some scientists are hopeful that hyperaccumulators could be used to "clean" soil where there has been a build-up of toxic material due to human activity.
Other potential applications include phytomining - growing hyperaccumulator plants on nutrient-poor but metal-rich soils to extract the elements they take up.
Here's an informative and entertaining video that explains how the synchrotron light source works and how they use it to image things other tools can't. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16028723
Yeah it would be for the short time you manage to do that.
"The term heavy metal refers to any metallic chemical element that has a relatively high density and is toxic or poisonous at low concentrations. Examples of heavy metals include mercury (Hg), cadmium (Cd), arsenic (As), chromium (Cr), thallium (Tl), and lead (Pb).
Why does no one ever talk about these with respect to Mars? It seems like a research-worthy pursuit to see if we can engineer plants (bacteria?) like this to modify the climate of Mars, or to make artificial superstructures self-sustaining.
Shouldn't it be a research-worthy pursuit to modify(fix) the climate of the planet we're already living on? I'm not sure what attempting to live on a desolate planet is going to do for us. Say we turn it into another Earth, now what? We ruin that one too?
We should research stabilizing our climate. Absolutely. But while we are at it, it would also be in our interest to make humans a multiplanet species, in order to protect us from a global extinction threat that isn't man made, as well. Super volcanoes, calderas (pretty much the same, I know), large meteor strikes.... none of these have anything to do with man made pollutants, and survival of the species is kind of a neat little concept, in my opinion =) Granted, we would probably become a new species in several thousand years, once we were off planet, due to the radiation and gravity differences, but hopefully the problem solving and intelligences would remain.
Because Mars doesn't have liquid water or an atmosphere, so most "efforts" (or at least pontificating) are on those primary problems that would preclude plant life.
"Pycnandra acuminata is a large (up to 20m tall) rare rainforest tree, restricted to remaining patches of rainforest in New Caledonia," says Dr Antony van der Ent
If ever there was an appropriate name for a tree researcher!
This sounds like it could have multiple potential uses, if we can figure it out, and maybe if we can genericise it - Nickel is toxic, but its far from the only metal contaminant . If this could be adapted to, for instance, help process landfill sites, that could be big news.
> Other potential applications include phytomining - growing hyperaccumulator plants on nutrient-poor but metal-rich soils to extract the elements they take up.
Why nutrient-poor? Isn't it enough for them to extract metal?
It’s not clear but I would hazard that it’s ions, as it would likely precipitate out of suspension otherwise. Also, as an ion it’s more likely to have a biological effect.
Nominative determinism strikes again