r/BeAmazed • u/Dev1412 • Aug 20 '26
Science For a better future(context in text)
What if something as simple as a coconut husk could help tackle plastic pollution in our oceans? One Hawaiian student’s research points to an exciting possibility.
Vera Wang, a senior at Kaiser High School in Honolulu, Hawaii, began exploring the idea in 10th grade. Inspired by Polynesian weaving traditions, she created an ocean water filter using woven coconut husk fibers designed to physically trap microplastics and sunscreen compounds from seawater.
But Vera wanted to understand what could be done with the waste collected by the filter. She partnered with researchers at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, working in the laboratory of Dr. Anthony Amend.
Laboratory testing revealed something fascinating. Naturally occurring fungi living inside the porous coconut husks were able to survive on and actively biodegrade microplastics and chemical sunscreen compounds.
Genetic sequencing also showed that some fungal strains found in the coconut husks were not present in global genomic databases, suggesting they could represent previously uncharacterized species with the ability to break down persistent ocean pollutants.
Vera’s research earned top honors at the Hawaiʻi State Science & Engineering Fair and qualified her for the International Science & Engineering Fair (ISEF).
What began as a school science project has opened an intriguing path for research into biodegradable plastic solutions, ocean pollution and fungi-based environmental cleanup.
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u/LinkToThe_Past Aug 20 '26
I swear something like this always comes up every few years and it's always some sensationalized headline.
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u/MiggyEvans Aug 20 '26
That was my first thought too. What does it really do and how is this headline distorting that?
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u/rtxa Aug 20 '26
probably unusable on any sort of scale, even if title technically true
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u/Septiiiiii Aug 22 '26
I took a waste water management course last semester. This guy is right. Its hard to scale it AND its extremely slow. There are multiple known plastic eating fungi.
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u/Angel_of_Communism Aug 20 '26
The dna of the fungus could be used to make some other form of life that could eat the plastic.
Like an industrial composter.
That would be useful.
BUT someone would have to pay to collect all the plastic. So no.
What's more likely to happen is that someone will put it in a bacteria or something and release it into the ocean, and then surprised Pikachu face when it causes some other problem, like eating all the boats, or killing all the fish.
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u/NoBookkeeper3523 Aug 20 '26
Or waking up Godzilla, history shows again and again how nature points out the folly of man
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Aug 20 '26
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u/Krashnachen Aug 20 '26
Even if not sensationalized, people just don't think about scale.
Ok, let's say we have plastics water filter. The next step is always: filter a large chunk of the world's ocean water.
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u/Recursiveo Aug 20 '26
This is usually the answer. Most of these stories are very true (at the lab bench in a 10 cm dish).
Same thing in biotech. People wouldn’t believe how many issues we’ve solved in 100,000 HeLa cells in a little culture flask.
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u/Jumpy-Force-3397 Aug 20 '26
This is also how innovations happen. Having a high rate of failure is part of the process.
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u/DontAskAboutMyButt Aug 20 '26
We could do it if it wasn’t for all the fish that keep getting caught in the filter. Also the shipwrecks
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u/the_zero Aug 20 '26
Even if we think about scale, it's pretty cool that a high school student performed an experiment, partnered with University researchers, and working together they identified new fungal strains that can presumably feed on microplastics.
What they break down into is a good question. Can it be done at scale is a good question. But the "amazing" part is a smart kid learning and doing smart kid things.
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u/Krashnachen Aug 20 '26
Sure, usually the personal achievements are really impressive. And beyond that, the research and the impact has to start somewhere.
Problem is that's almost never how it's framed or what people take away from it. This post is better than the average, but still titled "for a better future", as if we're on the verge of an actually implementable solution.
And the comments are completely off the mark. Ridiculous points acting as if there's conspiracy to silence or assassinate people behind these solutions...
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u/nolonger1-A Aug 20 '26
I think it's been like that since ten years ago, and yet plastic waste is still a big problem in the world.
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u/WideAinous Aug 20 '26
I think its that while it might be a true statement, it does it so ineffectively compared to the grand issue of plastics in the ocean.
plants also reduce co2 in the atmosphere which is also a huge issue for us, but it just won't be able to tackle how much we produce in the first place. You could also imagine similar sensationalized headlines about other basic things that don't scale up to the issue.
