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Hummus in Space
By Dr Valerie Jeffries FLS Undeterred by the loss of astronaut tardigrades spilt on the Moon when their 2019 Beresheet spacecraft crashed, the same team has switched to edible plants, with their Space Hummus Experiment. The basis of Hummus, a delicious internationally popular and highly nourishing food, is the Chickpea. Chickpeas come from the Middle…
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Part 3: Primitive and Complex (and crème brûlée)
By Dr Valerie Jeffries FLS. Exploration of the Solar System looking for evidence of habitability is about ‘primitive life’, with no expectation of anything beyond tiny bacterial-style cells, possibly with viruses. Single-celled life forms ruled Earth for 1.5 billion years before the evolution of bigger modern cells, and in terms of total biomass they still…
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LIFE, BUT NOT WHERE WE KNOW IT? Part 1: Life on Mars
By Dr Valerie Jeffries FLS. Are we alone ? We no longer believe that Planet Earth holds the only possibility of life, just as we know that our whole Solar System is extremely small in the vastness of space. We already recognise Mars, possibly Venus, and at least three moons of the giant planets Jupiter…
