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"tardigraves find a way." wikipedia: They have been found in diverse regions of Earth's biosphere – mountaintops, the deep sea, tropical rainforests, and the
by fsckboy 3y ago
"tardigraves find a way."
wikipedia:
They have been found in diverse regions of Earth's biosphere – mountaintops, the deep sea, tropical rainforests, and the Antarctic. Tardigrades are among the most resilient animals known, with individual species able to survive extreme conditions – such as exposure to extreme temperatures, extreme pressures (both high and low), air deprivation, radiation, dehydration, and starvation – that would quickly kill most other known forms of life. Tardigrades have survived exposure to outer space.
- benj111 3y agoSo on some future space mining trip to the moon, these will some how get picked up, then after their long sleep, and some mutations from cosmic rays, will start taking out the crew one by one?
- Ygg2 3y agoNo. Mutation doesn't imply it just morphed for dramatic purposes.
- benj111 3y agoWhat if it got radioactive and then bit one of the crew who took on tardigrade qualities, and started taking out the crew? Or maybe a transporter incident where the tardigrades DNA merged with a humans, and it started taking out the crew? Or 25th century Meta started secret experiments on Luna tardigrades and decided they wanted to test their new weapon on the unsuspecting crew of some old transport ship?
- ionwake 3y agoI too am waiting for ygg2s’ answers as he seems knowledgable on the subject
- Ygg2 3y agoWhat if you got bitten by slightly irradiated mosquito? Nothing. Yeah, this isn't a Marvel comic. Best case scenario, tardigrades develop to feed on people. Since they are microscopic they get to compete with other of our parasites. Huzzah.
- benj111 3y agoMy replies weren't entirely serious. The parent paraphrased Jurassic park so I think I'm allowed to reference other scifi tropes. I don't think that's the 'best' case. Dinosaurs evolved from simpler things than tardigrades so if we mess up this planet enough that we have to leave and only the tardigrades survive, our offspring could return to find giant tardigrade type things that eat our not so human children. Or we could time travel forward to that time. The choice of delorean, TARDIS or some kind of planet of the apes time travel, I leave up to you.
- dahart 3y ago> Tardigrades have survived exposure to outer space. We don’t have to leave this hanging as if tardigrades can survive anything; they’re robust but not immortal. The very same article discusses what that sentence about space really means. In the most direct experiment done so far, after 10 days of exposure to the vacuum of space but not solar radiation, a third weren’t able to reanimate, and after that “subsequent mortality was high”. For tardigrades that were exposed to the vacuum and solar radiation “had significantly reduced survival, with only three subjects of Milnesium tardigradum surviving.” Of the Israeli Lunar Lander, Wikipedia says “in May 2021 it was reported that they were unlikely to have survived the impact.” It might be reasonable to speculate and extrapolate based on the 10 day experiment that even if any did survive impact they probably haven’t by now with three and a half years of vacuum, even if they did land in the shadows, right? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tardigrade#Survival_after_exposure_to_outer_space https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tardigrade#Survival_after_expo...