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If we are going to have an enduring presence on either the Moon or Mars, or anyplace off of Earth, we will need to grow food there. It is simply too expensive, inconvenient, and fragile to be dependent on food entirely from Earth. In fact, any off-Earth habitat will need to be able to recycle most if not all of its resources. You basically need a reliable source of energy, sufficient food, water, and oxygen (consumables) to sustain all inhabitants, and the ability to endlessly recycle that food, water, and oxygen.

The ISS has achieved 98% recycling of water, which is what NASA claims is the threshold for sustainability of long space missions. The ISS also recycles about 40% of its oxygen. However, the ISS grows none of its food. It is all delivered from Earth, with a 6 month supply aboard the ISS. There are experiments to grow plants on the ISS, and these have been successful, but this is not a significant source of nutrition for the astronauts.

Doing the same on the Moon is not practical for long missions, although we will certainly be doing this for a time. But the goal, if we are to have a lunar base as NASA hopes (NASA plans a lunar base at the Moon’s south pole by 2030) is to grow food on the Moon (and eventually on Mars). On the ISS the big limiting factor is microgravity. The Moon has lower gravity than Earth, but it has some gravity and so that will likely not be a major problem, especially since we can grow plants on the ISS. We can also grow plants hydroponically pretty much anywhere, and I suspect this will happen on any lunar base. But a fully hydroponic system has its limits as well.

Hydroponics on the Moon would be challenging for several reasons. First, it is energy intensive, and energy may be a premium on a lunar base, especially early on. Second, it requires a precise balance of nutrients in the water, and those nutrients would have to be sourced from Earth. So it doesn’t really solve the problem of dependence on Earth. And third, hydroponics requires a lot of equipment which would have to be shipped from Earth. We could theoretically leach nutrients from lunar regolith, and this might help a bit, but is also energy intensive and would not be a source of nitrogen.

Therefore – NASA and others are looking into the possibility of growing plants in lunar regolith. This could have multiple advantages. It requires much less equipment, energy, and water than hydroponics. Many of the nutrients would come from the regolith itself. This would reduce dependence on supplies from Earth. A soil-based system can also more easily recycle nutrients from food waste and human waste. Likely, a lunar base would have a hybrid hydroponic and soil-based system. As a side benefit, if such a base grew enough food to feed its human inhabitants, this would also recycle CO2 and produce more than enough oxygen for them to breath. In fact, they would have to figure out something to do with the extra oxygen to keep it from building up (likely not a problem – oxygen has many uses).

The major hurdle to growing food in lunar regolith is that – well, you can’t. Plants do not grow well in lunar regolith. It lacks nitrogen and other nutrients, it lacks organic matter, and it contains toxic compounds. Experimentally, plants will not grow sufficiently in simulated lunar regolith. But, we can treat the regolith to turn it into soil that can grow plants, and that is the focus of the current study mentioned in the headline. Scientists have used simulated regolith, modified by adding organic matter (vermicompost) created by red wiggler earthworms composting organic waste, and were able to grow chickpeas in the resulting soil. They tried various mixtures, and found that 75% regolith to 25% soil was the limit – more than 75% regolith and the plants would not survive. They also coated the chickpeas with arbuscular mycorrhizae before planting. The fungus is symbiotic, increasing the uptake of some nutrients while decreasing the uptake of some toxins like heavy metals.

The experiment was considered a success – the chickpea plants grew, survived, and produced chickpeas. However, they have not yet tested the chickpeas to see if they are safe and edible. They need to be tested for any toxic compounds. This is also not the first such study, there have been dozens of others. They generally show that crops will grow in modified simulated Martian and Lunar regolith. But questions remain about how good the simulated regoliths are.

There has also been one study using actual unmodified lunar regolith (brought back by the Apollo missions). In this study the plants grew, but showed signs of severe stress and were morphologically altered. That they grew at all, however, is amazing and encouraging.

What does all this mean for the future of lunar and Martian bases? They will very likely include some growing of food in modified regolith. The implication of the research is that we can likely develop a self-sustaining system in which plants are grown in modified soil using mostly native regolith. These plants produce food and oxygen while using CO2. The soil can then be fertilized using compost from any organic waste generated by the base, including humanure. You can even recycle urine in order to source nitrogen. In short, we can envision a system in which everything is recycled to locally produce food and air. We can also recycle 98% of the water in the system, perhaps eventually even more. You just need to kickstart the system with initial resources, and maybe need to top them off from time to time, but otherwise the system is self-sustaining.

It is also likely that the more the lunar or Martian regolith is used to grow food, the more it will look like Earth soil. The percentage of organic matter will increase, it will develop an ecosystem of microorganisms, and any toxins will be leached out over time. This high quality soil can then be used to expand the farm, and generate more modified soil from regolith.

It is also likely that such a lunar farm would exist underground, probably within a lava tube. This means that all the light with be artificial, but that’s not a big problem – we can do grow lights. Having a farm under a dome on the surface is likely not worth it. This would provide free sunlight, but only half the time, and not in a typical circadian cycle, but roughly 14 days of sunlight followed by 14 days of darkness. It would also be susceptible to radiation and micrometeors. Better to be in the safety of a lava tube, deep under ground, and just use grow lights.

