In 2013, space-loving botanist Wieger Wamelink began to wonder if, like that of its blue cousin, the soil on Mars could actually grow any plant life. Knowing there’d be only one way to find out, he created his own Martian soil in a lab and planted seeds in it. 

You might be thinking, “Wait, didn’t I see Matt Damon do that with potatoes in that one movie?” This might seem eerily similar to something out of science fiction, but it’s a very real experiment that yielded some extraordinary discoveries. 

Wamelink’s team planted 4,200 seeds representing 14 different plant species in a “simulated” Martian regolith, aka rocky soil. In other words, a makeshift soil using crushed volcanic rocks collected here on Earth that matched previous rover analyses of Martian soil. 

According to Science Focus, these soils were initially developed to test whether rovers and........

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