Where can i find a list or does anyone know what the soil or surface contents from another planet contains? What planets may contain soil from which food can grown?
Your typos have made your request difficult to understand. I presume 'form another plant' was meant to be 'from another planet'. I don't think we consider other planets to have soil. Soil contains organic material and as far as we know there is no life on other planets in the solar system. I think the term used to describe this is regolith. You should be able to find details of analysis for lunar and Martian regolith somewhere on the NASA site. A concern about the Martian soil is that it is probably poor in nitrogen and apparently contains a lot of hydrogen peroxide. Both of these would be a problem for plant growth.
Thanks Hipparchia, I noticed the errors after i posted. Yes, it seems like there would not be life on other plaets in this solar system. If we kept it to this solar system, i am trying to envision the substrates and if they had dirt. So we are a far way off from dust and dirt to soil? Does it contain organic matter because it is soil?
Well, as far as I am aware the only soil analysis we have from another planet is that of Martian soil. This has been performed from a couple of different surface and orbiting vehicles, starting with the Viking probes. Googling with “martian soil analysis” should provide a fair bit of information.
Hipparchia seemed to be thinking of the moon as a planet and in this context I think I would agree with her, so we do have lunar regolith analysis also. There is an excellent overview of its composition and character here. I couldn't locate a comparable item for Martian regolith, but wikipedia does have an article on Martian soil. Contrary to Hipparchia's view that soil needs an organic, or even biological component, this abstract from the European Journal of Soil Science suggests there is controversy among the experts as to the best definition of soil.
That's right. I imagine Mercury's regolith might be broadly similar. I didn't know about the arguments over soil definition. I thought that soils were definitely meant to contain biological organics. Something I want to correct is that I said soils needed to contain organic material and what I meant was biologically derived material. There are lots of non-biological organics out there and I imagine the Martian and Lunar soils have some of these.
So Hipparchia, you seem to think that the surface of other planets is uniform across the whole planet? That seems to be what others think but is that correct? What would make you think this? Can we use the Earth as an example, at least to some degree? Probably. Was the whole planet covered and samples taken from many different areas? Any information will be helpful BUT the main focus of this thread is: 1: To determine if soil\stratum\substrate from another planet can be used to grow plants and specifically edible plants. Mainly what we eat, like corn as an example can be viewed as the ultimate goal. 2: What would the outcome be for organisms that consume the plants\food? And to be clear, number 2 being primary.
If it doesn't have organic matter, it's not much better than a hydroponic growing medium, which just holds the roots. There might be some mineral content, but you would have to supply all the organic nutrients separately.
Let me be clear. The soil is the MAIN focus. No additives can be used except fro pure water and sunlight. Meaning it would be transported to an environment conducive to growing plants but left unchanged.
the three primary macronutrients: nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), and potassium (K). the three secondary macronutrients: calcium (Ca), sulfur (S), magnesium (Mg). and the micronutrients or trace minerals: boron (B), chlorine (Cl), manganese (Mn), iron (Fe), zinc (Zn), copper (Cu), molybdenum (Mo) and selenium (Se).
Thank You Wikipedia. We know what may(MAY) need to be present we can acknowledge that. What we cannot acknowledge is that these elements would not be present in soil from another planet. Obviously we would use what we perceive to be capable of this task. And this task is primarily as outlined in my previous post: Remeber this soil would be virtually untouched by humans or animals (or any living organisms at least visually - not including microscopic level organisms, which for the purposes of this thread is inconsequential...iow's there may be or may not be.). The goal is to use this for the daily sustenance of a group of humans. They can drink whatever is found on earth though. Bearing in mind that we are looking for them to be healthy so they would drink water, juice, coffee, tea etc. Bear in mind, once the soil is removed it is transported to a growing area either here on Earth or on the originating planet but the key is that it is placed in a human friendly environment. I suppose even a greenhouse would suffice merely for the fact that the soil is basically untouched directly by earth atmosphere, at least for the most part but this isnt as important as the soil itself. I would look to grow corn but can be anything used to raise a human to adulthood and beyond.
That is why i said we would remove enough soil from the planet and bring it to an environment to aid in this task. We can even use greenhouses with oxygen and no reason not to use methods of oxygenation. We would use Air, Water and Sunlight. Which basically mimics what humans need to survive. Although humans do not need sunlight for survival but of coures the humans dont really need sunlight for survival, the plants do though. Plants\crops grown from "extraterrestrial" strata.
You're welcome, I'm obviously no expert. I would think that soil isn't the most difficult part. Plants don't even need soil. As long as you have a nutrient solution, all you need is air with carbon dioxide in it, and sunlight (or it's equivalent).
...sigh...we are eliminating all forms of additives, all forms of new hydroponics and going old school - Dirt.
Dirt is only convenient because it happens to have the nutrients in it that plants need. I suppose it's possible that the dirt on some planet is good for growing things. Some deserts only need water to be verdant.
Thanks Emil. What i was thinking, the other day, was the earth has many different types of substrates. Is it correct to perceive that other planets dont also have them? What does the earth look like from Jupiter or neptune? If you ask me the colors would be uniform and i suppose it would be blue with some white yet when we are here on earth its nothing like what it looks like from millions of miles away. Suppose we take some soil from select parts of jupiter or neptune and try to grow some food, like corn or something like that. I think it can be done. Some questions: If corn grows does this automatically signify that the corn is safe to eat? Would not the substances that were toxic to humans also be toxic to the corn thus prohibiting the corn to grow? Would the growth of the corn also mean that it is safe merely by the fact that it grew to be just like corn here on earth?
