Astrobiology - Ancient Mars History - A Temporal Biotope

[hydrophyte]

Haven't been here in a while!

Astrobiology - Ancient Mars History - A Temporal Biotope

I've had this setup going for some time, but for the sake of explanation I'll start the pics from the beginning.

Strictly speaking, this is a terrarium display, but it borrows heavily from aquascaping design concepts. While they can grow on land, the organisms that it houses are more accurately considered to be aquatic and able to live terrestrially owing to special adaptations and conditions.



This is a biotope terrarium display intended to represent a speculative ancient Mars or very early Earth landscape (both during periods of time several billions of years in the past) with microbial biocrusts growing as the first terrestrial ecosystems. Modern day analogs of these environments on Earth still grow today as desert biocrusts with some of the very same organisms that first colonized the land, especially Cyanobacteria.

Tank is the Aquatic HCA 12-gallon bookshelf positioned on a floating shelf that I built with MDF and steel stud-mount brackets.

Egg crate + hobby plastic mesh false bottom. Lighting is an economy 36" planted aquarium strip I found on AMAZON.

Soil substrate is MMS-1 Mars Regolith Simulant, the same material used for laboratory testing of rover technology. This is basically just crushed basalt lava gravel screened with particle sizes to specification.

Thanks for looking. I'll explain further with more content on the way!

Images credits: Mars surface images in Public Domain and mainly from Mars rover missions. Courtesy of NASA, JPL-Caltech, Malin Space Science Systems and other collaborating institutions.

 

[Courtneybst]

Very intrigued! I'll be watching 👽

 

[Myrtle]

I won't spoil the surprise, having seen this on another forum, but it's definitely an angle folks here will appreciate!

 

[MichaelJ]

This is a biotope terrarium display intended to represent a speculative ancient Mars or very early Earth landscape (both during periods of time several billions of years in the past)

What an interesting concept. Cant wait to see!

 

[hydrophyte]

Thanks so much for checking it out! This project has been a lot of fun.

While "colonization" of land on Earth is usually mentioned in reference to the first terrestrial plants, it is very likely that microbial life had already grown in favorable sites on land for a very long time before the first plants. These ecosystems probably resembled present-day microbial mats and biocrusts with Cyanobacteria and other photosynthesizers as primary producers along with heterotroph Bacteria and other groups. With biological weathering of rock material, nitrogen fixation and development of soil organic matter, these ancient biocrust systems no doubt created more favorable conditions for advance of the first true land plants. Here's an article I found as a free pdf that explains these ideas including the fossil and biosignature evidence used to illuminate them....

https://www.researchgate.net/public..._on_land_and_the_first_terrestrial_ecosystems

I purchased liquid Cyanobacteria cultures from a biological supplies warehouse for "planting" the soil substrate. I could have alternatively collected wild Cyanobacteria from the area around here—we have some growing on the side of our house, for example—but I thought it would be more instructive to start with material having IDs already. And among the selections in their list were several that I probably could not have found growing wild...

I did not have the best equipment to use—a couple of objective lenses were broken—but I managed to get a few microscopy images with these cultures. So fascinating! While other Prokaryote groups certainly are remarkable for their wide range of metabolisms and other strategies, they aren't especially interesting to look at under magnification because they tend to share the same simple rod, sphere or spiral shapes. Cyanobacteria, on the other hand, have distinct, relatively large morphological features you can observe and use for ID...

 

[hydrophyte]

Layout taking shape...



Stones are rounded/weathered scoria basalt I found as WYSIWYGs on eBay. I really like these...



Spirit rover mission image with Martian basalt rocks and wind-blown sand as reference....



Images credits: Mars surface images in Public Domain and mainly from Mars rover missions. Courtesy of NASA, JPL-Caltech, Malin Space Science Systems and other collaborating institutions.

 

[hydrophyte]

Layout after initial scaping at the end of January '22, almost one year ago...



I figured, accurately, that if any Cyanobacteria managed to establish and grow they could eventually find their way all over the tank. But I was curious to see how well they would compare in initial growth and appearance, so I introduced liquid culture for each species in its own area of substrate...

 

[hydrophyte]

Here are more recent pics from around Christmastime to show Cyanobacteria growth.

The Cylindrospermum and the Nostoc do not seem to have established in here, but the other three are doing well.

