Tardigrades are so tough, they can survive outer space

http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20150313-the-toughest-animals-on-earth

by wasi0013 • 11 years ago

227 84 11 years ago

bicx• 11 years ago

Looks cool, but the page seems to freeze Chrome within a second or two. Chrome could learn a thing or two from Tardigrades.

brixon• 11 years ago

Put some water on it.

oaktowner• 11 years ago

Hmm. What OS?

Works for me (Chrome 41.0.2272.89, OS X 10.9.5)

joshstrange• 11 years ago

Update: 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• 11 years 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• 11 years ago

The numbers seem correct...

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• 11 years ago

The 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• 11 years ago

I 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

dekhn• 11 years ago

I 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.

Raphmedia2• 11 years ago

Your comment made me understand that I've never seen them moving.

I've found this video https://youtu.be/F5fg64rmFHE?t=15m19s that shows them.

My mind is so blown. They are so small but so animal like... !

Sharlin2• 11 years ago

Nitpick: Tardigrades are animals.

Apofis• 11 years ago

Holy crap! It moves just like a mouse/rat moves. Really surprised me. Thank you!

IndianAstronaut• 11 years ago

Rotifers 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.

yawaramin2• 11 years ago

There'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

So it's not clear-cut even in our species!

thebouv2• 11 years ago

Water Bears! My daughter is both amazed by and terrified by these.

neumann• 11 years ago

Tell her that it is her spirit animal. A pretty cool list of features to have for your spirit animal!

arethuza• 11 years ago

Or a Dæmon from His Dark Materials:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%C3%A6mon_%28His_Dark_Material...

thebouv2• 11 years ago

That must be it. Water bears work their way into random conversations with her every once in a while. Narwhals too.

michaelfeathers• 11 years ago

Someone could probably spin a great science fiction story around the idea that tardigrades are an advance team for exploration by extraterrestrials.

TeMPOraL2• 11 years ago

Or distant relatives of the advanced nanotechnology brought here by aliens who seeded life on this planet.

funkdobiest2• 11 years ago

I 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.

bitwize• 11 years ago

The 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• 11 years ago

This is who I think of:

https://c1.staticflickr.com/3/2665/4048198665_d9b03610c4.jpg

Which is Heimlich, the caterpillar, voiced by Joe Ranft.

tarequeh• 11 years ago

It made me think that it's already wearing a space suit, no wonder they survive in space.

stronglikedan• 11 years ago

The mouth(?) is so geometric and symmetrical that it almost looks man-made. I want to plug my headphones into it.

funkdobiest2• 11 years ago

Does 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• 11 years ago

That description could apply equally well to a lot of humans who would choose immortality if given the choice. Hell is us.

dccoolgai• 11 years ago

Cryptobiosis (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

OneOneOneOne• 11 years ago

How do these critters handle bleach?

amagumori• 11 years ago

the previous title, "tardigrades, toughest 1mm-long animal on earth" didn't get those page views rolling in...

niix• 11 years ago

I 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• 11 years ago

I 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.

JackFr2• 11 years ago

Not only did they survive, massive asteroid impacts could their means of propagation.

http://www.technologyreview.com/view/425093/earth-ejecta-cou...

revscat3• 11 years ago

So 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• 11 years 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.

revscat3• 11 years ago

This 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.

JackFr2• 11 years ago

Such a condition obviously does not exist on Earth, so this feature could not have arisen via environmental pressures, at least not directly.

Your premise does not justify your conclusion. Reword your final sentence to read: Such a condition obviously does not exist on Earth, so this feature could not have arisen on Earth via environmental pressures, at least not directly.

IgorPartola2• 11 years ago

What if the adaption is just a side-effect of another adaptation? As in, if there is no difference between surviving at -80 C and absolute 0?

Besides, I don't exactly see a point in some intelligent creature creating these little buggers with the ability to survive basically anything, yet giving them no other purpose. It's the equivalent of creating a computer program that is in all ways perfect, yet does absolutely nothing.

revscat3• 11 years ago

There is no intended implication for intelligence behind the extremophile behavior of tardigrades. Merely that it is curious how such a characteristic would have arisen given the absence of the environmental conditions (seemingly) needed to precipitate such traits.

chm• 11 years ago

Have you read the entire article? They propose an explanation for this.

