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Tardigrades are so tough, they can survive outer space
- bicx 12y agoLooks cool, but the page seems to freeze Chrome within a second or two. Chrome could learn a thing or two from Tardigrades.
- brixon 12y agoPut some water on it.
- oaktowner 12y agoHmm. What OS? Works for me (Chrome 41.0.2272.89, OS X 10.9.5)
- joshstrange 12y agoUpdate: Looks like it fixes itself after a little bit. I'm wondering if Hover Zoom is to blame as it was on in incognito for me but I can't reproduce now so I don't know... --------------- OS X 10.10 Chrome 41.0.2272.89 (64-bit) It's happening to me as well. I thought it may be Privacy Badger blocking some JS or something stupid like that but after trying in incognito mode I can confirm it's probably not a plugin causing it (The plugins still being loading in incognito mode are: 1Pass, EditThisCookie, HoverZoom, JsonView, and RES). In Chrome Canary (43.0.2330.4 and 43.0.2331.0 tested) scrolling seems to work fine. It also works fine in FF (34.0.5 and 36.0.1).
- jmadsen 12y ago"They are never more than 1.5 mm long, and can only be seen with a microscope" Confused - I can see things that are 1.5mm long. Some sort of editing mistake here, I think.
- jahnu 12y agoThe numbers seem correct... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tardigrade http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tardigrade "The biggest adults may reach a body length of 1.5 mm (0.059 in), the smallest below 0.1 mm. Newly hatched tardigrades may be smaller than 0.05 mm."
- masklinn 12y agoThe average individual is usually 0.3 to 0.5mm, 1.5mm are giants. And though they're described as barrel-shaped, they're not as wide as they're long. The main problem is they're close to translucent, so bigger individuals can be visible with good vision and the right light, but it's not exactly trivial.
- daddykotex 12y agoI think they come up in one of Cosmos episodes. Actually very interesting to see how they go around almost everywhere. Edit : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2I-PQxuPkjA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2I-PQxuPkjA
- dekhn 12y agoI found a tardigrade while using my microscope to look at pond water. Man, they look funny and dopey and move around very clumsily. Not exactly what you'd think would be the toughest animal around. I would have put my money on rotifers.
- Raphmedia 12y agoYour comment made me understand that I've never seen them moving. I've found this video https://youtu.be/F5fg64rmFHE?t=15m19s https://youtu.be/F5fg64rmFHE?t=15m19s that shows them. My mind is so blown. They are so small but so animal like... !
- IndianAstronaut 12y agoRotifers are interesting in their own way. They are an example of an animal where their sex is determined by what environmental conditions their parents were in. We normally think of sex determination as something that happens at conception, but with rotifers it is much before that.
- yawaramin 12y agoThere's actually some evidence and theory to suggest that sex of human children is determined by their mother's stress level: http://www.economist.com/node/10130882 http://www.economist.com/node/10130882 So it's not clear-cut even in our species!
- thebouv 12y agoWater Bears! My daughter is both amazed by and terrified by these.
- neumann 12y agoTell her that it is her spirit animal. A pretty cool list of features to have for your spirit animal!
- arethuza 12y agoOr a Dæmon from His Dark Materials: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%C3%A6mon_%28His_Dark_Materials%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%C3%A6mon_%28His_Dark_Material...
- thebouv 12y agoThat must be it. Water bears work their way into random conversations with her every once in a while. Narwhals too.
- michaelfeathers 12y agoSomeone could probably spin a great science fiction story around the idea that tardigrades are an advance team for exploration by extraterrestrials.
- TeMPOraL 12y agoOr distant relatives of the advanced nanotechnology brought here by aliens who seeded life on this planet.
- funkdobiest 12y agoI was thinking why we don't include these in the mars rovers and other space probes, see how they do on other planets. Is there some ethical problem with that? Like the prime directive.
- TeMPOraL 12y agoAs far as I know, such missions go to great lengths to ensure this does not happen. There are two main reasons for that: 1) if you're searching for traces of life on another world, you don't want to discover bacteria you brought from Earth, and 2) you definitely don't want to unintentionally contaminate said world with terrestial life that would start to alter the planet, because you'll lose valuable research data. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetary_protection http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetary_protection.
- bitwize 12y agoThe tardigrade image in the banner at the top is... freaky. Like a Monsters Inc. monster wearing one of those HAZMAT suits they have to wear in case of child contamination.
- scoggs 12y agoThis is who I think of: https://c1.staticflickr.com/3/2665/4048198665_d9b03610c4.jpg https://c1.staticflickr.com/3/2665/4048198665_d9b03610c4.jpg Which is Heimlich, the caterpillar, voiced by Joe Ranft.
- tarequeh 12y agoIt made me think that it's already wearing a space suit, no wonder they survive in space.
- stronglikedan 12y agoThe mouth(?) is so geometric and symmetrical that it almost looks man-made. I want to plug my headphones into it.
- funkdobiest 12y agoDoes anybody else feel sorry for them, you look like a turd with legs, your mouth looks like an anus, and you can't die easily. Maybe some sort of reincarnation hell?
