Will potatoes grow on Mars?

Lab growing space potato

In a lab in the Peruvian capital of Lima, a simulator mimicking the harsh conditions found on Mars now contains a hint of life: a nascent potato plant.

After experimenting in the Andean nation’s dry, desert soil, scientists have successfully grown a potato in frigid, high carbon-dioxide surroundings.

Though still in early stages, investigators at the International Potato Centre believe the initial results are a promising indicator that potatoes might one day be harvested under conditions as hostile as those on Mars.

The findings could benefit not only future Mars exploration, but also arid regions already feeling the impact of climate change.

“It’s not only about bringing potatoes to Mars, but also finding a potato that can resist non-cultivable areas on Earth,” said Julio Valdivia, an astrobiologist with Peru’s University of Engineering and Technology who is working with NASA on the project.

The experiment began in 2016 — a year after the Hollywood film The Martian showed a stranded astronaut surviving by figuring out how to grow potatoes on the red planet.

Peruvian scientists built a simulator akin to a Marsin-a-box: Frosty below-zero temperatures, high carbon monoxide concentrations, the air pressure found at 6,000 metres altitude and a system of lights imitating the Martian day and night.

Though thousands of miles away from colleagues at NASA’s Ames Research Centre in California providing designs and advice, Peru was in many ways an apt location to experiment with growing potatoes on Mars.

The birthplace of the domesticated potato lies high in the Andes near Lake Titicaca, where it was first grown about 7,000 years ago. More than 4,000 varieties are grown in Peru, Bolivia and Ecuador, where potatoes have sprouted even in cold, barren lands.

The Peruvian scientists didn’t have to go far to find high-salinity soil similar to that found on Mars, though with some of the organic material Mars lacks: Pampas de la Joya along the country’s southern coast receives less than a millimetre of rain a year, making its terrain somewhat comparable to the Red Planet’s parched ground.

International Potato Center researchers transported 700 kilos of the soil to Lima, planted 65 varieties and waited. In the end, just four sprouted from the soil.

In a second stage, scientists planted one of the most robust varieties in the even more extreme conditions of the simulator, with the soil — Mars has no organic soil — replaced by crushed rock and a nutrient solution.

Live-streaming cameras caught every tiny movement as a bud sprouted and grew several leaves while sensors provided round-the-clock monitoring of simulator conditions.

The winning potato: A variety called “Unique.”

“It’s a ‘super potato’ that resists very high carbon dioxide conditions and temperatures that get to freezing,” Valdivia said.

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Gazette reviews Ghost in the Shell

PARAMOUNT PICTURES

Scarlett Johansson was memorable if invisible as the voice of an operating system that falls in love with Joaquin Phoenix in Her. She was all physicality in Jonathan Glazer’s alien thriller Under the Skin. And so, accusations of whitewashing aside, she seems perfect to embody Major, the cyborg-human hybrid at the centre of the existential sci-fi action flick Ghost in the Shell.

Major combines a human brain in a robot body. In an opening sequence that borrows liberally from Westworld, Blade Runner, The Matrix and more, we learn that her original body was killed in a refugee crisis. Her new one belongs to the Hanka Corporation, which means that, legally, so does she. “My name is Major Mira Killian and I give my consent,” she rattles off whenever the company wants to modify her, but the line is delivered with all the introspection of someone clicking “accept” at the bottom of a 27-page iTunes agreement.

Hanka is run by Cutter (Peter Ferdinando) but personified by the more kindly Dr. Ouelet (Juliette Binoche), who has a maternal relationship with Major. But she mostly takes her orders from Aramaki (Takeshi Kitano), a Zen security chief. In a nice touch, he speaks only Japanese, while his underlings respond in English. Major’s closest comrade is Batou, embodied by the wonderfully sympathetic Danish actor Pilou Asbaek.

As imagined by director Rupert Sanders (Snow White and the Huntsman), the future is a busy, scary place. Giant advertising holograms tower over the unnamed port city where the action happens: The effect is like Blade Runner on steroids, and the film skirts dangerously close to creating sensory overload in its viewers. Digital fish prowl the streets, as though a ’90s screensaver had broken out of its monitor.

Major’s brain-in-a-robot existence is only the most extreme example of future tech gone wild. Humans go in for “upgrades,” whether necessary — Batou’s new eyes — or purely gratuitous, like the character who boasts that his new synthliver means “It’s last call every night.” There’s an app for telepathy and robot geishas. But oddly, no self-driving cars.

But the story, beneath all the science-fiction and action-movie trappings, is fairly simple. Someone is threatening Hanka, and Major and the rest of her team have to figure out who is doing it and why. The first question turns out to be easy: It’s Kuze (Michael

Pitt), who in a delicious throwback stutters like Max Headroom. (The original Japanese manga is from the ’80s, after all.) His reasons turn out to be more complex than I should probably let on.

But the filmmakers have opted for flash over contemplation, image over reflection. Major is troubled by lifelike visions that come unbidden into her consciousness — or as you and I would call them, memories. And more than one character remarks that we are defined not by our memories but by our actions. That’s a great philosophical leaping-off point, but the screenplay, by Jamie Moss and William Wheeler, leaves it hanging and undeveloped.

The film’s slick packaging almost makes up for its lack of thoughtfulness — certainly it provides a distraction on par with Johansson’s flesh-toned combat suit, which renders her semi-invisible, emphasis on the semi. But this Ghost in the Shell, like the various books, films, video games and TV series before it, owes a debt to the mind-body problem, as raised by René Desartes and critiqued by Gilbert Ryle, whose phrase “the ghost in the machine” inspired the title.

There is some food for thought in this iteration, but by the time Hanka’s CEO rolls out the spider-tank (pretty much what you’d imagine), it’s clear that this ambitious effort has become a shell game with too much shell and not nearly enough ghost.