The Chernobyl exclusion zone may be off-limits to humans, but ever since the Unit Four reactor at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant exploded nearly 40 years ago, other forms of life have not only moved in but survived, adapted, and appeared to thrive.
  • 𞋴𝛂𝛋𝛆@lemmy.worldEnglish
    6·
    4 hours ago

    Obviously, all the junk noncoding DNA most life is carrying around likely includes some coping mechanisms for whatever potential situations arise. Like there is the one town in Iran with something like ten times Earth’s nominal background radiation and people are fine living there.

    Makes me a bit concerned when this kind of thing is talked about and researched. Probably my cynicism, but if it gets out that most species have some genetic tolerance in a significant portion of the population, the potential for nuclear weapons use increases dramatically. I believe it is likely that early life had a lot more exposure to radiation, so early ancestors likely evolved the machinery. When the vast majority of DNA is noncoding, I think the probability is high. We come at the medical issue backwards, playing wack-a-mole with symptoms, rather than building a full ontological understanding of biology. That level is still centuries away. Hopefully we are less primitive murder orgy fans by then. We survived the world war of chemicals, and physics that followed. If we survive the world war of computer science, the world war of biology will be the brutal final boss for the starting planetary level of Evo’ Universe. Who bets we can beat the game on one evo life?