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u/pleasant_equation Aug 20 '26
Breaking news! High school student discovers trees consume greenhouse gases!
Comments: omg I hope the trees are employing a body guard now so that they don’t get murdered
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u/HikariAnti Aug 20 '26
Because in most cases these microbes can only survive in an extremely specific environment and immediately die anywhere else, also would probably take like twenty years for it to break down a plastic cup assuming best case scenario.
Idk if that's also the cases here but will assume so until I see something that proves the opposite.
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u/cactusmask Aug 20 '26
Also, how does some mutant make a billion dollars from cleaning the ocean. Anything is possible (as long as it makes some dipshit rich).
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u/DaddaMongo Aug 20 '26
This girl is either going to become insanely rich or get screwed over. I'm guessing it will be the latter.
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Aug 20 '26
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u/DonaldTheWall Aug 20 '26
Even if she does her research will eventually be bought by 10 different companies who will mothball it for no reason other than it hurts that company's bottom line.
Theres been a few inventions like that where megacorp offers to buy it but they refuse so they attack the suppliers and force them into bankruptcy where they get the patent and burn it
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u/Stoyfan Aug 20 '26
And there will be one company that buys her research because it hurts other company’s bottom line
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u/-Camour- Aug 20 '26
Sad thing is the only real way to even prevent this is to screw yourself over and share it with everyone possible and yet as we seen with penicillin these companies will STILL find a way to control it
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u/GitEmSteveDave Aug 20 '26
Theres been a few inventions like that where megacorp offers to buy it but they refuse so they attack the suppliers and force them into bankruptcy where they get the patent and burn it
Such as?
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u/DonaldTheWall Aug 20 '26
I just saw a YouTube short about it where a small single guy had invented I think it was a car part that wouldn't break and a company tried to buy it and he refused so they threatened his suppliers which caused him to go bankrupt and they bought it and shelved it
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u/I-am-fun-at-parties Aug 20 '26
So believable
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u/Matt_cruze Aug 20 '26
You dont believe that I solved perpetual motion and a company bought it and shelved it?
Would some one do that? Just go on the internet and tell lies?
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u/Deaffin Aug 20 '26
I take it you haven't heard of the famous mega-philanthropist genius, Nigel Cheese.
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u/YoursTrulyKindly Aug 20 '26
A: Protect the idea with a patent and one girl gets rich
B: Open source the idea and everyone can implement it
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Aug 20 '26
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u/Dear_Dragonfruit3317 Aug 20 '26 edited Aug 20 '26
Neither of those things will happen. Every couple of months there is a young person or high school student that supposedly comes up with some amazing discovery and Reddit has a circlejerk about it. And every single time it is either impractical to implement or too expensive to use at scale.
Edit: Apparently, we are redefining what “too expensive” means.
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u/SerialSection Aug 20 '26
And everytime it is the brainchild of the Lab Investigator she is being mentored by.
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u/hates_stupid_people Aug 20 '26
Most of the time it's a recreation of existing science that was already found to be impractical.
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u/Nagemasu Aug 20 '26
too expensive to use at scale
Just to be clear, when it comes to something that takes many hundreds of years to break down and destroys the environment and wildlife, nothing is "too expensive". It's that those responsible don't want to pay, and therefore will do everything they can to suppress or shift the blame/responsibility.
If we don't do something, then the amount of plastic to clean up in future is going be huge, and before it gets to that point, the impact it's had will have cost us far more than whatever "too expensive" is now
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u/PM_ME__BIRD_PICS Aug 20 '26
Hi.
The reason we are in this mess is because of money. Needing to spend a fuck ton if it won't solve anything because those that have, will not part with it.
Thank you.
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u/Orleanian Aug 20 '26
It's that those responsible don't want to pay
My brother in crisps, what do you think "too expensive" means?
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Aug 20 '26
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u/artaru Aug 20 '26
I think the distinction matters but not a ton in this case.
A lot of people can eat at restaurants more expensive than their usual range. They can technically afford it but more than they want to. They can still sensibly call it “too expensive”.
