As in a bad science fiction film, I can imagine a human-mushroom hybrid conquering Mars!
#Mars #radiation #shield #fungus
Testing Chernobyl fungi as a radiation shield for astronauts
Without the Earth's protective atmosphere and magnetic field, humans would not live very long in space, on the moon or on Mars. So scientists have been looking for viable ways to protect astronauts. In this new effort, the researchers have built on research that showed some kinds of fungus are able to flourish in a very highly radioactive place here on Earth—inside the destroyed reactors at the Chernobyl site in Ukraine. Testing of several types of the fungus has showed that they not only survive in the former reactors, but actually flourish. They have the ability to absorb radiation and to convert it into energy for their own use. To look into the possibility of using such types of fungus as a shield for humans, the researchers arranged with NASA to send a sample of one of the types of fungus found at Chernobyl—cladosporium sphaerospermum—to the International Space Station.
https://phys.org/news/2020-07-chernobyl-fungi-shield-astronauts.html
