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These microscopic creatures can survive in the vacuum of space, inside a volcano, and in an Antarctic lake nearly a mile underground...So when an Israeli spacecraft carrying a horde of hibernating tardigrades crashed on the moon in April 2019 because of a computer glitch, scientists thought the animals would surely have survived...Scientists found these creatures couldn't survive speeds above 2,000 mph when shot out of a gun...

Explanation: Is this an alien? Probably not, but of all the animals on Earth, the tardigrade might be the best candidate. That's because tardigrades are known to be able to go for decades without food or water, to survive temperatures from near absolute zero to well above the boiling point of water, to survive pressures from near zero to well above that on ocean floors, and to survive direct exposure to dangerous radiations. The far-ranging survivability of these extremophiles was tested in 2011 outside an orbiting space shuttle. Tardigrades are so durable partly because they can repair their own DNA...

Pudgy, ungainly tardigrades are among the smallest legged animals on Earth, and these microscopic water bears lumber around like chubby-thighed toddlers. But most creatures as small as tardigrades don’t even have legs, so scientists recently analyzed tardigrades in motion to better understand how they use their limbs.

Tardigrades are undoubtedly weird. Dehydrate them into glass, then fire them out of a gun, and once you rehydrate them you can still have a living creature. Their outsides aren't the only thing that's tough either, with scientists finding last year that they also have special DNA armor proteins. But if we take a step back from their immense capacity for being beaten up, there are many other mysterious things about them. For starters, how do these tiny creatures walk? After all, they're one of the only animals with soft little bodies like this that can walk, plus they're one...

Genetic enhancement may not be restricted to the pages of sci-fi novels for much longer. For example, scientists have already inserted genes from tardigrades — tiny, adorable and famously tough animals that can survive the vacuum of space — into human cells in the laboratory. The engineered cells exhibited a greater resistance to radiation than their normal counterparts... Tardigrades and "extremophile" microbes, such as the radiation-resistant bacterium Deinococcus radiodurans, "are a great, basically natural reservoir of amazing traits and talents in biology," added Mason... "Maybe we use some of them." Harnessing these traits might also someday allow astronauts to journey...

There may be life on the Moon after all: virtually indestructible beings that can withstand extreme radiation, sizzling heat, the coldest temperatures of the universe, and decades without food. These terrifying-sounding creatures aren't aliens but in fact microscopic Earthlings known as tardigrades, who likely survived a crash landing on the lunar surface by Israel's Beresheet probe in April, the organization responsible for their trip said Tuesday. Based on an analysis of the spacecraft's trajectory and the composition of the device the micro-animals were stored in, "we believe the chances of survival for the tardigrades...are extremely high," Nova Spivack, founder...

Beresheet was a robotic lander. Though it didn't transport astronauts, it carried human DNA samples, along with the aforementioned tardigrades and 30 million very small digitized pages of information about human society and culture. However, it's unknown if the archive — and the water bears — survived the explosive impact when Beresheet crashed The tardigrades and the human DNA were late additions to the mission, added just a few weeks before Beresheet launched on Feb. 21. Much like Cretaceous fossils locked in amber, the DNA samples and tardigrades were sealed in a resin layer protecting the DVD-size lunar library, while...

Full Title: "Scientists find preserved animal carcasses in mysterious Antarctic lake 'twice the size of Manhattan' buried under 3,500 feet of ice" Scientists in Antarctica have found preserved carcasses of tiny animals in a mysterious lake buried under more than 3,500 feet of ice. Mercer Subglacial Lake is a hydraulically active lake that lies more 1000m beneath the Whillans Ice Plain, a fast moving section of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. Researchers managed to drill into the lake for the first time earlier this year, and have now revealed they found signs of life. According to Nature, researchers found the...

A newfound species of tardigrade, or "water bear," with tendril-festooned eggs has been discovered in the parking lot of an apartment building in Japan. The newfound tardigrade, Macrobiotus shonaicus, is the 168th species of this sturdy micro-animal ever discovered in Japan. Tardigrades are famous for their toughness: They can survive in extreme cold (down to minus 328 degrees Fahrenheit, or minus 200 Celsius), extreme heat (more than 300 degrees F, or 149 degrees C), and even the unrelenting radiation and vacuum of space, as one 2008 study reported. They're bizarre and adorable at the same time, with eight legs on...

Tardigrades are microscopic animals that survive a remarkable array of stresses, including desiccation [extreme drying]. How tardigrades survive desiccation has remained a mystery for more than 250 years. Trehalose, a disaccharide essential for several organisms to survive drying, is detected at low levels or not at all in some tardigrade species, indicating that tardigrades possess potentially novel mechanisms for surviving desiccation. Here we show that tardigrade-specific intrinsically disordered proteins (TDPs) are essential for desiccation tolerance. TDP genes are constitutively expressed at high levels or induced during desiccation in multiple tardigrade species. TDPs are required for tardigrade desiccation tolerance, and these...

Sea plankton has been discovered living on the outside of the International Space Station, Russian cosmonauts have claimed. Scientists on board the ISS are reported to have discovered living organisms when taking samples from windows. Head of the Russian ISS orbital mission Vladimir Solovyev said the results of the experiment “are absolutely unique”. Solovyev told the Russian Itar-Tass news agency that the tiny marine life-forms were not native to the launch site in Kazakhstan. “Plankton in these stages of development could be found on the surface of the oceans,” he said. “This is not typical for Baikonur [in Kazakhstan]. It...

In 2007, a little known creature called a tardigrade became the first animal to survive exposure to space. It prevailed over sub-zero temperatures, unrelenting solar winds and an oxygen-deprived space vacuum. On Monday, this microscopic cosmonaut has once again hitched a ride into space on the Nasa shuttle Endeavour. Its mission: to help scientists understand more about how this so-called "hardiest animal on Earth" can survive for short periods off it. Tardigrades join other microscopic organisms selected to be part of a project into extreme survival. Shuttle Endeavour Endeavour climbs into the sky on Monday Project Biokis is sponsored by...