clipped from unitedcats.wordpress.com

The abandoned town of Pripyat, the Chernobyl reactor in the background.

There has been an exciting new biological discovery inside the tomb of the Chernobyl reactor. Like out of some B-grade sci fi movie, a robot sent into the reactor discovered a thick coat of black slime growing on the walls. Since it is highly radioactive in there, scientists didn’t expect to find anything living, let alone thriving. The robot was instructed to obtain samples of the slime, which it did, and upon examination…the slime was even more amazing than was thought at first glance.

This slime, a collection of several fungi actually, was more than just surviving in a radioactive environment, it was actually using gamma radiation as a food source.

Samples of these fungi grew significantly faster when exposed to gamma radiation at 500 times the normal background radiation level.

The fungi appear to use melanin, a chemical found in human skin as well, in the same fashion as plants use chlorophyll.