Too expensive can mean affordability or inadequate desire to pay the asking price. It’s fair to to call this situation too expensive based on the latter.
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u/UnjustlyInterrupted Aug 20 '26
I think too expensive is a useless phrase here.
You would never refer to lifesaving healthcare as "too expensive" would you? It's either unaffordable or affordable?!
I think the people taking issue with the phrase (myself included) are taking issue with the idea that (like eating at a restaurant) there's some level of choice in the matter that seems ludicrous?
Like, if you met someone who said "I don't eat at that restaurant it's too expensive" you'd understand they'd done some cost benefit analysis and come to a conclusion. If someone said "I didn't get the life saving surgery, now I'll die, it was too expensive." You'd have follow up questions? Like, it was too expensive for your family? Society? Who decided the money amount was more than your life? Possibly the phrase too expensive comes across to people like me as a contraction of "too expensive to justify"
So when it comes to saving the whole world... What does too expensive to justify mean?
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u/artaru Aug 20 '26
actually yeah. i had an uncle with limited means. he had cancer. he could liquidate his entire life saving for a very slim chance at buying maybe 1-2 years.
except he was already quite old and accepted his fate, he decided to forego treatment and leave the savings to his family instead.
So when it comes to saving the whole world... What does too expensive to justify mean?
this is far too simplistic.
the real cost here is opportunity cost.
if environmental problem A causes 3 x money to fix.
and environmental problem B causes 1 x money to fix
then problem A is too expensive in the context of B or other myriad issues we can fix in the world by a more cost-effective - benefit gaining lens.
we can "afford" to fix A, but we have to allocate our resources smartly (in an ideal world, that is)
no one (sensible) is saying problem A is too expensive because we would rather spend our money on curing baldness or funding a single-person tourist ride trip to mars instead.
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u/UnjustlyInterrupted Aug 20 '26
I think your uncles story kinda proves my point (sorry for your loss btw) because those are the follow up questions that I was talking about answered?
And equally, your example of a & b solutions does the same? Because going "what does too expensive to fix mean?" Isn't simplistic, it might be a simple question, but it's an important one?
Because if it's "too expensive to do this idea compared to B idea" great, let's do b. But as has been pointed out, we're not doing that, we're spending money on fun space jaunts. So... It's not too expensive, we're spending money in the wrong places? That's what "too expensive" means here.
It'd be like your uncle saying the cancer treatment that bought him two years of life was too expensive, and then revealing he spent the liquidated assets on reflooring someone else's house he'd known for a week.
My original point is that "too expensive" always appears to be a relative term, and when it comes to saving the world, the answers to that relativity are almost universally unpalatable to such a degree they present as untrue.
Basically, if option a is deemed too expensive, and option b is deemed too expensive, and option c is doing something whack with the global economy where it could hypothetically have done option a or b, then option a or b were never really "too expensive". Does that make more sense?
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u/Spadeykins Aug 21 '26
His uncle let himself die, so checkmate. The planet is too expensive to save librulz.
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u/Orleanian Aug 20 '26
Sure they're two different things. Just like apples and oranges are two different things.
But the thing is, they're both fruits.
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u/Careless-Weather8877 Aug 20 '26
Companies don’t even profit are worth billions.
Think about that. Just because oil companies could’ve kickstarted EV and renewables decades ago they didn’t want to. It’s already easy to extract oil until … wait almost low on oil and can’t regenerate it. Or national security reasons to not have to rely on it.
They got their money. You and your family got fucked. Your kids will be fucked. All because of that concept it’s too expensive. Even if some of those that said that are actually working for it since the writing is on the wall now.
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u/PinkGlitterLady4 Aug 20 '26
Not what you think it means. It just means those companies don't want to spend a single dime for something that could work, if they could simply do nothing and still make profit while sticking to the status quo
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u/Infamous-Crew1710 Aug 20 '26
Student discovers you can kill virus by throwing the Petri dish out of the window.
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u/Spadeykins Aug 21 '26
'too expensive' means capitalists wont invest in it and governments are entrapped by their interests so the planet will continue to burn in futility.
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u/SophieCannotStop Aug 20 '26
Why would she get screwed over?
