Good News Friday: From Farming on Mars to Flying Around The Globe Solo

Take it or leave it, but TGIF is here again, which means that time has arrived for you to forget about political whirlwinds just for a while and focus on this week’s spate of good news stories.

Farming on Mars?

With scientists yet to figure out how to protect a crewed mission to Mars from the unsafe levels of radiation astronauts would be exposed to while in space and on the planet’s surface, one research team has already come up with a scheme that may make growing crops in Martian soil possible.

In their study, the researchers noted that the low nutrient content of soil and high salinity of water on Mars make farming there problematic, to say the least. To resolve the problem, the team proposes “simple and efficient strategies for treating basaltic regolith simulant soil and briny water simulant for suitable resources for growing plants.”

Regarding Martian soil, the researchers suggest that alfalfa plants can grow in it, and that the “alfalfa biomass” can be used as fertilizer to grow crops such as turnips, radishes, and lettuce.

17-Year-Old Flies Solo Around the World

Belgian-Britain Mack Rutherford, 17, has become the youngest individual to fly solo in a small aircraft around the globe.

The teenage pilot took off from Bulgaria's capital city Sofia on March 22 and travelled for five months on board an ultralight plane, making landings from time to time, of course. With a high speed of 300 km/hour, he flew the plane across 52 nations, covering two oceans, five continents, and crossed the equator twice before landing in the Bulgarian capital on Wednesday.

According to media reports, Rutherford had to undergo extreme weather conditions to break the world record: he battled sandstorms in Sudan, extreme heat waves in Dubai, and heavy rainfall in various areas across the globe amid the monsoon season.

Why Do Corals Glow?

Most scientists prefer to scratch their heads when it comes to reasons why coral that lives 148 feet (45 meters) below the ocean’s surface glows.

A new study conducted by researchers from Tel Aviv University and the Inter-University Institute for Marine Sciences in Eilat suggested that corals give off light to attract prey.

“Despite the gaps in the existing knowledge regarding the visual perception of fluorescence signals by plankton, the current study presents experimental evidence for the prey-luring role of fluorescence in corals,” study leader Or Ben-Zvi of Tel Aviv University explained.

According to him, researchers suggest that their so-called “light trap hypothesis”’ may also “apply to other fluorescent organisms in the sea, and that this phenomenon may play a greater role in marine ecosystems than previously thought.”

Man Survives Battle With Crocodile

A 34-year-old firefighter was left badly injured but alive after a savage battle with a massive alligator in Lake Thonotosassa, Florida. The firefighter, JC La Verde, spent ten days at the hospital after undergoing face and jaw reconstruction surgery and a craniotomy following his fight with the deadly reptile.

The eyebrow-raising fight took place as La Verde was swimming in a lake while his work colleague was filming him from a drone for an adventure race promotional video. All this ended up with the 34-year-old running into an alligator that was swimming in the opposite direction.

La Verde told Sky News that he was unable to see the creature when he collided with it. “I was unable to see it (the alligator). I hit it directly with my head. It chomped me on my head, my scapula (shoulder blade), and my upper torso”, he recalled. The reptile finally released La Verde because, as the man himself has explained, he “didn't become submissive” and instead grabbed the alligator’s snout and started “playing” with the inside of its mouth.

Pilot Spots Mysterious Lights Over North Carolina

A US civilian airliner had a relatively close encounter with what appeared to be some sort of flying pulsing lights in the sky over North Carolina. The pilot who encountered the lights said that the best way to describe what he saw would be “2-3 aircraft circling in left hand turns with their landing lights on, which means that they were only clearly visible when the lights were facing towards us.”

Details of the encounter were shared online by prolific blogger Scott C. Waring, who described the video recorded by the pilot as “amazing and rare footage of a real UFO.”

“This is 100 percent undeniable proof that UFOs are following jets and curious about those aboard them,” the blogger argued.