{"id":17598,"date":"2015-09-21T03:47:28","date_gmt":"2015-09-21T10:47:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2015\/09\/the-first-man-made-biological-leaf-turns-light-and-water-into-oxygen"},"modified":"2017-06-04T11:38:30","modified_gmt":"2017-06-04T18:38:30","slug":"the-first-man-made-biological-leaf-turns-light-and-water-into-oxygen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2015\/09\/the-first-man-made-biological-leaf-turns-light-and-water-into-oxygen","title":{"rendered":"The First Man-Made Biological Leaf Turns Light and Water Into Oxygen"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\\'blog-photo\\' href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/the-first-man-made-biological-leaf-turns-light-and-water-into-oxygen.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>If humanity hopes to realize its dreams of exploring the stars, we\u2019re going to need to find ways to recreate life on Earth aboard a spaceship. Simply stockpiling enough vital supplies isn\u2019t going to cut it, which is what led <a href=\"http:\/\/www.julianmelchiorri.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Julian Melchiorri<\/a>, a student at the Royal College of Art, to create an <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dezeen.com\/2014\/07\/25\/movie-silk-leaf-first-man-made-synthetic-biological-leaf-space-travel\/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+dezeen+%28Dezeenfeed%29\" target=\"_blank\">artificial biological leaf<\/a> that produces oxygen just like the ones on our home planet do.<\/p>\n<p>The problem with using natural foliage on our interstellar explorations is that plants may not flourish in zero gravity as much as we\u2019d need them to. But since they\u2019re a better way to produce oxygen than simply trying to carry countless tanks full of O2, Melchiorri wanted to engineer a better alternative that would easy survive the rigors of space travel.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/the-first-man-made-biological-leaf-turns-light-and-water-into-oxygen2.jpg\" width=\"644\" height=\"392\" alt=\"The First Man-Made Biological Leaf Turns Light and Water Into Oxygen\" data-chomp-id=\"fs0yutxtassagn7p2o3i\" data-asset-url=\"http:\/\/i.kinja-img.com\/gawker-media\/image\/upload\/s--UOZwoUvw--\/fs0yutxtassagn7p2o3i.jpg\" data-format=\"jpg\" \/><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/gizmodo.com\/the-first-man-made-biological-leaf-turns-light-and-wate-1612646588?utm_campaign=socialflow_gizmodo_facebook&utm_source=gizmodo_facebook&utm_medium=socialflow\" target=\"_blank\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If humanity hopes to realize its dreams of exploring the stars, we\u2019re going to need to find ways to recreate life on Earth aboard a spaceship. Simply stockpiling enough vital supplies isn\u2019t going to cut it, which is what led Julian Melchiorri, a student at the Royal College of Art, to create an artificial biological [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":367,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1902,1514],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17598","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bioengineering","category-space-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17598","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/367"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17598"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17598\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":64142,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17598\/revisions\/64142"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17598"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17598"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17598"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}