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u/Professional_Bundler Aug 20 '26
Big pharma has better lawyers to secure the patent.
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u/pressuredrop19 Aug 20 '26
Big pharma? It isn’t medicine.
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u/hedoeswhathewants Aug 20 '26
It's also not even a product. It's a naturally occurring fungus, which you definitely can't patent
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u/The_Tsainami Aug 20 '26
They can pat it then sell to government at premium
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u/hedoeswhathewants Aug 20 '26
No, you can't patent a natural fungus
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u/brown_felt_hat Aug 20 '26
Processes can be patented in the US, so if the actions to convert the fungus into a viable, cost-effective, deployable form is specific, that can be done.
I'm not saying it will, there's probably 10+ reasons it hasn't already been deployed widescale elsewise.
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u/JustStraightUpTired Aug 20 '26
Processes can be patented in the US
Production method can be patented, but you can't patent growing fungus. And more importantly, even if someone figures how to produce something effective from this that requires converting the fungi into something else that breaks down microplastics and is able to make it cheap enough to be put into action, it either gets put into action or they try sell it for too high price. If the latter happens, it's only a matter of time until someone else figures out another method for doing the same or they have to lower the price to a point where the solution actually gets bought.
The reason it's harder in medicine than other industries is the legal requirements for producing something that goes into human bodies are massively costly and it's not worth the risk of legal action to try compete with a patent. But the reason it DOES HAPPEN in other countries besides the US is because some countries don't have the same respect for patent laws as the US does. India specifically has shown to really not give a fuck when it comes to US medical patents, I don't see why they'd care about patents if they could supply the world with a solution to plastic waste.
And as for the 10+ reasons, there might be and probably is, but never forget the first and most important reason why tech isn't deployed widescale. Time. These things take time. The steps needed from invention to production and then to mass deployment aren't simple or short. Trains took decades to become useful. Electric grid took decades to be spread. Internet still isn't as wide spread as you'd think. Even if this discovery was world changing, it will take decades to be put into action.
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u/brown_felt_hat Aug 20 '26
Production method can be patented, but you can't patent growing fungus.
which is why I said
if the actions to convert the fungus into a viable, cost-effective, deployable form is specific
This isn't medicine so most of the middle is not relevant?
And as for the 10+ reasons, there might be and probably is, but never forget the first and most important reason why tech isn't deployed widescale.
Money, actually. If you can't make it profitable in current year, it dies.
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u/JustStraightUpTired Aug 20 '26
This isn't medicine so most of the middle is not relevant?
If it isn't relevant, then neither was your comment. The whole point is that patents aren't be all end all of technology. If there's money in it, patents don't prevent it from being put into use.
Money, actually. If you can't make it profitable in current year, it dies.
Semantics. There wasn't money in stopping the destruction of the ozone layer, but we still managed to do that. It just took time to get everything deployed and regulations put into place. Plastic is the same, even if there's no money in it, it's an important problem to fix, so any actually effective solution will be put into use regardless of whether it's profitable or not. But whether it's effective is a whole different story.
which is why I said
if the actions to convert the fungus into a viable, cost-effective, deployable form is specific
Which is why I spoke about medical patents, patents don't prevent medicine from being made elsewhere for cheaper. A patent which would save humanity? Yeah, it's only a matter of time until someone ignores patent laws and puts it into use if it's effective.
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u/appleavocado Aug 20 '26
And then who really gets screwed over? The environment, always the one to get fucked without enough voices to defend her is Mother Earth.
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u/BOBOnobobo Aug 20 '26
This thread chain is peak bad Reddit.
Like, not once does it makes sense why she would get screwed over (y'all just know companies want to make money, but if this is actual research then there's no patent and anybody can just use it, but she did get paid to do it)
It would also make sense for plastic producers to invest in stuff like this: 1. Because it gets them off the hook for pollution 2. Because they want to understand the effects of this fungi on plastic that we don't want to degrade
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u/Morbid_Aversion Aug 20 '26
Or neither because releasing a bunch of fungi into the oceans is probably worse than the plastic that's already in there.
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u/Preeng Aug 20 '26
If she already showed people how it works, then she can't patent the idea. She can patent a particular method for processing stuff through that fungus, but any research she published is fair game for anybody now.
