Plants in space! (and plants in my yard)
Plants in space!
I’ve been waiting all week to write that headline.
In case you’re new here, I work for the University of Arizona. Last week we had our annual faculty cookout (my first one, since I started my job during pandemic, and it’s hard to have a cookout over Zoom) at one of the university research facilities here in town. When we weren’t stuffing our overeducated faces with amazing Mexican food, we were offered tours of some of the research facilities. Long-Suffering Husband and I took a tour of a laboratory where scientists are studying how to grow plants to support a human mission to Mars or the moon. They’ve designed modular greenhouses that can be packed up and loaded on a space ship, then reassembled and buried beneath the surface of whatever inhospitable world humans are trying to occupy. The idea is to produce fresh food, water, and oxygen for the astronauts and recycle their waste. How cool is that?
Here’s a poster with more information about this research project:
And here’s me with Long-Suffering Husband in front of one of the greenhouses:
Sometimes I really love being an academic.
Plants not in space
Since we’re talking about plants… My garden has nothing to do with NASA, which is a good thing, because if astronauts had to depend on my gardening skills for survival, we’d need to figure out how to do extraterrestrial body disposal.
And now I really want someone to make CSI: Mars. Can’t you just picture the cast standing around in space suits arguing about the effect of the Martian atmosphere on decomposition rates?
Anyway.
Despite my less-than-NASA-worthy skills, my garden is starting to pretty up a bit. Spring is in full swing in Tucson, which means the weather doesn’t make any damn sense. On Tuesday night, we had our lowest low (31F, I think) for April 4 since the 1930s, and by Monday we’re supposed to have a high of 95F. Yeah, that’ll be fun.
The cold didn’t kill my flowers, so I took a bunch of pictures in case the heat does them in. Here are a couple of shots of most of my back garden as of this morning (please ignore the weeds):
Just for fun, I searched for a post with garden pictures from this time last year. The garden has come a long way!
The tall monstrosities in the righthand pic are green onions. A couple of years ago, I planted the bottom three or so inches of some green onions from the supermarket. I cut the tops for cooking instead of harvesting the whole plant, and the clumps keep getting bigger–plus they bloom (as you can see in the pic) and seed all over the place. I’ve done this for years, and even in cold, snowy Flagstaff they’d come back every year. Here in not-cold Tucson, I have green onions for the kitchen year-round.
Here are some closeups of what’s blooming:
It’s citrus blooming season, so my yard and the entire neighborhood smell like heaven.
It’s also the start of cactus blooming season. This one is in a front yard down the street from me:
Random crap that has crossed my desk
I spend way too much time on the internet and social media. Mostly I gather memes for my posts or immerse myself in the drama of the AITA subreddit. Every now and then, though, I find something great. Here’s what I’ve found recently that’s great:
- An article from Scientific American called, “There’s a Psychological ‘Vaccine’ Against Misinformation.” It’s an interview with the author of Foolproof: Why Misinformation Infects Our Minds and How to Build Immunity (which I still need to read). The author argues that we can protect ourselves from misinformation the way people learned to protect themselves from brainwashing–through a technique called “prebunking,” i.e., forewarning them, exposing them to a small dose of the misinformation with tips on how to refute it, and helping people recognize the techniques used to spread misinformation. Interesting stuff. The article is free online.
- On a much lighter note, courtesy of McSweeney’s: “H. P. Lovecraft Writes Olive Garden’s Dinner Menu.” I strongly recommend you don’t drink anything while reading, unless you want your drink relocated to your sinuses. I think I’ll have some bubbling sacks of slime for lunch.
Now that you’re already laughing, let’s move on to:
The Memery
New dad joke just dropped:
I’m trying to remember what grocery shopping was like before cell phones. Like, people had to tell you what they wanted beforehand and write it on little scraps of dead trees. And then just accept whatever brand/size/flavor/color the shopper picked out.
How did we survive?
Never have I felt so called out by a meme.
Along those same lines:
I actually do run.*
* On a treadmill.
* For about 5 minutes a week.
So that’s the secret to finding a place to read where the family won’t find me.
Not sure that would have worked as well with our greyhounds, but it would have been funny.
Am old. Can confirm.
Someday I’ll have to tell y’all about the time Long-Suffering Husband and I were chased down a trail by a guy with a gun and a chainsaw.
No, I’m not kidding.
And finally:
Definitely. Where do you think I find all these memes?
And… I’m outta here. Who has fun weekend plans? I’ll be cleaning my house and spreading compost. It’s party central around here, I’m telling you.
This post is part of the Weekend Coffee Share, hosted by Natalie the Explorer.
23 Comments
Joanne
Those plants in space remind me of the movie The Martian! I love when actual science intersects with science fiction. Your garden is looking lovely. Ours is just starting to show a few buds and sprouts and I really need to get out there and cut back all the dead stuff from winter… but I’m waiting for it to warm up just a bit.
Janet Alcorn
Thanks! Happy to send you some of our weather–it’s supposed to be 98 here on Monday and Tuesday. I’m not ready for the inferno to return.
Kelly Wellington
Re: Plants in space. Have you not seen the amazing scifi series, The Expanse? It seems like it would have hooked you right in with the hard-bitten colonial detective (a la film noire)
Janet Alcorn
Ooh, no, I haven’t! Will add to my To Watch list. Thanks!
ganga1996
Wow Arizona hit 30 and a 95. I thought we get that here only in the North East.
