The moon dust eaten by cockroaches began to be auctioned. Why do cockroaches eat moon samples?

1969, Apollo 1 1 astronauts brought back a batch of moon samples. Apollo 1 1 is the first time that humans landed on the moon, which also makes these moon samples very precious. However, the moon samples of Apollo 1 1 have repeatedly appeared problems.

When NASA was processing lunar samples, the lunar sample bags of Apollo 1 1 were put into auction because they were mislabeled. Finally, the court ruled that the sample bags belonged to the bidders, so that some moon samples of Apollo 1 1 directly fell into private hands, and these samples began to be auctioned in private names.

New Hampshire once again auctioned Apollo 1 1 moon samples, which attracted many people's attention, because the moon samples auctioned this time were samples that had been swallowed by cockroaches.

Why do cockroaches have a chance to swallow moon samples? In the Apollo mission, the moon sample is a very precious experimental material, and it is the research material that many scientists dream of. But why are such precious moon samples eaten by cockroaches?

According to the archives of NASA, it is not that there is a problem with the storage of lunar samples eaten by cockroaches, but that NASA has conducted biosafety experiments on lunar soil. By letting animals and plants contact and swallow the lunar soil, it helps scientists to study the influence of the lunar soil environment on the earth's animals and plants.

After Apollo 1 1 brought back the moon samples, scientists could not judge whether there were microorganisms or other harmful substances in the moon samples, so all the articles returned by astronauts and the moon were quarantined for 2 1 day.

With the safe end of the isolation period, scientists began to explore the influence of lunar soil on animals and plants on the earth. This experiment involves many animals and plants, including quail representing birds, mice representing animals, cockroaches representing insects, flies and so on. The researchers also scattered lunar samples into fish tanks to test the effects of lunar soil on fish and mussels, and cultivated plants with lunar soil.

During the experiment, the researchers divided the lunar soil into two parts, one part was disinfected at high temperature in advance, and the other part remained intact. The experimental results show that neither the disinfected lunar soil nor the original lunar soil will have obvious effects on animals and plants.

The experiments consumed a total of 22 kilograms of moon samples, which aroused the dissatisfaction of NASA, so these experiments were stopped at 197 1.

Cockroaches eat lunar samples not because there are cockroaches in the lunar sample storage device, but because researchers mix lunar soil and food and feed them to unsuspecting cockroaches ~

Eight cockroaches that ate the moon soil were preserved: in the biological safety experiment of the moon samples, eight cockroaches were fed with the moon samples, and all the cockroaches were in good health without any adverse phenomena. However, in order to ensure the accuracy of the experiment, scientists still selected some cockroaches for tissue section observation.

A mixture of moon samples and food can be seen in cockroach tissue slices, which were made public at auction to prove the authenticity of the moon samples.

Some cockroaches became tissue sections for research, and some cockroaches were completely preserved.

Entomologists who participated in the Apollo 1 1 Biosafety Test took their own souvenirs of Apollo 1 1 with commemorative stamps on them and three well-preserved cockroaches. All three cockroaches have eaten moon samples. Although they look small, they are valuable.

The price of cockroach tissue slices that have swallowed lunar soil is $65438+00000; 40 mg of lunar dust, priced at $500,000; 0.2 grams of moon pebbles, priced at $850,000. It can be seen that the price of the original month sample is still higher than that of the eaten month sample ~

Summary: The moon samples eaten by cockroaches are only a mixture of moon dust and chyme, and the auction items are also carefully extracted from cockroaches' stomachs. But these lunar samples were not accidentally eaten by cockroaches, but were part of the researchers' experiments.

Apollo 1 1 lunar sample experiments prove that lunar soil is basically harmless to animals and plants on earth, but if human beings want to survive in space for a long time, they need not only to prove that alien soil is harmless, but also to carry out crop cultivation and multi-generation cultivation experiments. When our crops can grow healthily on other planets, human beings may become a "multi-planet species".