TE
科技回声
首页24小时热榜最新最佳问答展示工作
GitHubTwitter
首页

科技回声

基于 Next.js 构建的科技新闻平台,提供全球科技新闻和讨论内容。

GitHubTwitter

首页

首页最新最佳问答展示工作

资源链接

HackerNews API原版 HackerNewsNext.js

© 2025 科技回声. 版权所有。

Tardigrades are so tough, they can survive outer space

227 点作者 wasi0013大约 10 年前

29 条评论

dekhn大约 10 年前
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.
评论 #9197493 未加载
评论 #9198862 未加载
huxley大约 10 年前
Just the other day I read a fascinating (to me) Quora reply to the question &quot;What can happen if a human eats a water bear (the most resistant living organism), or gets a water bear in their blood stream?&quot;<p>Short answer: it gets dissolved in the stomach acid and dies.<p>Long answer here: <a href="http://www.quora.com/What-can-happen-if-a-human-eats-a-water-bear-the-most-resistant-living-organism-or-gets-a-water-bear-in-their-blood-stream" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.quora.com&#x2F;What-can-happen-if-a-human-eats-a-water...</a>
评论 #9199621 未加载
jmadsen大约 10 年前
&quot;They are never more than 1.5 mm long, and can only be seen with a microscope&quot;<p>Confused - I can see things that are 1.5mm long. Some sort of editing mistake here, I think.
评论 #9197149 未加载
评论 #9197140 未加载
bicx大约 10 年前
Looks cool, but the page seems to freeze Chrome within a second or two. Chrome could learn a thing or two from Tardigrades.
评论 #9197116 未加载
评论 #9198262 未加载
评论 #9197831 未加载
revscat大约 10 年前
So this is interesting:<p><pre><code> It&#x27;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. </code></pre> I&#x27;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.
评论 #9198118 未加载
评论 #9198382 未加载
评论 #9198184 未加载
评论 #9198155 未加载
评论 #9201526 未加载
评论 #9200427 未加载
评论 #9198378 未加载
bitwize大约 10 年前
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.
评论 #9197381 未加载
评论 #9197725 未加载
评论 #9200313 未加载
dccoolgai大约 10 年前
Cryptobiosis (the long-fangled scientific term for what these things do) is something I&#x27;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 &quot;simple&quot;, but it is truly fascinating.<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptobiosis" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Cryptobiosis</a>
kpilars大约 10 年前
I just read that &quot;Tardigrades (water bears) are so tough, they can SURVIVE outer space&quot; and they need WATER from decade to decade to survive and they also live on earth for 500 million years. Then I read &quot;Suddenly, It Seems, Water Is Everywhere in Solar System&quot;.<p>So wouldn&#x27;t be fun to have a probe (on Philae for example) called &quot;Bearfinder&quot;? Shouldn&#x27;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?
评论 #9199674 未加载
michaelfeathers大约 10 年前
Someone could probably spin a great science fiction story around the idea that tardigrades are an advance team for exploration by extraterrestrials.
评论 #9197350 未加载
realrocker大约 10 年前
Data. We can use them to store data. Not your average cat picture storage but maybe DNA data of plant seeds and such.
评论 #9199993 未加载
BMorearty大约 10 年前
I learned about tardigrades from an episode of last year&#x27;s remake of Cosmos. Neil deGrasse Tyson said tardigrades survived all five of earth&#x27;s mass extinctions.
评论 #9198200 未加载
lkrubner大约 10 年前
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.<p>Also, does anyone know what &quot;mm&quot; stands for when they say these creatures are a maximum of 1.5mm long? I thought &quot;millimeter&quot; but that doesn&#x27;t make sense in the context:<p>&quot;They are never more than 1.5 mm long, and can only be seen with a microscope.&quot;<p>I can see things that are 1 millimeter with my own eyes, so what does &quot;1.5 mm&quot; mean? Could &quot;nm&quot; would have been nanometer, but that would be far too small, much smaller than a virus. I&#x27;m thinking they meant millionth of a meter?
评论 #9200456 未加载
评论 #9200553 未加载
leeoniya大约 10 年前
some may also like to read about single-cell wasps:<p><a href="http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/2011/11/30/how-fairy-wasps-cope-with-being-smaller-than-amoebas/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;blogs.discovermagazine.com&#x2F;notrocketscience&#x2F;2011&#x2F;11&#x2F;3...</a>
评论 #9207873 未加载
kazinator大约 10 年前
Can someone explain why something up to 1.5mm long can &quot;can only be seen with a microscope?&quot; 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.
评论 #9200637 未加载
评论 #9200810 未加载
jessaustin大约 10 年前
Some scifi (e.g. Simmons&#x27;s <i>Hyperion</i> 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.
评论 #9198519 未加载
jessaustin大约 10 年前
<i>If Rahm is to be believed, tardigrades can survive even higher temperatures.</i><p>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.
thebouv大约 10 年前
Water Bears! My daughter is both amazed by and terrified by these.
评论 #9197476 未加载
pvaldes大约 10 年前
Rotifers support a billion dollar&#x27;s human industries currently.<p>They are <i>the</i> preys for breeding the tiny larvae of marine fishes in our future spacial stations so don&#x27;t go out your planet without some of them.<p>You don&#x27;t want just to put some humans in mars. You&#x27;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.
superasn大约 10 年前
What is the chance that these creatures didn&#x27;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.
brobdingnagian大约 10 年前
Are tardigrades conscious?
kang大约 10 年前
I don&#x27;t know if you know this but &#x27;Tardigrades&#x27; 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 &#x27;Cosmos: A space Odyssey&#x27; presented by by Neil deGrasse Tyson
yawaramin大约 10 年前
As I pointed out way back when,[1] Mark Shuttleworth really missed the opportunity to name an Ubuntu release the Tenacious Tardigrade.<p>[1] <a href="http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/1295#comment-403210" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.markshuttleworth.com&#x2F;archives&#x2F;1295#comment-403210</a>
stared大约 10 年前
There is an educational game, MetaBlast (<a href="http://metnet-mbl.gdcb.iastate.edu/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;metnet-mbl.gdcb.iastate.edu&#x2F;</a>), where Tardigrades are creatures you can encounter (and interact with). Even one appearing on the screenshot.
daddykotex大约 10 年前
I think they come up in one of Cosmos episodes. Actually very interesting to see how they go around almost everywhere.<p>Edit : <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2I-PQxuPkjA" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=2I-PQxuPkjA</a>
funkdobiest大约 10 年前
Does anybody else feel sorry for them, you look like a turd with legs, your mouth looks like an anus, and you can&#x27;t die easily. Maybe some sort of reincarnation hell?
评论 #9197785 未加载
OneOneOneOne大约 10 年前
How do these critters handle bleach?
zkhalique大约 10 年前
Who would win in a longevity contest between a Tardigrade and a Rotifer?
niix大约 10 年前
I can&#x27;t stop laughing at the first line of this article &quot;If you go into outer space without protection, you&#x27;ll die.&quot;.<p>Its like the journalist really took to heart what she learned in her early writing classes about using an attention grabber.
amagumori大约 10 年前
the previous title, &quot;tardigrades, toughest 1mm-long animal on earth&quot; didn&#x27;t get those page views rolling in...