Low current around roots boosts plant growth

Re:Low current around roots boosts plant growth by bdamm on Tuesday November 14, 2023 @01:59AM (#38259988)

Once upon a time I had a hobby growing mushrooms of various types. One day I tried an experiment; I placed little bags populated with oyster mushrooms at various distances from my Wi-Fi hub, a bag about each 15cm or so. After the expected grow time, I had successful growth at the farthest distance of perhaps 2m. However, up close to the base station, all of the bags within 1m or so showed no growth whatsoever. Most notably, there was no contamination, no mold that was visible, and none of the desired oyster mushroom growth. All the bags within one meter were basically sterilized.

So there is certainly a way to say "do not grow". If anyone works out the opposite encoding, I am sure there will be a lot of interested parties who would like to speed up their growth processes.

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Re:Low current around roots boosts plant growth by vasco on Tuesday November 14, 2023 @02:08AM (#38260034)

A huge thousand meter apple tree powered by a nuclear reactor that keeps saying grow more, single handedly producing the country's yearly apple intake.

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Re:Low current around roots boosts plant growth by danielbln on Tuesday November 14, 2023 @06:29AM (#38261964)

https://i.imgur.com/vhEgtfc.png

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Re:Low current around roots boosts plant growth by bigallen on Tuesday November 14, 2023 @08:28AM (#38263017)

Ha! What’s the terminal velocity of an apple? Sounds like weaponized fruit to me

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Re:Low current around roots boosts plant growth by hoseja on Tuesday November 14, 2023 @03:25AM (#38260534)

This makes no sense whatsoever. What possible mechanism do you propose for the fungi to detect and act on such low-power microwave emissions?

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Re:Low current around roots boosts plant growth by blowski on Tuesday November 14, 2023 @03:35AM (#38260601)

[delayed]

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Re:Low current around roots boosts plant growth by AlecSchueler on Tuesday November 14, 2023 @04:21AM (#38260947)

I had a similar thought, something like varying levels of ambient humidity closer to the washroom. The experiment needs to be repeated in more controlled conditions. Surprised to see the HN crowd taking this obvious pseudoscience at face value.

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Re:Low current around roots boosts plant growth by generalizations on Tuesday November 14, 2023 @07:50AM (#38262676)

I'm surprised to see experimentation being dismissed so readily.

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Re:Low current around roots boosts plant growth by AlecSchueler on Tuesday November 14, 2023 @08:26AM (#38263004)

Calling for more rigorous experimentation is not a dismissal of experimentation. It's healthy to be critical about experimental methodologies and to call for more rigour before conclusions are drawn.

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Re:Low current around roots boosts plant growth by eutropia on Tuesday November 14, 2023 @07:55AM (#38262726)

experiments are not pseudoscience; we teach kids science via science fair projects doing very similar types of experiments.

Pseudoscience is generally when you have an explanation for something but no evidence, and generalize that theory to explain too much

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Re:Low current around roots boosts plant growth by AlecSchueler on Tuesday November 14, 2023 @08:25AM (#38262993)

No, experimenting is not pseudoscience, but taking a single flawed experiment communicated anecdotally with no mention of setup or control and then moving into discussion about the "results" as if it was performed in any way reproducibly is pseudoscience. It presents itself as science but when you pick it apart it's actually lacking many mainstays of what we'd call scientific methodology.

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Re:Low current around roots boosts plant growth by seunosewa on Tuesday November 14, 2023 @09:06AM (#38263426)

It's not necessarily false, it's just less rigorous.

So we can call it light science. Or amateur science?

People shouldn't be discouraged from practicing science.

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Re:Low current around roots boosts plant growth by AlecSchueler on Tuesday November 14, 2023 @01:07PM (#38267057)

Or we could call it pseudoscience? I'm not discouraging anyone, in fact I'm encouraging repeating the experiment with more rigour, that is calling you more science.

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Re:Low current around roots boosts plant growth by frankyg on Wednesday November 15, 2023 @06:35AM (#38275628)

dude just experimented a bit.

science is when what you call rigour leads from hypothesis closer to fact or not fact.

op just tried a quick and dirty experiment with duck tape and stuff.

get your attitude right, mate.

name three examples that describe the term pseudo-science, to begin with. Psychology doesn't count ^^

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Re:Low current around roots boosts plant growth by vGPU on Wednesday November 15, 2023 @07:02PM (#38284164)

There have been several experiments that have showed similar findings, and I looked through half a dozen or so and didn’t find any that showed otherwise. Here’s one that you can browse:

https://www.eurekaselect.com/article/75099

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Re:Low current around roots boosts plant growth by greggsy on Tuesday November 14, 2023 @08:01AM (#38262782)

Also possible that the experiment was just poorly designed, and the results poorly interpreted.

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Re:Low current around roots boosts plant growth by Modified3019 on Tuesday November 14, 2023 @02:07PM (#38267947)

Light would vs also need to be controlled. I certainly don’t do so well next to blue leds.

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Re:Low current around roots boosts plant growth by rini17 on Tuesday November 14, 2023 @03:48AM (#38260704)

Interference with bioelectricity signalling which too is very low power, why not? At 15cm distance there could be stronger near-field effects.

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Re:Low current around roots boosts plant growth by mikrotikker on Tuesday November 14, 2023 @08:27AM (#38263009)

Reminds me of a story I heard about a microwave (?) Link on a rural hill somewhere in NZ that requires switching off when techs go to site because it transmits over the road. Cows have to be fenced out of the area in front of it because it damages them, but no grass grows in a cone infront of it anyway.

Can't remember if a uni mate told me that or John Sullivan the telecoms lead of the Auckland skytower construction.

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