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How Does the Tiny Waterbear Survive In Outer Space?
DevotedSkeptic sends this excerpt from SmithsonianMag:
"The humble tardigrade, also known as a 'waterbear' or 'moss piglet,' is an aquatic eight-legged animal that typically grows no longer than one millimeter in length. Most tardigrades (there are more than 1,000 identified species) have a fairly humdrum existence, living out their days on a moist piece of moss or in the sediment at the bottom of a lake and feeding on bacteria or plant life. In 2007, a group of European researchers pushed the resilience of this extraordinary animal even further, exposing a sample of dehydrated tardigrades to the vacuum and solar radiation of outer space for 10 full days. When the specimens were returned to earth and rehydrated, 68 percent of those that were shielded from the radiation survived, and even a handful of those with no radiation protection came back to life and produced viable offspring. How do the little tardigrades survive such a harsh environment? Although amateur tardigrade enthusiast Mike Shaw recently made waves by postulating that the animals may be equipped to survive in outer space because they originally came from other planets, scientists are certain that the creatures developed their uncommon toughness here on earth."
You got the date wrong, it was 2002!
It has Electrolytes
He must be related to Egon Spengler, who collects spores, moulds, and fungus.
They're related to the TARDIS.
Yuh-huh.
I meant that in a nice way.
Although amateur tardigrade enthusiast Mike Shaw recently made waves by postulating that the animals may be equipped to survive in outer space because they originally came from other planets ...
Tardigrade Captain: Okay over there, bring the ship down in that clearing, it looks like there's some specimens there on that asphalt path. ... apparently dead organic material ... ... ... but sir, this colony may be lacking light speed travel but our sensors show a plethora of cultural phenomena -- aggregates of which exist right here in this very metropolis! ...
*the Tardigrade craft lands in Time Square and the well armed two meter tall Tardigrades disembark*
Tardigrade Captain: Oh, for the love of Ursa Major! How ugly these specimens turned out! Look at that one!
*the Tardigrade captain gestures toward an Earth female with her jaw agape*
Tardigrade Captain: Ewww, what is this on top of them?
*the Tardigrade captain reaches for the girls hair with his second set of appendages while the first set rubs saliva down his mouth onto his chest and his tertiary set scratches himself*
Tardigrade Officer: *runs a device over the woman* Some sort of fibrous material sir
*the Tardigrade captain withdraws his appendages in terror*
Tardigrade Captain: Oh for fuck's sake, another experiment ruined. Gross. GROSS. All of them just gross as all hell! Alright, everybody back on the ship, you know the drill, take off and nuke 'er from orbit
Tardigrade Officer: But
Tardigrade Captain: You know Jerry, it's always something with you, isn't it? 'Mew mew mew, this civilization has eliminated all evil. Blah blah blah this civilization is one million years old, isn't that worth something?' Now this is the 174th failed experiment we've checked up on and I
*just then an advertisement for Here Comes Honey Boo Boo blares across the Times Square display -- the stupefied Tardigrades watch*
Tardigrade Officer: I'll push the button this time.
My work here is dung.
This brings a new meaning to the old Royal Guardsmen song 'Bears':
[third verse]
While swimming in your pool try not loose your cool
And be drown-ded... by a Water-Bear!
Citation: http://lyrics.wikia.com/The_Royal_Guardsmen:Bears
William George
"Scientists believe Water Bears from space have made habitat on earth."
Being dragged out of your home and subjected to solar radiation and a vacuum?
I expect they live only for revenge.
why moron? it's not that far-fetched to postulate that some creatures here may have come from elsewhere..
Actually it is. I'm not a biologist (INAB?) but I think all species down here on Terra all interrelate in some way. We all have RNA/DNA, etc etc. No, I don't know enough to know what I'm talking about with authority, but our species are all adapted to our planet.
It's not impossible that
a) an outer-space species could exist
b) it would get here
c) it could live and thrive here
- but it is far-fetched.
"The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes" - Winston Churchill
Now that we know they can survive in extreme environments, what do we do with 'em? I suppose they could dump a few payloads of them on Mars or Venus and wait a few million years while evolution takes it's course....
American Third Position
Finally, a real choice!
While this does sound funny at first, I find it intriguing. Who knows?
While we probably can't know for certain, we can look around and notice no planet nearby that could have supported life that complex with the possible exception of mars.
Then we can look at the fact that only 68% survived a mere 10 days after being specially treated to do so.
Then we can speculate about the amount of time it might take for a blasted out chunk of mars to find its way to earth. Hundreds of years is my guess. Millions if it came from further.
We can further speculate what percentage would survive the journey and then survive a fiery entry into Earth's atmosphere.
