It is still really cool. As a physicist, with a lot of contacts to nuclear physics, I can't recall hearing about any biological systems (aside from humans) making deliberate beneficial use of gamma radiation.

With sufficient evolution, one could imagine a biological system that could sustain itself for long durations in spaceflight with only a gamma source for "food". Such an organism could travel far and wide.

I was thinking something similar: Can we farm this organism? Could intergenerational ships of humans travel between stars, if they had gamma based farms?

That's a big part of the storyline of The Expanse book series.

Same line of thought here.

If you read the article they linked to the source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2677413/

Also, it's shocking to me, did you already know about this?

After some research we don't seem to know everything about this fungi and it seems to have amazing potential for possible nuclear waste disposal.

This funig does not diggest the radioactive material. It diggest the rays produced by radioactive material decaying. The radioation emitted is similar to light for a plant for this fungi. If this fungi diggests radioactive material, my guess would be, that it would die- surrounded by its decendants, who would fare pretty well in the sunshine of their spore creator.

Yah, the language of "eat radiation" is fraught with confusion.

> However in fungi, it reportedly absorbed radiation and converted it into some type of chemical energy for growth.

So the actual mechanism is more in line with photosynthesis, maybe call it radiosynthesis for a similar process outside of the visible spectrum. I'm not even sure what frequencies plants absorb light energy.

You could possibly surround the material with the fungi to naturally absorb the gamma radiation.

Also some genetic modification to the fungi may yield interesting results.

Lead would work a lot better.

Lead doesn't convert it to chemical energy.

Seems like a waste if we can use the decay...

Also, this fungi could be infinitely cheaper and much greener than lead...

The amount of energy lost in this circumstance is too small to invest effort into reclaiming it.

It is unlikely to be both cheaper than lead and equally reliable.

One day we may find a commercial use for this, but replacing lead with fungi in this context is not likely.

Or you could go with a substance that both stops radiation AND extracts the energy, used in every nuclear reactor: water. It's not quite as good as lead but pretty good, and it will heat up while stopping the radiation, then conveniently through convection can transport itself to a point where the energy can get extracted.

Water extracts thermal radiation at the infrared wavelength, not the higher energy wavelengths that these fungi eat. (X-ray, and Gamma).

Funny enough, these little critters are actually found in reactor pools.

They don't eat the radioactive material. They eat the radiation. I don't think this helps disposal.

Yeah, discovered all the way back in 1991.

Which source is dubious, and why is it dubious?

You didn't read the article and Fox is a fine source, I see CNN on here all the time. Both lean Republican and Democrat respectively according to non-bias fact checking sites.

To the point of the lack of research, they clearly link the source in the article https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2677413/

Also I don't see how the title is clickbaity...

> Also I don't see how the title is clickbaity...

Because the entirely true "Plant that eats radiation found near Chernobyl" would be similarly accurate.