Tiny Worms Survive Shuttle Crash

John H. Doe writes "According to CNet, tiny worms kept in special aluminum canisters aboard the space shuttle Columbia (which broke apart in the atmosphere back in Feb. 1, 2003) survived their fall to earth. The small (about 1mm long) soil roundworm Caenorhabditis elegans was found alive in four or five of the recovered canisters, after an impact 2,295 times the force of Earth's gravity."

Comments

This is rather old

[Capt'n Hector]

I hate to spoil the party, but this was news around April, 2003. This isn't really a source, but if you think about it, it's about as infallible as you can get. Behold, a Google Cache of a weblog I wrote at that time, the server of which doesn't really exist anymore. It was back in the time of Chimera before it became Camino, back when RSS was cool. But of course don't take my word, I'm sure someone else can furnish a true news source to back this up...

Re:Whuh?

[NitsujTPU]

Eh, that claim is ok. They're not saying that the life forms could survive the journey through space... just a landing. They aren't even making claims that they could survive re-entry.

Yes, however, if you take it as justification of theories regarding panspermia, you would need much more evidence to back other claims.

How hard did they fall?

[falcon5768]

after an impact 2,295 times the force of Earth's gravity.

Did they really hit that hard? I mean how did they come up with this number, cause Im sure the terminal velocity of a canister, or even fragments of the shuttle if it just happened to be in a portion of the shuttle, would have enabled it to hit at a much slower force.