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u/Friendly-Captain6236 Aug 20 '26
Or we’ll never ever hear about this innovation ever again, just like with pretty much every other innovation that could actually help humanity and the Earth.
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u/Impressive-Egg-7444 Aug 20 '26
She's not a rich white pedo, they're definitely going to screw her over.... The world could be such an incredible place if we just cared about others...
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u/DPSOnly Aug 20 '26
You don't have to get screwed over not to get rich. Very common for these kinds of inventions/discoveries to not be scaleable in the slightest which is simply a necessity for putting it to use.
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u/Financial-Virus-6696 Aug 20 '26
I feel like every year we find some way to clean up plastic and nothing comes of it
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u/JudoExpert Aug 20 '26
A lot of things that are discovered are effective in theory but aren’t the most practical. Same thing with cancer research etc.
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u/dwarffy Aug 20 '26
Don't lump this with cancer research. The cancer research actually gets implemented and does save lives.
The issue with cancer is that it is insanely complicated with multiple different ways of manifesting. There will never be a single cure for cancer, just different treatments targeting different versions for different people.
The research feels slow but it's actually improving. The survival rates of multiple cancers are vastly improved compared to even just 20 years ago. And will be better 20 years from now.
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u/Kolby_Jack33 Aug 20 '26
There's a shit load of plastic in the ocean and more is dumped in it every day. It ain't like we're ever gonna make something that solves the problem in a week. When a problem is huge, every step to resolve it seems like a baby step, but they are all still important steps to take.
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u/angwilwileth Aug 20 '26
What is probably going to happen is that some microorganism is going to learn how to eat it and then we will all be in trouble.
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u/BeefistPrime Aug 20 '26
Because the headlines are sensationalized. Most good ideas turn out not to work. They don't scale well, they have some waste product that's worse than what they're designed to fix, or some other very practical reason. So let's say 10% of things that seem like they might be ideas worth investigating ever pan out... you remember the 90% of the sensationalized "amazing [whatever]" headlines and think it's something that survived the test of time and not one of the 90% of failures. People always make a conspiracy theory out of it even though it's exactly what you'd expect to happen with lots of ideas that don't pan out and irresponsible journalism.
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u/sparkfizt Aug 20 '26
This is just poor science journalism, like "x common things kills cancer cells!*" *In a petri dish, it also kills every healthy cell in the dish...
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u/Significant-Cloud- Aug 20 '26
Why is the plaque on her medal blank?
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u/paulD1983R Aug 20 '26
Because I have discovered a pineapple skin fungi that eats words off of plaques.
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u/Doitforthewoosh Aug 20 '26
It’s been engraved here:
Fungi found on coconut husks can decompose plastic, sunscreen
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u/lilacnyangi Aug 20 '26
whatever ai they used to crop her out and erase the background must've erased the plaque too.
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u/SocranX Aug 20 '26
Looks like it hallucinated an extra part of her arm/jacket on the left, too.
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u/Deaffin Aug 20 '26
Pretty sure you're the one hallucinating on that one.
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u/SocranX Aug 20 '26
Nah, compare it to the original image. Her jacket isn't poking out of the other side of the plaque. It's just a part of the background that the AI thought was supposed to be part of her jacket.
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u/Deaffin Aug 20 '26
That's not the original image.
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u/SocranX Aug 20 '26
Okay but that's still clearly very different from the one shown here. And it also seems pretty clear that the one posted by OP is based on the one I linked, with the extra bit on her arm being added for the reasons I mentioned. So it's just two (or more) layers of AI "enhancement" messing with the image.
Edit: I'm pretty sure the one you linked is even more AI than the one I linked. Almost definitely not the original.
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u/Deaffin Aug 20 '26
Whoops, you're right.
Okay, I backtraced it and going by the timestamps, I definitely have the original image now.
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u/Doitforthewoosh Aug 20 '26
It’s written on here:
Fungi found on coconut husks can decompose plastic, sunscreen
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u/alexabeams Aug 20 '26
oh cute her name is vera wang. not hawaiian high school student 🧑🩰✨ go on, vera wang!