- Lx1oG-AWb6h_ZG0 12y agoThat description could apply equally well to a lot of humans who would choose immortality if given the choice. Hell is us.
- dccoolgai 12y agoCryptobiosis (the long-fangled scientific term for what these things do) is something I've been fascinated by ever since I heard about Water Bears on one of those weird little nature shows ten years ago. Most of the organisms that can do it are understandably "simple", but it is truly fascinating. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptobiosis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptobiosis
- OneOneOneOne 12y agoHow do these critters handle bleach?
- amagumori 12y agothe previous title, "tardigrades, toughest 1mm-long animal on earth" didn't get those page views rolling in...
- niix 12y agoI can't stop laughing at the first line of this article "If you go into outer space without protection, you'll die.". Its like the journalist really took to heart what she learned in her early writing classes about using an attention grabber.
- BMorearty 12y agoI learned about tardigrades from an episode of last year's remake of Cosmos. Neil deGrasse Tyson said tardigrades survived all five of earth's mass extinctions.
- JackFr 12y agoNot only did they survive, massive asteroid impacts could their means of propagation. http://www.technologyreview.com/view/425093/earth-ejecta-could-have-seeded-life-on-europa/ http://www.technologyreview.com/view/425093/earth-ejecta-cou...
- revscat 12y agoSo this is interesting: It's not just the harsh environs of outer space that tardigrades can survive in. The little critters seem adept at living in some of the harshest regions of Earth. They have been discovered 5546m (18,196ft) up a mountain in the Himalayas, in Japanese hot springs, at the bottom of the ocean and in Antarctica. They can withstand huge amounts of radiation, being heated to 150 °C, and being frozen almost to absolute zero. I'm having a hard time seeing how the ability to survive in such high and low temperatures arose via natural selection, especially the ability to survive at near absolute zero while in the tun state. Such a condition obviously does not exist on Earth, so this feature could not have arisen via environmental pressures, at least not directly.
- noir_lord 12y ago> Such a condition obviously does not exist on Earth, so this feature could not have arisen via environmental pressures, at least not directly. Doesn't need to arise directly, it may be that the adaptations that allow you to survive -50C are the same ones that allow you to survive -200C. Also there is Exaptation where one trait for one set of circumstances later adapts to serve another set of circumstances - the classic been feathers, they evolved as a method of keeping warm and later where later co-opted for flight.
- revscat 12y agoThis seems the most likely explanation, but it is still extraordinary. Being able to survive in cold is one thing. But being able to survive being placed in liquid nitrogen for an extended period of time? That's incredible.
- civilian 12y agoI dunno, have you looked into the human suspended animation with sulphur? A layperson could say: "wow, it's amazing the humans adapted to go into suspended animation when exposed to the cold and an atmosphere of sulphur!" It's not really something we adapted to, it's just another accident of our biology. https://www.ted.com/talks/mark_roth_suspended_animation https://www.ted.com/talks/mark_roth_suspended_animation All life is a hack! All organisms are just pushing the minimum code change to get a leg up on everything else. Loopholes are everywhere.
- realrocker 12y agoData. We can use them to store data. Not your average cat picture storage but maybe DNA data of plant seeds and such.
- moe 12y agoWell, but how? Tattoo them with a nano-needle?
- realrocker 12y agoOr inject them with nano-fibre(?) Use them as a container.
- jessaustin 12y agoIf Rahm is to be believed, tardigrades can survive even higher temperatures. If there is a question about this, one would have expected 90 years to be enough time for someone to arrange a follow-up study.
- jessaustin 12y agoSome scifi (e.g. Simmons's Hyperion series) posits that the way for humans to survive near-light-speed travel is for the body to be basically destroyed by acceleration, and then rebuilt on arrival. If that ever happens, perhaps tardigrades will inspire the techniques used in the process.
- maxerickson 12y agoI enjoyed reading it, but Hyperion struck me as having a great many fantasy elements. It has both time travel and FTL (both of which are nonsense given current physics, there is no reasoned framework to explain them in). Also, symbiotic life extension technology. I also crankily believe that unobtanium is also a fantasy element (sorry Larry, scrith too), so maybe I shouldn't bother having the conversation. But why is a magic wand 'a stupid plot device', but an inexplicable technology is 'a reasoned exploration'? Or is that not what hard sci fi means? Because fantasy often focuses on the social implications of magic, which is at least a similar sort of activity as imagining how big you can make something if you can adjust the laws of physics.
- apalmer 12y agoAll valid but the caveat 'Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic'. The line between what is science fiction and what is fantasy in a future setting can be very thin.
- maxerickson 12y agoI'm basically arguing that any such line is arbitrary. The distinction between science fiction and fantasy is probably a useful one for helping readers find books they like. Going further than that seems like it is going to almost always involve a lot of personal preference.
- Florin_Andrei 12y agoDescribing the modern world to contemporaries of Socrates would be less like sci-fi, more like fantasy, to them.
- leeoniya 12y agosome may also like to read about single-cell wasps: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/2011/11/30/how-fairy-wasps-cope-with-being-smaller-than-amoebas/ http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/2011/11/3...