Finally, one factor I have not mentioned yet is the potential to alter the plants themselves to adapt them to growing on the Moon, or on Mars or on a space station. Through some combination of cultivation and genetic engineering, we may be able to adapt crops to the lower gravity and the modified lunar soil. This could optimize productivity, safety, and nutrition.

While there is a lot of work to be done, the research so far shows that farming the Moon or Mars is feasible, which is good if we plan to have long term bases on either.

The post Scientists Grow Chickpeas In Lunar(ish) Soil first appeared on NeuroLogica Blog.

What do a 20th-century physicist, an 18th-century statistician and an ancient Greek philosopher have in common? They all knew how to extrapolate with incredible accuracy. Columnist Jacob Aron explains how to combine their methods to improve your ability to guess

Everyone knows Yuri Gagarin as the first person to go to space. But was he? Literary historian Vladimir Brljak tells the tale of the intrepid balloonists who first flew beyond the blue terrestrial sky, challenging the definition of where our world begins to end

For decades, astronomers wondered why most nearby galaxies are speeding away from the Milky Way instead of being pulled in by its gravity. New simulations reveal the answer: our galaxy sits in a gigantic, flat sheet of matter surrounded by huge empty voids. This hidden structure—dominated by dark matter—balances gravitational forces and lets neighboring galaxies drift outward. The discovery finally explains the puzzling motions of galaxies just beyond our Local Group.

Electrons in solar materials can be launched across molecules almost as fast as nature allows, thanks to tiny atomic vibrations acting like a “molecular catapult.” In experiments lasting just 18 femtoseconds, researchers at the University of Cambridge observed electrons blasting across a boundary in a single burst, far faster than long-standing theories predicted. Instead of slow, random movement, the electron rides the natural vibrations of the molecule itself, challenging decades of design rules for solar materials.

Researchers at Cornell University have developed a powerful imaging technique that reveals atomic scale defects inside computer chips for the first time. Using an advanced electron microscopy method, the team mapped the exact positions of atoms inside tiny transistor structures and uncovered small imperfections nicknamed “mouse bites.” These defects form during the complex manufacturing process and can disrupt how electrons flow through a chip’s channels, which are only about 15 to 18 atoms wide.

Craters, craters, and yet more craters: this snapshot from ESA’s Mars Express is packed full of them, each as fascinating as the last.

A sweeping new ALMA image has peeled back the veil on the Milky Way’s core, exposing a dense network of cold gas filaments near the central black hole. Stretching across 650 light-years, the survey maps the hidden fuel for star formation in remarkable detail and reveals a surprisingly complex chemical brew. This extreme region hosts some of the galaxy’s most massive, short-lived stars. The findings could help explain how stars — and even entire galaxies — formed under the universe’s most chaotic conditions.

Astronomers using the MeerKAT radio telescope in South Africa have discovered the most distant hydroxyl megamaser ever detected. It is located in a violently merging galaxy more than 8 billion light-years away, opening a new radio astronomy frontier.

Here’s one less thing to worry about — or to look forward to: NASA has ruled out any chance that an asteroid called 2024 YR4 will hit the moon in 2032.

A ring of 13 carbon atoms and two chlorine atoms has a remarkable molecular structure that means you would have to go around the loop four times to return to your starting position

Reader Jon Gallant recently finished the essay collection compiled and edited by Lawrence Krauss, The War on Science:  Thirty-Nine Renowed Scientists and Scholars speak Out About Current Threats to Free Speech, Open Inquiry, and the Scientific Process.” (Luana and I have a paper in it taken from our Skeptical Inquirer paper on the ideological subversion of biology).

Jon decided to leave a review of the book on its Amazon page (his review is shown below in the Amazon rejection). Yep, his submitted review was rejected. He sent the rejection to me and I reproduce it and his emailed speculations (with permission).  I’ve put a red box around the submitted review:

At first I was puzzled, as I don’t follow Amazon reviews and know nothing about the ideology of the site or company.  Can you guess why the review was returned with requests for changes?  I suspect you’ve guessed correctly, though we can’t be sure.  I asked Jon what he thought, and here’s some of his response:

Use of the term “woke” in a less than reverential tone is no doubt classified by Amazon’s editors as “hate speech”.  After all, it makes wokies feel unsafe.  My hunch is that the dopier Communications majors from the 2010s work as review editors at Amazon.  The better-connected ones get into the editorial offices of some Nature publications we have encountered.

In truth, I can see no other explanation.  The review was not worshipful enough of wokeness, and in fact made fun of it, even expressing a hope that it would disappear.  If you have another explanation, by all means put it in the comments. I had no patience to read Amazon’s “community guidelines” to see if there were other infractions.

I don’t know if Jon will resubmit his review, but I thought that this was both sad and amusing. The other reviews (126 of them) are bimodal (70% five star, 18% one star), and it’s also amusing to look at the negative ones, most of them finding the book guilty of association with the wrong people, or not hard enough on Trump and right-wing assaults on science (not its purpose)

Taking psilocybin – the psychedelic component of magic mushrooms – eased symptoms of obsessive compulsive disorder among people who did not respond to conventional treatments, and the effects lasted at least several months

Send in your good wildlife photos, as I’m out save for singletons and doubletons.

