BookTalk.org

Meet the Tardigrade, also known as the water-bear or moss piglet. This cute little fella can survive in the most extreme conditions, withstanding temperatures from near absolute
zero to well above the boiling point of water and can survive X-ray radiation 1000 times the human lethal dose.

How is this possible you may ask? In severe conditions, these guys are capable of reversibly suspending their metabolism and going into a state of cryptobiosis. Basically they shrivel up and die…but not really. Once conditions become favorable, soaking them in water is key to their resurrection. It has been reported that Tardigrades have successfully recovered from a dried-up piece of moss kept by a museum for 120 years. plaintalkbm.com/get-your-science-on-sup ... -critters/

awesome!! it's great how wonders like these are all around us and inside us all the time!! even when we are depressed about life on the corporate hamster wheel.

WATER BEAR!!

those guys are cool.

Things like those may actually end up being better inter-planetary settlers than we are. Asteroid impacts are capable of sending rocks right into space and those rocks can and do make impact on other planets. Water bears which effectively give up and die, then come back to life when they make contact with water, pretty much put themselves into cryogenic sleep. If an organism like that which is photosynthetic made it to another planet, then you've essentially got viable pan-spermia going on!

Very cool!

We could GMO them to eat eyeballs and drop plane loads on our enemies.

whAT!?

Would that plane have a saw blade catapult strapped to it?