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u/SecreteMoistMucus Aug 20 '26
Headlines are supposed to be informative. Vera Wang would be the appropriate way to describe her if people knew who she was before this, which they obviously don't.
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u/alexnu87 Aug 20 '26
How is it not informative to state the name of the person the news is about?
Using generic qualifiers like “a high school student, a 16 year old boy, someone’s wife” is just a tabloid, emotionally manipulative, approach, to induce shock value.
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u/SecreteMoistMucus Aug 20 '26
Because when you say the name of a person and people don't know who that person is, the only information provided is "a person."
Those examples you provided aren't qualifiers, they are information. Yes they are generic information, but "high school student discovers fungi" is far more informative than "a person discovers fungi."
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u/Deaffin Aug 20 '26
Using generic qualifiers like “a high school student, a 16 year old boy, someone’s wife” is just a tabloid, emotionally manipulative, approach, to induce shock value.
That's the entire point of what you're looking at. This is not news, it is entertainment.
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u/Muppetude Aug 20 '26
Look at any modern news headline. The only times they use a person’s name is when they are a known public figure, otherwise the headline just refers to them by their title or occupation.
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u/getridofit888 Aug 20 '26
I’m sure we’ll hear all about how this will be used to better the earth /s
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u/DarthScruf Aug 20 '26
"its not profitable so we didnt do it" just like recycling.
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Aug 20 '26
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u/Thevenard Aug 20 '26
I'm pretty sure that's the plot of a post apocalyptic Manga, where they develop something to eat plastic and it end up evolving to eat everything including humans.
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u/Tonkarz Aug 20 '26
It was a thing in Niven’s Known Space setting. It ate all the plastic off shelves and everywhere else. So they only use metal, glass and similar.
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u/C_Dazzle Aug 20 '26
I feel like I've heard this story a few times now of very young and bright students discovering or developing something that biodegrades plastic. Are we doing it yet?
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u/BannanaPepperPizza Aug 20 '26
You could find a microbe that does it in a week. It's not a preferable substrate, and doubtful it's the sole carbon source. The scale needed to do anything impactful wouldn't make a dime, it'd probably lose billions a year, so fermenting plastic will never be a thing.
Sensationalist science headlines are published everyday.
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u/Retina400 Aug 20 '26
Is sunscreen compounds littering the ocean in some deleterious way that I was previously unfamiliar with?
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u/vaggos62 Aug 20 '26
Or mysteriously disappear.
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u/BeefistPrime Aug 20 '26
Ah yes, because Big Keep Plastic In The Oceans is going to murder her. BECAUSE FUCKING LITERALLY EVERYTHING is a conspiracy to you guys no matter how little it makes sense.
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u/AlwayHappyResearcher Aug 20 '26 edited Aug 20 '26
We see these useless "traditional person invented traditional way to tackle global problem by being traditional" BS weekly, it never scales, and most of the time is crap.
And why would she disappear? Nobody cares about plastic waste that's the whole point, there is no some mythical mafia who needs all the plastic waste.
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Aug 20 '26
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u/Real-Entertainment29 Aug 20 '26
Can't wait to never hear/and or see this in an actual use.. 😔
I love creative minds like that!
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Aug 20 '26
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Aug 20 '26
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u/RedOctober20 Aug 20 '26
Let me guess, with one million coconuts you can biodegrade 10 grams of plastic or something like that. It's might be like creating synthetic gold. Doable but far from being worth it.
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u/Arthasindura Aug 20 '26
Nice
One more thing to add to the list of things that can help the planet that won't be utilized anytime soon
I really hope countries would stop war and focus on utilizing the recent discoveries to extend the life expectancy of this planet
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u/owo1215 Aug 20 '26
honestly we had many of these type of discoveries in recent years, why aren't we starting to attempt to put it to use?
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u/JustAnotherAlt071024 Aug 20 '26 edited Aug 20 '26
Because usually these "miracle solutions" aren't practical at all - maybe it can't be scaled up or only work in certain temperature range, has very complex maintenance, has bad side effects or dozens of other things.
Few months ago there was post about some girl who came up with a filter that removes 95% of microplastics from water. The catch? It uses highly poisonous heavy metal and only recaptures about 80% of it.