Today’s photos come from reader Jan Malik from New Jersey and are geese and DUCKS. The captions and ID’s are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.

Here are some Barnegat Inlet ducks (and other visitors) from the last day of this February.

Canada Goose (Branta canadensis) and Brant (Branta bernicla) in flight.  Same genus, similar body form, and a fairly recent common ancestor—only about 1–2 MYA in Pleistocene North America. Anne Elk’s (Mrs.) theory about brontosauruses could be adapted to geese: they are thin at one end, much, much thicker in the middle, and thin again at the far end. My new theory is that these two species split when the Laurentide Ice Sheet separated the American coast from the inland regions. The Brant specialized in coastal habitats and feeding on seaweeds, while the Canada Goose evolved inland, feeding mostly on herbs and grasses. Perhaps this theory is not new. Or not mine.

Arguably the biggest stars of the winter Barnegat Inlet are the Harlequin Ducks (Histrionicus histrionicus). The drakes’ plumage is so dramatic—and their calls so comical (resembling a bath rubber ducky)—that many people come to Barnegat Light just to see them. The hens’ coloration is more subdued but still lovely.

JAC: You can hear their calls on the Cornell page for this species. Just below is a hen:

Every year I see them bobbing along the jetty, sometimes tossed around by heavy seas but always masterfully avoiding the rocks. They seem attracted to heavy surf and avoid the open sea. They stay mostly in a loose flock, which in recent years appears to have declined from 20–30 ducks in 2010 to just 10–15 in the last couple of years.

Drake:

They can preen while in the water, but they do catch a breather by climbing onto slippery rocks. Their feet are set a bit farther back, like in other diving ducks, but they can walk on land—although a bit awkwardly. By late February most of them are gone, heading back north to their nesting grounds on Labrador’s whitewater rivers and streams:

Like other diving ducks, they dip their heads before diving for fish. My other theory—Theory Number Two—is that by doing so they defeat the air–water interface diffraction and better locate prey:

They are exceptionally buoyant, which makes sense given their rocky surf habitat, but it also means they must put extra effort into diving. They have to jump slightly into the air before the dive to gain momentum, then use their wings as paddles to become submerged:

I once heard that the difference between geese and ducks is that ducks can launch themselves directly into the air from a resting position, while geese need to run for a while, either on water or land. This is probably true for dabbling ducks (like Mallards), but a Harlequin—with its feet set back a bit—must run some distance to become airborne:

Another common winter visitor: the Red-breasted Merganser (Mergus serrator), drake. Their bill serration is more pronounced than in other diving ducks, helping them catch fish:

Merganser hen. These are the most sea-loving mergansers. The other two I’m familiar with—Common and Hooded Mergansers—rarely appear in coastal waters. They are said to be very active underwater predators pursuing fish, but I’ve never seen that myself:

Common Eider (Somateria mollissima), probably an immature drake in transitional plumage. They are quite large and plump, which—together with the proverbial “eider down”—makes them well adapted to nesting in the Arctic. Reportedly, hens with ducklings may form crèches on their nesting grounds (a defense against polar foxes and skuas perhaps?) One day I must see that:

Indigenous people in Papua, Indonesia, have helped scientists track down two animals that were thought to have gone extinct thousands of years ago: a relative of Australia’s greater glider and a palm-sized possum with a bizarre, elongated finger

Back in February 2025, a SpaceX rocket that had delivered 22 Starlink satellites to orbit had a malfunction. It failed to execute a planned deorbit burn and drifted for 18 days in orbit before beginning an uncontrolled descent about 100km off the west coast of Ireland. Some parts of the rocket landed in Poland, and while they didn’t injure anybody, there was enough concern about the lack of communication that Poland dismissed the head of its space agency. But that wasn't the only lasting impact of this failure. A new paper from Robin Wing and her colleagues at the Leibniz Institute for Atmospheric Physics, published in Communications Earth & Environment ties that specific rocket reentry to a massive plume of pollution for the first time.

The Alzheimer’s field is being turned on its head as mounting evidence points to the disease beginning outside the brain many years before symptoms start. This may mean we have to totally rethink how we approach preventing and treating the condition

Our so-called public servants have one set of standards for themselves and another for private citizens who dare to the challenge their government.

The post MAHA Government Doctors Feel Entitled to Falsely Smear Private Citizens in the Press While Demanding That They Not Be Falsely Smeared in the Press first appeared on Science-Based Medicine.

A new ultrathin photodetector from Duke University can sense light across the entire electromagnetic spectrum and generate a signal in just 125 picoseconds, making it the fastest pyroelectric detector ever built. The breakthrough could power next-generation multispectral cameras used in medicine, agriculture, and space-based sensing.

A team of astrophysicists, cosmologists, and physicists has developed a novel way to compute the Hubble constant using gravitational waves. As our capability to observe gravitational waves improves in the future, this new method could be used to make even more accurate measurements of the Hubble constant, bringing scientists closer to resolving the Hubble tension.