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Live Worms Found in Columbia Wreckage
Scoria writes "CNN is reporting that hundreds of live worms, fourth or fifth generation descendents of the subjects of a scientific experiment conducted aboard Columbia, have been discovered amongst the shuttle wreckage. The worms,
C. elegans ,
share many biological characteristics with humans and are the size of a pencil tip."
CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (AP) -- Hundreds of worms from a science experiment aboard the space shuttle Columbia have been found alive in the wreckage, NASA said Wednesday.
The worms, known as C. elegans, were found in debris in Texas several weeks ago. Technicians sorting through the debris at Kennedy Space Center in Florida didn't open the containers of worms and dead moss cells until this week.
All seven astronauts were killed when the shuttle disintegrated over Texas on February 1. Columbia contained almost 60 scientific investigations.
"To my knowledge, these are the only live experiments that have been located and identified," said Bruce Buckingham, a NASA spokesman at the Kennedy Space Center.
The worms and moss were in the same nine-pound locker located in the mid-deck of the space shuttle. The worms were placed in six canisters, each holding eight petri dishes.
The worms, which are about the size of the tip of a pencil, were part of an experiment testing a new synthetic nutrient solution. The worms, which have a life cycle of between seven and 10 days, were four or five generations removed from the original worms placed on Columbia in January.
The C. elegans are primitive organisms that share many biological characteristics of humans. In 1999, C. elegans became the first multicellular organism to have the sequencing of its genome completed.
C. elegans have two sexes: males and hermaphrodites, which are females that produce sperm. A hermaphrodite worm can self-fertilize for the first 300 or so eggs but later usually prefers to accept sperm from males to produce a larger number of offspring.
The experiment was put together by researchers at the NASA Ames Research Center in California.
The moss, known as Ceratodon, was used to study how gravity affects cell organization. During Columbia's flight, shuttle commander Rick Husband sprayed the moss with a chemical that destroyed protein fiber. He also sprayed the moss with formaldehyde to preserve it. Seven of the eight aluminum canisters holding the moss were recovered.
Why worms?
The C. elegans are primitive organisms that share many biological characteristics of humans.
The experiment was put together by an Ames Research Center researcher and Dr. Fred Sack at Ohio State University.
"The cells were surprisingly well-preserved, but we're analyzing how useful it's going to be," Sack said.
NASA officials said they don't know if the worms will still have any scientific value since they were supposed to have been examined and unloaded from Columbia within hours of landing
"It's pretty astonishing to get the possibility of data after all that has happened," Sack said. "We never expected it. We expected a molten mass."
I think they were the real cause of the crash, soon they'll start to take over the world unless they're stopped!
-- Hulver's site
Let's make slashdot mods eat a fistful of them every time they posts a dupe :-) That would be a geeky punishment - being forced to eat space worms.
Daniel
Carpe Diem
I'd like to pledge my loyalty to the alien overlord worms.
When I was younger.... smaller and lighter I could easly jump out of a second story window onto the ground without causing myself any injury.
Now I'm older, taller and fatter there's no way I'd jump out of a second story window, it's hurt too much.
It's not too surprising that something small survived whilst the people died.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
C. elegans have two sexes: males and hermaphrodites, which are females that produce sperm
They don't share this one do they? Is my wife keeping something from me?
Brocklesby Park Cricket Club
I, for one, welcome our new invertebrate overlords.
I'd like to remind them that as a trusted TV personality, I can be helpful in rounding up others to... toil in their underground sugar caves.
Meep meep
That would have made finding the rest of the wreckage a lot easier, though.
Get off my launchpad!
Go here for more info (genetic) and a pic of them
This proves that life can survive a fiery impact with the earth -- like that of a meteor impact. On top of that, it's not even a single celled organism... even though these things are as small as pencil lead, they are somewhat organized multicellular organisms.
I would think this might add a little bit more credibility to the people who think life originated in somewhere other than Earth.
If the worms can survive the crash, why can't they build the whole shuttle out of whatever worms are made of?
El Karma: excelente(principalmente la suma de moderación hecha a los comentarios de los usuarios)
Yes... because we humans are the size of a pencil tip. Then again, it's it good that they are not the size of a VW.
.00000001 VW beetles, or about 1,000,000,000 human-hair-widths.
;)
I think a pencil tip is equivalent to
But I could be wrong. I wish they'd just switch to the metric system like the rest of the world!
My journal has hot
Just like the moon landings and that other thing.
I'm smarter than the average bear.
The C. Elegans genome may be browsed here...
It's 11pm, do you know what your deamons are up to?
"The worms, C. elegans, share many biological characteristics with humans and are the size of a pencil tip."
Alright kids, enough with the George W. Junior jokes already. We know he's dumb but this is getting a little tired...
...what...
no?
oh alright carry on then...
Once again NASA opens a can of worms in their Columbia disaster enquiry!
