Chinese scientists plant seeds bred on Tiangong space station
The new colonial movement: Chinese scientists have now planted on Earth some of the 12,000 seeds that were bred on China’s Tiangong space station for six months and brought back to Earth in April.
The seeds, including alfalfa, oats and fungi, were selected by multiple research institutions last year. They were brought back to Earth by the Shenzhou-13 on April 16. Space breeding refers to the process of exposing seeds to cosmic radiation and microgravity during a spaceflight mission to mutate seed genes and then send them back to Earth to generate new species.
The goal is to see which seeds survive best in the harsh environment of space, which would thus make them better candidates for transport to other planets for planting.
While some of the results of this research will be published, much will not. China tends to keep what it learns close to the vest.
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The new colonial movement: Chinese scientists have now planted on Earth some of the 12,000 seeds that were bred on China’s Tiangong space station for six months and brought back to Earth in April.
The seeds, including alfalfa, oats and fungi, were selected by multiple research institutions last year. They were brought back to Earth by the Shenzhou-13 on April 16. Space breeding refers to the process of exposing seeds to cosmic radiation and microgravity during a spaceflight mission to mutate seed genes and then send them back to Earth to generate new species.
The goal is to see which seeds survive best in the harsh environment of space, which would thus make them better candidates for transport to other planets for planting.
While some of the results of this research will be published, much will not. China tends to keep what it learns close to the vest.
Readers!
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. Your support allows me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Only now does it appear that Washington might finally recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
I wonder what the anti-GMO people think of this.
Random exposure to radiation and planted in an oh-so-secure Chinese location hoping for the best vs careful gene tailoring to get just what is desired and regulated planting.
It seems an obvious choice to me, but I’m not willing to blind millions of children because OMG! GMO!
Seemore Feed Me!!!!!!!!
Or
Its Supper Kudzu. Grows twice as fast and large in less fertile soil.
markedup2 pondered: “I wonder what the anti-GMO people think of this.”
When pointing out that all our food is genetically modified by cross breeding, over the past few millennia, relying upon random mutations to create a better food source rather than some sort of hazardous food, the anti-GMO people I have had these discussions with think that nature cannot make something bad for us, like rattlesnake poisons or plagues. However, these same people have also insisted to me that Wuhan flu is natural rather than a lab-made genetically modified organism created specifically in order to see how bad bad can be. The argument changes in order for them to always get their way.
For the anti-GMO people, only scientifically performed gene-splicing is bad, not the variations we find in nature, so the next time those people come across an oleander plant, how many of them will ingest the poisonous sap?
The anti-GMO people do not think through their arguments but rely upon their emotional gut reactions to drive their decisions. This is what three-year-olds do, not what the adults in the room do. The adults perform experiments and make their decisions based upon the results. Knowledge, rather than emotion, drives the decisions of the adults. This is why we do experiments on the ISS.
It is the difference between Galilean science and Aristotlean science. During his time, there were two schools of thought: one that believed we could think about and deduce the secrets of nature and another school that believed that experimentation was necessary to prove the truth of what we thought. Aristotle believed in the former. This was an emotional belief, based upon hubris. Had he experimented with this hypothesis, he would have discovered that heavier objects fall at the same rate as lighter objects, and that his hypothesis was incorrect, that we need to perform experiments. Instead, science followed Aristotle’s hubris and set us back two millennia, until Gallileo convinced scientists that experimentation was necessary in order to determine the truth, and science started making forward motion again.
Sometimes what we think is obvious is not how nature works. This is why we no longer believe that light travels through ether, the obvious medium through which such waves must travel.