lish (lishd) wrote in wtf_nature,

Waterbears can go without food or water for more than a decade. They can survive temperatures from zero to above the boiling point of water, pressure six times stronger than the deepest ocean trench, radiation hundreds of times higher than the fatal dose for a human, and the vacuum of space.

Guys you don’t know the half it. Tardigrades, or waterbears, (or moss piglets, how cute is that?) are the coolest things in the entire world.

They pretty much live everywhere on earth, and all they do is amble around drinking water. But if their life is in danger, they shrivel up into this little raisin thing and they can survive practically anything.

There was a piece of moss sitting dry in a museum for a century. Some scientists wetted the moss, and they woke back up. Just started drinking the water again.

They have survived as near to absolute zero as science has allowed us to get.

They’ve woken up after being subjected to 6 times the radiation lethal to humans, even though they are about 3 millimeters in length on average.

NASA sent them into orbit and they were released into the vacuum of space for ten days. They woke up.

So what does this mean? Scientists believe this may help to prove the existence of live elsewhere in the universe, and how life came to Earth. If there are creatures that can survive the emptiness of space, who’s to say an asteroid didn’t carry some from one planet to ours?

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