...And airstrikes, and banana bombs and exploding sheep (sometimes).
:)
Why not shuttle accidents too? Should be a walk in the park for them!
C. elegans belongs to the phylum of nematodes.
Funnily, nematodes are called "sukkulamadot" in Finnish, which translates to "shuttle worms" in English.
But seriously, this goes a long way to prove the panspermia theory. Or atleast to disprove all the nay-sayers. If a pencil-tip-sized worm can survive that impact, then bacteria should be able to survive the impact of a comet.
All this proves is that worms in a locker can survive a shuttle crash.
That's the problem with all these conspiracy theories and wacky beliefs about the world. Someone looks at two statements, one of which is fact, and they conclude the other is fact, because it just seems like it might be true based on the first one. They then use their new 'fact' as a basis for proving other things, and away we go.
Ok...
Would this also mean if you got infected with a weird viurus or "worm" you could sue?
Ok, you cannot be infected by C. elegans. They are not parasitic.
Think of how terrible it would have (or was) if they had biotoxins on board the shuttle?
Yeah, that would suck. Although it would probably either burn up upon re-entry or make it to earth safe in it's really good seal (as happened with these worms). Sure, once the box hit the ground it might break open...anyways
Does anyone know if these "similar to human" worms are harmful to humans?
Unless you were to swallow one and choke, these worms are not harmful to humans at all.
What makes them similar to humans anyway?
They share some genetic features. Some scientific stuff that no one cares about but scientists. C. elegans are similar to humans in the same way D. melanogaster (fruit flies) are similar to humans. Genetic and developmental regulators.
Does radiation and antigravity make such creatures mutate?
Radiation does cause things to mutate (although generally not in the grow an extra arm fashion). Antigravity does not. I don't think that these worms would have been to exposed to much greater radiation being in a space ship in space because the astronauts are not mutated upon returning home either.
What if these worms were carrying some sort of bacteria in their digestive system like tape worms and mosquitos do that are bredding grounds for new super viruses like SARS and illness like Malaria???
They were carrying bacteria in their digestive system, all organisms do. However, these bacteria would be particular to worms and not humans. And, see the previous argument on radiation. You have more to fear from the astronauts having mutant bacteria than the worms.
As they state in the article, C. elegans have a life cycle of 7-10 days. As they also state in the article, the shuttle, at the end of its mission, crashed on Feb. 1. That was 89 days ago. But somehow they've only managed to go through 4-5 generations? It's a pretty simple calculation.
More interesting (like CNN hasn't ever had a problem with pretty obvious facts) however is the survival. If we were talking about fungi or bacteria, organisms which are able to enter a dormant/stationary phase of the life cycle, it wouldn't be too surprising that they could survive. But C. elegans just have a pretty basic (egg-->larva-->adult) life cycle so they don't have a mechanism for surviving extreme situations (like a flaming fireball smashing into earth).
One of the great things about C. elegans is that they're easy to mutagenize and determine which genes give rise to characteristics such as resistance to UV/ionizing radiation, long life, ability to consume large volumes of alcohol, etc. I hope that some of these super space worms get into the hands of folks like Leon Avery or Tim Schedl so they can figure out what helped these guys survive.
There's one thing computing teaches you, and that's that there's no point to remembering everything.
--Doug Copland
To some degree, this is a serious question, so I'll give it a serious answer: C. elegans serves as a useful model of development in multicellular animals (like us) because it's about the most primitive animal that still has basic systems like a nervous system, a digestive system, etc. It's also very tough (as this incident proves), reproduces quickly, and is easy to tinker with in the lab. IIRC, it was the first animal to have its genome completely sequenced.
It also shows the capacity for rudimentary learning, making it of great interest to neuroscientist, since it's a lot easier to study the ~300 neurons in a typical C. elegans than the rather larger number found in more compex organisms.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
The space shuttle did disintegrate, but in terms of space bound meteorite impact, it was quite a controlled descent. It broke apart, looked fiery, but that doesn't mean it was a ball of plasma. A Fighter jet can break down and look fiery at just 200 feet off the ground...
My further point is that this article is somehow trying to strike the "oh look, things that have common characteristics with humans (in that their cells divide, and some of them have sperm <poster's humour>) made it alive through... it's not such a big tragedy after all."
The first thing that's mentionned in the article is:
All seven astronauts were killed when the shuttle disintegrated over Texas on February 1. Columbia contained almost 60 scientific investigations.
Anyways, boo on CNN, it both draws on sensationalism (exploiting a story because of it's tragic sense), and assumes readers are stupid...
Oh, that is just plain old mean. Comparing worms to RIAA and MPAA folks. Give the worms some dignity. Show them some respect.
Norris/Palin 2012
Fact: We deserve leaders who can kick your ass and field dress your carcass.
Warning to Zoop: if there is further public discussion of Project Sbarro, your security clearance will be withdrawn.