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.
From the press release: In this ground-breaking new history of early America, historian Robert Zimmerman not only exposes the lie behind The New York Times 1619 Project that falsely claims slavery is central to the history of the United States, he also provides profound lessons about the nature of human societies, lessons important for Americans today as well as for all future settlers on Mars and elsewhere in space.
Conscious Choice: The origins of slavery in America and why it matters today and for our future in outer space, is a riveting page-turning story that documents how slavery slowly became pervasive in the southern British colonies of North America, colonies founded by a people and culture that not only did not allow slavery but in every way were hostile to the practice.
Conscious Choice does more however. In telling the tragic history of the Virginia colony and the rise of slavery there, Zimmerman lays out the proper path for creating healthy societies in places like the Moon and Mars.
“Zimmerman’s ground-breaking history provides every future generation the basic framework for establishing new societies on other worlds. We would be wise to heed what he says.” —Robert Zubrin, founder of founder of the Mars Society.
Available everywhere for $3.99 (before discount) at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and all ebook vendors, or direct from the ebook publisher, ebookit. And if you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and I get a bigger cut much sooner.
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.
From the press release: In this ground-breaking new history of early America, historian Robert Zimmerman not only exposes the lie behind The New York Times 1619 Project that falsely claims slavery is central to the history of the United States, he also provides profound lessons about the nature of human societies, lessons important for Americans today as well as for all future settlers on Mars and elsewhere in space.
Conscious Choice: The origins of slavery in America and why it matters today and for our future in outer space, is a riveting page-turning story that documents how slavery slowly became pervasive in the southern British colonies of North America, colonies founded by a people and culture that not only did not allow slavery but in every way were hostile to the practice.
Conscious Choice does more however. In telling the tragic history of the Virginia colony and the rise of slavery there, Zimmerman lays out the proper path for creating healthy societies in places like the Moon and Mars.
“Zimmerman’s ground-breaking history provides every future generation the basic framework for establishing new societies on other worlds. We would be wise to heed what he says.” —Robert Zubrin, founder of founder of the Mars Society.
Available everywhere for $3.99 (before discount) at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and all ebook vendors, or direct from the ebook publisher, ebookit. And if you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and I get a bigger cut much sooner.
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.