Beware: You might be receiving spinach spam mail!
Updated | By East Coast Radio
Are vegetables becoming one with technology? If spinach can already send us spam, will carrots be calling our cellphones?
Technology is constantly evolving and people are making amazing advancements in its various fields.
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From space rockets to robots, there is almost always something new and innovative developing every day.
And most of it seems to make some sense when you first hear or read about it.
Spaceships make sense because people have been wanting to explore space since forever.
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But when you came across this story, it probably didn't make any sense!
So let's clarify:
A 2016 study titled, 'Nitroaromatic detection and infrared communication from wild-type plants using plant nanobionics', recently resurfaced and, as expected, people were baffled.
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According to Huffpost.com, the study was originally published by the Nature Materials Journal and they also mentioned that "plant nanobionics is the scientific practice of altering plants with extremely small particles to give them new abilities."
And give them new abilities they did.
The subjects for this study are what caught everyone's attention.
Leafy, Popeye-worthy, iron-filled spinach.
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Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and University of California researchers chose to embed tiny sensors made of carbon nanotubes into spinach leaves which would then lead them to detect compounds usually found in explosives.
Basically, these bunches of spinach would be like your regular old sniffer dog, just trying to find the dangerous materials and possible bombs.
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The sensors in the leaves would create a fluorescent signal when the roots came into contact with these compounds, the signals would be picked up by an infrared camera attached to a computer, finally sending the researchers an email alert.
Plants are very good analytical chemists. They have an extensive root network in the soil, are constantly sampling groundwater, and have a way to self-power the transport of that water up into the leaves.- Michael Strano, MIT author
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Turns out this system and the various types of information it can gather will be very helpful in the future.
Not only can it detect explosives, but it could also help identify oncoming droughts, changes in the water and soil (all vital information for agriculture), and pollutants.
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While the science behind this whole study is incredibly fascinating, our favourite part of all of this has been the internet's reaction, which once again did not fail to provide us with a few good laughs. We've rounded up some of our favourite reactions below.
Darren Maule and Keri Miller also weighed in on the subject, with Darren openly admitting that he had been communicating with his vegetables for years!
Have your spinach email my spinach and we’ll set something up pic.twitter.com/kdee9tUerM
— charles entertainment cheese (@jmurffff) February 2, 2021
To: farmer
— Justaboringgreyrock (@Justaboringgre1) February 2, 2021
From: spinach
Re: Upcoming drought
Dear Farmer,
I hope this e-mail finds you moist...
Pressures really ramping up on my grandma to learn how to use her iPad now that spinach is sending emails
— Matilda Boseley (@MatildaBoseley) February 2, 2021
Length of spinach's email.
— Ólafur Waage (@olafurw) February 2, 2021
vs
Content in spinach's email. pic.twitter.com/ZB1JoMHMZT
the rotting spinach at the bottom of my crisper:
— Lukas Neville (@lukasneville) February 2, 2021
"AS PER MY LAST EMAIL..." pic.twitter.com/TB3gP7UDJk
Finally. I was going to scream if spinach insisted on another meeting that should have been an email. https://t.co/L6vsoA2a8S
— Ambrose Persimmon (@MrPersimmon) February 1, 2021
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The journalist who covered the story first was also overwhelmed by the response it received online:
I wrote a story about spinach sending emails and woke up to it being one of the top trends on Twitter.
— Marthe de Ferrer (@MarthedeFerrer) February 2, 2021
I love this bird app.
Also it’s a genuinely awesome story.
Plants are being nano-engineered to detect landmines, pollution and droughts!https://t.co/pn3ovBHAQ1
While we can see the use of the spinach email spam, we'll have to draw the line at any beetroots using Bluetooth.
For more of the best Darren, Keri, and Sky moments, listen here:
Main image courtesy of iStock
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