Then we can set aside ALL of that speculation until there is ANY evidence of life on Mars more advanced than an accidental amino acid.
The inescapable preponderance of evidence is that it originated here. And simply because it can survive an odd experiment is no reason to speculate extraterrestrial origin.
Occam, guys, Occam.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
How does the tiny Waterbear
Survive in Outer Space
By dehydrating all the while
And wrinkling its face!
How bravely she can abide
Extremes of cold and heat
Take it all in stride so gallantly
With its graceful, nimble feet!
In works of art or science free
And open source, no fool
She teaches children how to code[1]
Because Waterbear is cool.
So cute, so humble, so robust
Waterbear is da boss
But all she really wants from life
Is a comfy home of moss.
[1] Shameless plug: http://waterbearlang.com/
Just those three stipulations alone don't make it that far fetched. Exogenesis, the hypothesis that all life on Earth originally comes from somewhere else, is legitimate. What would make the claim far-fetched is adding:
d) it would appear so similar to other life on Earth that biologists with morphological and molecular studies think they can place roughly where it fits in the phylogeny of all other life on Earth
e) it does not decend from the same root species as every other known species on Earth
Dashing and daring
Courageous and caring
Faithful and friendly
With stories to share
Taaaaaardibears!
It's extremely far fetched to hypothesize that any life form that shares our genetic code does not share a common ancestor with us.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Occam, guys, Occam
Mod +1 for random reference to The Critic.
Where does the school board find them and why do they keep sending them to ME?
So it had to survive a catastrophic event that threw it on a piece of rock out of the atmosphere of Mars into an orbit that brought it to Earth within the allotted number of days for it to survive and then survive entry into the Earth's atmosphere, which no matter how you spin it would involve the subject going from very,very cold to very, very hot, very, very quickly. To survive all that and land some place where there is food and beside a mate.
I really think it would need an infinite improbability drive to do all that.
A Tardigrade is a retrograde TARDIS and everyone knows that a TARDIS can handle outer space.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
How do we know that through their evolution they didn't lose their ability to last even longer out there than they do now?
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
Even NASA has postulated the possibility....
...of single celled organisims hitching a ride from Mars to Earth. We are talking about a complex multi-celled creature here, it's a very different proposition. I find the whole "panspermia" argument pointless, the Earth is made of the same stuff the rest of the solar system is made of, sure organic chemicals, large chunks of ice and maybe even single celled creatures rained down on the early Earth from space, that stuff just made the Earth a bit bigger, it was fundementally no different to the existing material. I think it comes from the idea that life is incredibly unlikely and only started in one place at one time, modern evidence says that notion is just a sciencey rebadging of the genesis myth.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
True. Bet's let's simplify that for you by reducing it to opposing hypothesis:
Your hypothesis is that an alien species incredibly hardy travelled through space to land on earth, managed to survive by competing with the existing lifeforms, but somehow slowly devolved into a microscopic eight legged bear.
Assumptions made: There is life in space, such life travels, it somehow found this particular tiny speck in the outer parts of the galaxy, it wasn't hardy enough to trump other life on earth, it is similar enough to other life on earth that we can't tell the difference scientifically other than by its hardiness... I'll take a break here, feel free to go on by yourself as an exercise in critical thinking.
Opposing hypothesis is that somehow a species on earth evolved to be extraordinarily hardy.
Assumptions made: Evolution is real.
Now, let's apply Occam's razor here, and cut away the hypothesis that makes the most assumptions. What's left? Sanity!
Oh, and as a bonus point, personally I'd make the assumption that tiny eight legged bears that scientists finds fascinating enough to pay to bring to fucking space for experiments have probably been researched quite a lot in every other possible way, and found to be quite in line with current understanding of what a terrestrial being is.
You mean in the same way we still can? There are entire fad diets out there based on cooking being bad for you. The only reason we live better on cooked meat is that it kills parasites and lets us store the food longer without spoiling.
Cooking makes it much much easier for your body to extract energy and nutreants from the food.
http://blog.nexusuk.org
I don't think so. Even assuming nucleotides are inevitably the preferred way to store genetic information given chemistry, the chances that they'd use the exact same 3 nucleotide to amino acid translation system that nearly everything else on earth uses is probably pretty low.
There's no reason that I can see why ATG would always have to translate into a methionine and the start of translation, for example. If aliens followed the central dogma (DNA--> RNA --> amino acids) there's an equal chance their tRNAs would translate ATG as some other amino acid. The only reason most life on earth uses that same translation system is because the chances of changing which 3 letter code corresponds to which amino acid isn't something that can be changed without having catastrophic effects.