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u/Daaledeere Aug 20 '26
A fungus doing same function was already discovered in Pakistan in 2017
https://www.dawn.com/news/1358923
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u/Anxious_Level2955 Aug 20 '26
that's great now imagine them spreading into medical equipment, airplanes, cars, your house...
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u/green1t Aug 20 '26
Genetic sequencing also showed that some fungal strains found in the coconut husks were not present in global genomic databases, suggesting they could represent previously uncharacterized species with the ability to break down persistent ocean pollutants.
inb4 it gets patented by a company that presses charges if you use it
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u/YoursTrulyKindly Aug 20 '26
The solution is to launch a waste disposal campaign in all the countries of the most polluting rivers that produce this plastic. Funds to create public utility ultra cheap (socialist) waste disposal. Awareness / advertising campaigns to get people on board.
Trivial to solve.
The IMF demands developing countries do the opposite.
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u/disiskeviv Aug 20 '26
With no date mentioned anywhere in the post, I am assuming it is an old and died down story with no tangible difference in microplastics. It is just running around on social media.
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u/Meme-Botto9001 Aug 20 '26
Fungi gonna be the next big evolution after the dumb apes destroyed everything.
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u/DRUGMUSIC_ Aug 20 '26
not to knock her win, but frankly we all know what need to be done but corporations are too greedy to pivot their business model.
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u/OhItsMrCow Aug 20 '26
cool, we will never hear about this ever again
I hope I'm wrong but I doubt it
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u/redlaWw Aug 20 '26
She should probably focus on developing the fungus rather than the sunscreen compounds.
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u/ssam07303 Aug 20 '26
"And the very next day she is found no more, and with all the relevant data purged." - someone
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u/justin_other_opinion Aug 20 '26
She's been staring at the edge of the water, long as I can remember..
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u/CaregiverUsual6020 Aug 20 '26
I interviewed this girl for a scholarship last spring, and she is truly one of the most remarkable young people I’ve ever met. The story is 100% true and I think she’ll probably win the Nobel prize someday.
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u/PhantomAllure Aug 20 '26
I love that nature is like "you know what, since you fucks won't do anything about this, we will" and then eventually some amazing human like this comes along and discovers this and brings it to light.
I hope the world pays attention to these bright young minds. They GIVE A SHIT about the world we're leaving them.
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u/ProverbialMindTart Aug 20 '26
And in a few years we’ll hear about this again, and still it will go nowhere and nothing will change.
No one who can make a difference wants to make a difference.
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u/smoothie_criminals Aug 20 '26
That’s freaking awesome!!! I hope the science community can implement this in the next decade because we need a way to break this down. Great job kiddo!!
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u/joshuadane Aug 20 '26
This person has done more good for human kind than elon musk and yet elon will still be worshipped by more people.
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u/ThatGuy271301 Aug 20 '26
Does nobody read comments before commenting? How are all of these comments slight variations of the same things lmao
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u/qqererer Aug 20 '26
Similarly, hundreds of millions of years ago the dinosaurs had a huge problem with trees and plants. They'd eat the leaves, then toss the rest, and it would all just lie around and pile up hundreds of feet deep.
A lot of that stuff became coal. But since then bacteria and fungus evolved to 'de compose' cellulose.
Which kinda sounds great, until you consider that plants and trees aren't really going to pile up hundreds of feet anymore because the bacteria and fungus is all going to release it back into the atmosphere.
It's going to be permanently hotter for the foreseeable hundred of millions of years.
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u/Basidia_ Aug 20 '26
That is just total non-sense. Dinosaurs evolved tens of millions of years after the Carboniferous period and bacteria and fungi evolved hundreds of millions of years before that
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u/qqererer Aug 20 '26
I should apologize for my comment, because it clearly was a failed execution of using a comedic device to frame dinosaurs as wasteful single use packaging consumers like we are coupled with the interesting fact that cellulose, like plastic was not a compostable material until it was.
Further, it's completely lost on people who, for whatever reason, see the world in completely literal, boundaried ways of interpreting the world.
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u/Basidia_ Aug 20 '26
Makes sense. Sarcasm is hard to read through text
For as sarcastic of a person as I am, I am very bad at recognizing it
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