Study reveals hidden talent of mushrooms: They can make it rain

Fox News ^ | October 29, 2015 | Michael Harthorne

[sparklite2]

Discovery reports researchers documented a previously unknown system in which rain makes mushrooms grow, mushrooms release spores into the atmosphere, and those spores create moisture droplets that could lead to rain.

“We can watch big water droplets grow as vapor condenses on (the mushroom spore’s) surface,” study author Nicholas Money tells Discovery. “Nothing else works like this in nature.” This process could be influencing climate patterns around the world, especially in fungus-heavy tropical forests like the Amazon, Gizmodo reports.

According to Gizmodo, a single mushroom can "catapult" up to 30,000 spores per second at speeds of up to 4mph. And it's been estimated mushrooms release 50 million tons of spores into the atmosphere ever year.

[sparklite2]

I'll have a pepperoni pizza with mushrooms, hold the rain.

[BitWielder1]

I thought it was fine dust from space that seeded the rain droplets.
It must have rained on this planet long before there were mushrooms.

[niteowl77]

Master Shake - uh, I mean The Drizzle - needs to hear about this so he can increase his crime-fighting powers.

Mr. niteowl77

[piytar]

This is actually well known. But still pretty cool!

[piytar]

It’s actually any dust and/or spores and/or pollen sufficiently high in the atmosphere. In addition, if a cosmic ray strikes the dust/spores/pollen, they pick up a charge that attracts water vapor and help form clouds/rain. Hence, when the sun’s magnetosphere is quiet (see Maunder Minimum and current solar activity), we get more rain, cooling, and NASTY winters.

[piytar]

PS That is a very short summary of the interactions involved. It’s a bit more complicated, but the underlying principles are known. “Scientists” pushing AGW most likely (a) are ignorant of these interactions or (b) are likely ignoring them to keep the grant money flowing.

[WayneS]

When this was happening with regular mushrooms, it was fine, and the environment remained in balance.

But these new rain-making ‘Spore Utility Mushrooms’ are a major contributor to global wetting...

[BitWielder1]

How can this make any more rain, isn't it limited to the amount of moisture in the atmosphere?
I would have guessed more dust would cause more but smaller drops, less dust fewer but larger drops.

[AlaskaErik]

If that were true it would be raining over California all the time.

[moovova]

Purple Rain?

Cool, man...

[Carthego delenda est]

I’ve read that there are spores in space.

[reed13k]

Possible desert reclamation process?

[backwoods-engineer]

In other words, the Climate Priests have NO IDEA how our biosphere and climate work together, and all their predictions are just so much... hot air.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks sparklite2.

• French Mathematicians Blast UN's 'Costly & Pointless Crusade' Against Global Warming

[Gator113]

What came first, the rain or the mushroom?

[Gator113]

So if you see a lib dying of thirst, give him a mushroom.

[sparklite2]

Heh. At least he’ll die happy.

[To Hell With Poverty]

I’ve read that there are spores in space.

Panspermia! One of my favorite words.

[Gator113]

Indeed. Tonight we are going to BBQ steak and stuffed mushrooms.

[tet68]

Dhrumbas, big landslide mushrooms!

Fantastic colors, FANTASTIC COLORS!!!

The little mushroom comes of itself...

Thank god for Gordon Wasson’s wife.

She was Russian and loved mushrooms, her love of fungi
and Gordon’s instinctual disgust of them caused him
to examine why some cultures were pro or con.
His interest then centered on Teonanacatl, the “food of the
gods”, in central American and also the Soma of the Vedas.
Very facinating.