Janet Alcorn
We get huge temperature swings here in the desert–40 degrees or more from day to night. It’s bizarre.
ganga1996
wow
Jennifer Jones
Plants in space is very exciting news. I haven’t heard of it, but will now be watching out for it in the news. Your own garden is coming along nicely. I love the Alfred Sisely rose and penstemons are one of my favourite perennials.
Janet Alcorn
Thanks! Penstemons are wonderful–beautiful, tough, drought-tolerant, and deer-resistant. What’s not to love?
Writing Sparkle
The living on Mars thing fascinates me. Those greenhouses do have a space feel. Whenever the topic of living on Mars comes up I can’t help but ask the question, Would you do it, would you move to Mars? Another question I throw in with it has to do with living under the ocean in the biodomes. If you had to choose between living under the seas or living on Mars which would you choose?
Janet Alcorn
I wouldn’t do either unless I had no other choice. I don’t think I’d even live on a small island for any length of time. I like to roam. But if I had to choose, I’d live under the ocean. At least there I might be able to be rescued if something went wrong.
Gary A Wilson
Janet – this was excellent!
I want to know more, much more about UA’s study. I could use most of it to either expand or publish a 2nd volume of my longest story to date, Defending Canopy Station.
https://garyawilsonstories.wordpress.com/defending-canopy-station/
I have this huge space station that depends on exactly the problem of renewing food, oxygen and water in space. I want to know how much water we’d need to shield everyone inside from run-of-the-mill cosmic radiation – which we don’t have to worry about here inside of our Van Allen belt, but out there, we’d be dead but likely, recyclable raw material pretty quickly – presuming of course, there was anyone left to do or care about recycling. . . hm.
Did they publish findings?
I AM going to read that SA article. I used to be a subscriber, but they got too new-agey-science-babble on me so I moved on – but this looks excellent and I want to compare notes.
Sam Woods de-appetizer-ating food review was a riot. He could lead the battle to wave off many a meal as we try to loose weight the good old fashion way of voluntary starvation.
Finally, I suspect I’m going to yield to the temptation of stealing the jogging meme to create the tee shirt that would be ME. . .
So much fun – so little time.
Do let me know if and how to tap into UA’s plants in space research. That has to be great stuff.
Janet Alcorn
When I get some time, I’ll see if I can find some published research based on the grow operation I visited.
Glad the articles were of interest to you! I howled at the Lovecraftian menu. I’m not a Lovecraft fan precisely because his prose is so overdone.
Gary A Wilson
Hi Janet,
I’d bet that some or much of this research might be available through the Biosphere project and would not be surprised if they actually somehow sponsored – wait – I just checked and indeed their logo was at the bottom of the poster you shared an image of. So, there’s a good place to start. Wish I’d been there for the tour. . .
I just finished the Sci-Am article and you were right – very interesting and now I’d like a list of the techniques that could be part of this pre-bunking concept. Given how much fake news and outright wide-range opinion manipulation we’re subjected to, a full defense, even at the individual level may be impossible and at the wider demographic level – I think it’s absolutely impossible.
The article correctly calls out that if we (all) had to doubt and check everything we’re exposed to – we’d never get through our day. I think that point is spot on. Our productivity would grind to a halt and we’d all be fired from any job that expected us to get things done.
Great stuff though – I’d be happy to know that I’m catching and avoiding adopting even a few more dishonest manipulations. Lord knows I’m getting really good at spotting phone and text messaging scams.
Thanks for sharing these gems..
Natalie
Like Joanne, those plants in space remind me of the movie The Martian. Your garden is coming along nicely. with beautiful flowers. Those green onions look huge. Thank you for your weekend coffee share.
Janet Alcorn
Thanks! I need to read/watch The Martian. I’ve heard really good things.
Maria
Love the headline! And this is so interesting Janet, on many levels. I mean I don’t think it’s crazy to think about humans growing food in space, even though I’d prefer to stay on earth myself. I had a dream a couple nights ago, related to the study for my thesis that I’m writing about “Kindergarten teacher’s attitudes towards teaching sustainability, in relation to LPFÖ 18” (our curriculum.) In my dream I was defending my thesis at a seminar and one of the Professor’s stated that I had to teach 3 years at the University of Arizona if I wanted to continue working towards my Phd. LOL. Imagine that, we might be colleagues 😉
Your garden is beautiful !
Janet Alcorn
Love the dream! I bet you’d like our winters 🙂
I’d definitely prefer to remain on earth. I’ve always been fascinated by space travel, but I like my comfort and general safety way too much to want to do it.
Maria
Yes 🙂
leannelc
Interesting seeing the plants in space thing Janet and also getting a peek at your garden – lucky it survived that unexpected cold snap. Loved the memes as per usual – especially the running ones…..I don’t run (I tell myself it’s to save my new hip…..but I never ran before my op either).
Janet Alcorn
I run a little bit, sometimes, not as much as I used to because I hate running. It does get me in shape better than other exercises I’ve tried, but like I said, I hate it.
Julie
The Lunar Greenhouses made me think of “The Martian” — I’m happy to see there are more than potatoes :-P.
Janet Alcorn
Yeah, a diet of nothing but potatoes would get pretty dull. I’m not exactly a foodie, but I think I’d have trouble with the monotony of eating in space.