The Anabaena has spread all over the tank, including the stone surfaces, but it is still thickest on the left side....



The Oscillatoria is alive, but has not spread from the small area where I introduced it. It has an oily sheen...



Tolypothrix is my favorite. This is among the Cyanobacteria that form calcium sheaths and the texture resembles a very fine moss...

 

[hydrophyte]

Some more pics..











Images credits: Mars surface images in Public Domain and mainly from Mars rover missions. Courtesy of NASA, JPL-Caltech, Malin Space Science Systems and other collaborating institutions.

 

[hydrophyte]

Couple new Instagram Reels for this project....

 

[hydrophyte]

Took me literally forever but I finished editing this quick video for the Mars setup. Please watch if you have five minutes...

 

[John q]

What a fantastic video, enjoyed watching that.👍

 

[MichaelJ]

Great video 🙂

 

[hydrophyte]

Great video 🙂

Thanks for watching!

 

[hydrophyte]

What a fantastic video, enjoyed watching that.👍

Thank you for watching! Please share if you can think of anywhere viewers might like to watch.

 

[hydrophyte]

Pondering ideas for an aquarium to model astrobiology/exoplanet concepts and found a couple of articles on the search for life elsewhere in our solar system. Really interesting! I recommend these as good reads and the pdf's for both are available free online.

 

[hydrophyte]

This is still at prototype stage, but I have a start on this new speculative astrobiology project.

I'm building an airtight enclosure where I can control gas composition to model alternative chemistries and metabolisms. My current favorite idea is a reducing atmosphere with H2 and other gases. Use of hydrogen gas has some serious potential hazards, but I have several layers of safety redundancy in mind. For starters, I'll plan to add the H2 as probably only 1% or 2% of the gas mixture.

The setup will join a large (2.75" X 36") tube and smaller (2" X 12") tube with airline hose and recirculate/mix gas with a small air pump. The small tube will hold the air pump along with MQ gas sensors, while the larger one will contain most of the gas atmosphere along with a volume of water and a water pump. I will probably put a few inches of plastic bioballs in the bottom of the 2.75" cylinder for microbial colonization.

Everything will hang up on the wall as a display with my wall-mount hardware.

My O-ring seals leak, a lot. So I'm going to have to problem solve some more and make new top & bottom caps. O-ring seal design actually is more complex than it would seem. I cut those round shapes with holes for the push-connect fittings on the CNC router, then flipped them up vertically to cut the O-ring grooves on the table router. But the table router bit left conspicuous tool marks where water easily gets around the O-rings. One idea I have for improving the seal is to just stick the cap in a vice, then pull a length of abrasive cord through the groove to flatten out the tool marks. I'll have to shop around some more to find a cord with a wide diameter and fine grit.

I'll keep working on this and try to have an update in a week or two.

 

[Wookii]

How married are you to the o-ring design? It might be easier to just sand the ends of the clear tube flat and cut a clear perspex circular flange to bond onto it with some threaded holes in. Then create a flat 'lid' with threaded ports for your 1/4" fittings and thorough holes to bolt down onto the flange, with some sort of rubber seal between the two.

Maybe not an elegant as the o-rings, but a lot easier to get a seal, and will be easier to create additional future 'lids'.

 

[hydrophyte]

How married are you to the o-ring design? It might be easier to just sand the ends of the clear tube flat and cut a clear perspex circular flange to bond onto it with some threaded holes in. Then create a flat 'lid' with threaded ports for your 1/4" fittings and thorough holes to bolt down onto the flange, with some sort of rubber seal between the two.

Maybe not an elegant as the o-rings, but a lot easier to get a seal, and will be easier to create additional future 'lids'.

I had wondered about a flange seal, but to be honest that sounds more complicated than O-rings. This is intended as a sculptural display and the straight tubes will just look better. These tubes are polycarbonate, not acrylic, and it is even more challenging to get a tidy cement/adhesive bond on this material.

I should be able to resolve the O-ring seal. I think I can stop any remaining slow leaks with silicone grease.

 

[Aqua sobriquet]

The end caps and O rings are best turned on a lathe. Provided the dimensions are correct it shouldn’t leak done this way.
I’ve had a scribble of a plug with O ring grooves for my Biomaster on the coffee table for a few weeks. Hopefully I’ll get round to it soon.