Tag: botany

Lunar and Martian Farming

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Can we grow crops on the Moon? How about Mars? If you saw the movie “The Martian,” it seems you could grow potatoes on Mars with a supply of water, oxygen, and some fertilizer, but without these necessities (soil nutrients, water, oxygen) they just wouldn’t last. If we eventually want to colonize places like the Moon and Mars, finding a way to live off the land is a must. The sunshine will help, but can we really grow crops on alien soil? As it turns out, Earth scientists have been working on this problem, by simulating the soils of the...

The Sun is Doing That Weird Thing Again

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You know the thing I mean, when it suddenly goes dark in the middle of the day and looks all fiery.  Stars come out in the daytime and animals go crazy.  When silly people pray extra hard for some reason.  I swear the Moon is involved. It looks like this…. Ah yes the solar eclipse, the rare event that only occurs because the Sun is both 400 times wider and 400 times more distant than the Moon.  It’s a mathematically beautiful event that only occurs every 5 years on average.  And when it does happen, the total coverage of the...