ChuckMcM• 11 years ago

They have been around a while, and the an evolutionary mechanism that lets you survived to -100C (some of the temperature extremes speculated in the last glacial period) might "just work" all the way down to near absolute zero.

That said, I am surprised that no NFL team has picked the Tartigrade has their mascot/theme ("The Texas Tardigrades are victorious!" kinda rolls off the tongue and they the buggers are tough and hang in there, good qualities for a sports franchise)

But the more interesting bit for me, is that they would survive on Mars if there are underground aquifers of liquid water occasionally, and Ganymede or any other moon with liquid seas if the radiation didn't kill them. Which I find interesting that we already have a 'proof of concept' of life that could be living off planet, now we need to figure out if it is actually out there.

semi-extrinsic• 11 years ago

As for the "Texas Tardigrades" proposal: the name sounds too much like "retard". Even if the local PC committee did not object, the opposing team supporters would have a field day.

Florin_Andrei2• 11 years ago

We can also survive (sort of) open-floor offices and stuff like that, and we haven't evolved that capability.

judk3• 11 years ago

The less you are made of, the less ways there are to break an important part of you. Complex organisms have many weaknesses.

realrocker2• 11 years ago

Data. We can use them to store data. Not your average cat picture storage but maybe DNA data of plant seeds and such.

moe• 11 years ago

Well, but how? Tattoo them with a nano-needle?

realrocker2• 11 years ago

Or inject them with nano-fibre(?) Use them as a container.

jessaustin4• 11 years ago

If 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.

jessaustin4• 11 years ago

Some 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.

maxerickson3• 11 years ago

I 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• 11 years ago

All 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.

jessaustin4• 11 years ago

Or is that not what hard sci fi means?

OK, I removed the adjective "hard". I'm not sure what I was thinking, using such a nebulous term. If you ask nine people the difference between "hard" and "soft" scifi, you'll get ten answers. And the vast excluded middle threatens to dwarf the two complementary categories anyway. I meant merely to differentiate those examples of scifi that go beyond "then they pressed the warp drive button and warped across the galaxy", to consider how humans might travel very fast. In the perhaps poorly chosen example of the Hyperion sequels (if any category would fit them, it's probably "kitchen sink"), bodies were reconstructed by a cruciform "symbiont" that restored recent snapshots. I imagine that instead, whatever cellular processes tardigrades exhibit might be somehow induced in humans.

judk3• 11 years ago

The difference between hard and soft speculative fiction (science vs fantasy is really more about the setting than the universe structure) is how big the plot holes are in the fabric of the universe.

Why does only one special person have the magical powers? Why do people use their incredible powers only for rather mundane tasks? How is it possible to create that space fortress that has more steel than the all conjectured quantities within 100 light years? The more questions you can ask and file to get good answers for, the softer the fiction is.

leeoniya• 11 years ago

some may also like to read about single-cell wasps:

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/2011/11/3...

moonfern• 11 years ago

Thanks for the link but the author, Ed Yong, 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• 11 years ago

I 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_Tarsius2• 11 years ago

This is actually a very interesting idea! We could also seed other planets with our water bears.

juliangregorian• 11 years ago

Could have potentially disastrous repercussions on alien ecosystems.

huxley• 11 years ago

Just 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...

Red_Tarsius2• 11 years ago

Off topic question: What kind of nutrients does a spoonful of tardigrades provide? Would water bear farming be useful or just silly?

zkhalique• 11 years ago

Who would win in a longevity contest between a Tardigrade and a Rotifer?

lkrubner• 11 years ago

In 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• 11 years ago

Copied from below:

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• 11 years ago

The are up to 1.5 millimeters long, and any detailed features of the animal can only be seen with a microscope.

kazinator• 11 years ago

Can 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• 11 years ago

The 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/tardigrad...

frozenport• 11 years ago

They are also transparent, and benefit from a phase sensitive imaging techniques, or dark field.

pvaldes• 11 years ago

Rotifers 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• 11 years ago

There is an educational game, MetaBlast (http://metnet-mbl.gdcb.iastate.edu/), where Tardigrades are creatures you can encounter (and interact with). Even one appearing on the screenshot.

yawaramin2• 11 years ago

As 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

brobdingnagian• 11 years ago

Are tardigrades conscious?

kang• 11 years ago

I 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• 11 years ago

What 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.

Tardigrades are so tough, they can survive outer space

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