To com­bat the Sahara Desert’s ongo­ing growth, stu­dent Mag­nus Lars­son has pro­po­sed a 6,000km wall that will be-wait for it-constructed by let­ting a bac­te­rium have its way with the sand, for­ming sandstone.

The bac­te­rium, bacillus pas­teu­rii, turns sand into firm sand­stone structu­res very quickly, and the pro­po­sed wall could house a sort of len­gthy oasis of water and vege­tation, to be used by refu­gees for housing. It’s try­ing to kill two enor­mous birds with an equally enor­mous stone: Com­ba­ting deser­ti­fi­cation and pro­vi­ding mass amounts of housing for those who need it. The pro­po­sal won a prize for susta­i­na­ble agricul­ture, but nothing this outrage­ous is without its problems.

This kind of bac­te­rial change has been per­for­med in very small envi­ron­ments, but has never been tried in as large a scale as the Sahara Desert. Besi­des the practi­ca­lity of the pro­ject, there are also envi­ron­men­tal con­cerns: This mas­sive a change to the eco­sys­tem could cause pro­blems we can’t even fore­see, from spe­cies extincti­ons to water shor­tages. Not to men­tion a pro­blem that wasn’t brou­ght up in the article: How do we get this thing to stop making sand­stone? I’m pretty sure expe­ri­ments with ice-nine didn’t turn out so hot.

text: gizmodo
obr: flickr