is applied in materials science) it could overturn our understanding of the field of distant space travel.

After this discovery actually deregisters the conditions necessary for advanced life, such requirement as being in the habitable zone.

Serious doubts about these aspects began to emerge for a long time, especially after the opening of the ecosystems around black smokers — hydrothermal vents on the ocean floor. There, in eternal darkness, photosynthesis is impossible, so the base of the food chain are bacteria performing chemosynthesis. The bacteria get energy by oxidizing emitted from a source of chemicals, such as hydrogen sulfide. Such ecosystems makes sense to look for under-ice oceans of Europe (satellite of Jupiter).

However, the limitation of chemosynthesis obvious that chemical fuels (even this is tasteless, as hydrogen sulfide) has the unpleasant feature to end quickly — sometimes faster than the poor people will have time to evolve and reinvent communism, electrification or even rockets, in order to escape before it's too late. Not to mention the fact that hydrothermal sources of volcanic activity, which not always is there: in Europe, most likely it is, but on Mars — no. The radiation generally does not require the planet!

Live ships

Such considerations lead us to the concept of a "living ship". One of the most famous illustrations Lеxx from the same sci-Fi series, which shows the advantages of this approach, in particular the ability to heal itself and reproduce. As you can see, nature has already taken steps in the right direction. The cells of fungi include chitinous shell, and is in the capable hands of an excellent structural material (crustaceans, insects and Arachnida will not lie).

Astronauts of the future could be very useful construction material, is able to repair itself when damaged, to multiply disputes, to finish a new section of debris and waste on the fly and everything else to feed the crew (if part of the produced biomass is edible). And even to take on medical functions due to the natural antibiotic activity — and it is quite superfluous if the nearest pharmacy penicillin remains light years behind! That's just whether to command a ship like this men... or evolved mold, mycelium of which is asleep the makings of a conqueror of space?

Eugene Slobodski may 19, 2013

Translated by «Yandex.Translator»