- moonfern 12y agoThanks for the link but the author, Ed Yong, http://edyong.flavors.me http://edyong.flavors.me, is wrong. That wasp has probably 10(0) 000's of tiny cells and is as big as some large single-cell creatures.
- kpilars 12y agoI just read that "Tardigrades (water bears) are so tough, they can SURVIVE outer space" and they need WATER from decade to decade to survive and they also live on earth for 500 million years. Then I read "Suddenly, It Seems, Water Is Everywhere in Solar System". So wouldn't be fun to have a probe (on Philae for example) called "Bearfinder"? Shouldn't our friends live (sleep) in worst case scenario (if earth would be their birthplace) on the moon, mars, or comet 67P. Or best scenario rather everywhere?
- Red_Tarsius 12y agoThis is actually a very interesting idea! We could also seed other planets with our water bears.
- juliangregorian 12y agoCould have potentially disastrous repercussions on alien ecosystems.
- huxley 12y agoJust the other day I read a fascinating (to me) Quora reply to the question "What can happen if a human eats a water bear (the most resistant living organism), or gets a water bear in their blood stream?" Short answer: it gets dissolved in the stomach acid and dies. Long answer here: http://www.quora.com/What-can-happen-if-a-human-eats-a-water-bear-the-most-resistant-living-organism-or-gets-a-water-bear-in-their-blood-stream http://www.quora.com/What-can-happen-if-a-human-eats-a-water...
- Red_Tarsius 12y agoOff topic question: What kind of nutrients does a spoonful of tardigrades provide? Would water bear farming be useful or just silly?
- zkhalique 12y agoWho would win in a longevity contest between a Tardigrade and a Rotifer?
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- lkrubner 12y agoIn the Bayesian sense, I must now update my priors regarding life coming to Earth from another planet. I always gave that theory a very low probability, but now that its been demonstrated that some life can survive in space, I must admit the theory is somewhat more possible than I previously believed. Also, does anyone know what "mm" stands for when they say these creatures are a maximum of 1.5mm long? I thought "millimeter" but that doesn't make sense in the context: "They are never more than 1.5 mm long, and can only be seen with a microscope." I can see things that are 1 millimeter with my own eyes, so what does "1.5 mm" mean? Could "nm" would have been nanometer, but that would be far too small, much smaller than a virus. I'm thinking they meant millionth of a meter?
- fraserharris 12y agoCopied from below: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tardigrade http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tardigrade "The biggest adults may reach a body length of 1.5 mm (0.059 in), the smallest below 0.1 mm. Newly hatched tardigrades may be smaller than 0.05 mm."
- bashinator 12y agoThe are up to 1.5 millimeters long, and any detailed features of the animal can only be seen with a microscope.
- kazinator 12y agoCan someone explain why something up to 1.5mm long can "can only be seen with a microscope?" That would make sense if the other dimensions were small. But from the pictures, it appears that this is not the case; tardigrades are approximately oval shaped, not much narrower than they are long. I have a circuit board on my desk here where some surface-mount components are about millimeter-something long, and less than a mm wide. I can plainly see them.
- gnud 12y agoThe Almighty Wiki says 'Usually, tardigrades are about 0.5 mm (0.020 in) long when they are fully grown'. Following the reference, we find that they're almost translucent, but can be seen in the right light [1]. 1: http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/pub/2011/5/tardigrades/1 http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/pub/2011/5/tardigrad...
- frozenport 12y agoThey are also transparent, and benefit from a phase sensitive imaging techniques, or dark field.
- pvaldes 12y agoRotifers support a billion dollar's human industries currently. They are the preys for breeding the tiny larvae of marine fishes in our future spacial stations so don't go out your planet without some of them. You don't want just to put some humans in mars. You'll need to move entire reliable trophic chains, and humans are only the cherry at the top. So take with you some rotifers, some Chlorella also and... well, maybe a big bag of dehydrated eggs of desert pupfishes.
- stared 12y agoThere is an educational game, MetaBlast (http://metnet-mbl.gdcb.iastate.edu/ http://metnet-mbl.gdcb.iastate.edu/), where Tardigrades are creatures you can encounter (and interact with). Even one appearing on the screenshot.
- yawaramin 12y agoAs I pointed out way back when,[1] Mark Shuttleworth really missed the opportunity to name an Ubuntu release the Tenacious Tardigrade. [1] http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/1295#comment-403210 http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/1295#comment-403210
- brobdingnagian 12y agoAre tardigrades conscious?
- kang 12y agoI don't know if you know this but 'Tardigrades' are the only living beings that survived all the four ice ages. This any many more amazing stories around it can be seen in an amazing TV documentary series 'Cosmos: A space Odyssey' presented by by Neil deGrasse Tyson
- superasn 12y agoWhat is the chance that these creatures didn't evolve on earth but on some other planet and comet and instead got transported here on a meteor. That would explain a lot of things as to why they evolved to stand 6 times the maximum pressure, temperature colder than ever recorded on earth, and their other attributes which are too extreme for even the most hostile environment on earth.