Worms survive Space Adventure!

[Che Guava]

ok, I don't know how many people here would find this interesting, but seeing as I stare at nematodes on an average of about 2.5 hours a day for my master's, I get pretty damn excited when I see them in the news!

Worms survived shuttle crash

NASA says tiny nematode worms that were aboard the space shuttle Columbia when it exploded were recovered alive in Texas.

Researchers say the survival of the nematodes suggests ways in which simple life forms might endure traumatic interplanetary journeys, The Washington Post reported.

The report, in a paper published in the journal Astrobiology, said a team led by NASA's Ames Research Center had placed six coffee-can-size aluminum canisters of nematodes aboard Columbia to monitor muscular atrophy during spaceflight.

NASA astrobiologist Catharine Conley said nematodes are useful in studying how prolonged spaceflight can affect the aging process in humans as well as human tolerance for cosmic ray exposure and muscular deterioration from weightlessness, the newspaper said.

When Columbia broke up the morning of Feb. 1, 2003, the nematode canisters plunged from the orbiter at speeds up to 650 mph and hit the ground with an impact 2,295 times the force of Earth's gravity.

link

In case you were wondering, nematodes are primitive roundwords that live in water films. They make up about 20% of the earth's organisms, and can be found inside virtually every multicellular organism. And they can survive falls from orbit, apparently...

 

[skadistic]

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmm...........Interesting. The bigger they are the harder they fall comes to mind. Microscopic things would seem to be the most hardy of life.

 

[Bozo Erectus]

"The curtain, a funeral pall,
Comes down with the rush of a storm,
While the angels, all pallid and wan,
Uprising, unveiling, affirm
That the play is the tragedy, "Man,"
And its hero the Conqueror Worm."

 

[The Condor]

Wow! I didn't know nematodes actually existed let alone survived crashing from space! That is pretty cool!

 

[Che Guava]

@skadistik: Nem's predate the cambrian 'explosion' of life, so yeah, I think they do ok

BTW,to any geneticist that might come by this thread: that is a picture of Caenorhabditis elegans, a nem with the dubious distiction of being the first multicellular organism to have it's genome sequenced.

 

[farting bob]

And they were contained in a canister, so they only had to survive impact. it links to 'interplanetry journeys' which would also involve travelling through space with no food source or oxygen, and going through earths atmosphere at incredible speeds.
But at least this shows that i can safely chuck a worm out of a window and it will be fine.

 

[Che Guava]

"The curtain, a funeral pall,
Comes down with the rush of a storm,
While the angels, all pallid and wan,
Uprising, unveiling, affirm
That the play is the tragedy, "Man,"
And its hero the Conqueror Worm."

nice!

I'm writing that one down right now!

 

[Bozo Erectus]

nice!

I'm writing that one down right now!

Its Poe btw The Conqueror Worm.

 

[thetrooper]

Worms survive Space Adventure!

But never a Concrete Donkey from the skies!

 

[The Condor]

@thetrooper: Haha do you play any of the Worms games?

 

[skadistic]

Worms forts is the only one I have but played others. Thoes games rock!

 

[The Condor]

Yeah, I own all the ones for the PS2 and PS except for the forts one. It is weird I played them all a lot but only ever got a concrete donkey once .

 

[Che Guava]

I LOVE worms!! I played it every day during my first year at university, everyone on my floor used the 'wormspeak' in conservation...

"You'll regret that!"
"Leave me alone!"
"Bombs awaaaay!"

 

[The Condor]

Did you ever prod? I love doing that or using baseball bats especially when you got a "homerun" and you got the applause. Also, the blowtorch and jackhammer were fun to make secret passages underground also with girders to block 'em off so when you used armaggedeon (I am confident I spelled that wrong) you would survive and the enemies wouldn't.

 

[thetrooper]

@thetrooper: Haha do you play any of the Worms games?

W2 and Armageddon.



"A donkey!"
"A donkey!"
"My kingdom for a donkey!"

Sorry to derail your thread Che.

Now get back on topic!

 

[Che Guava]

Sorry to derail your thread Che.

Now get back on topic!

I'm as guilty as any here

Back on topic: this is a pretty amazing discovery though, and the implications could be stagerring. If nematodes can survive impacts like that, it isn't too much of a stretch to imagine bacteria (being much smaller and much hardier) surviving on a meteor (did life originiate elsewhere and get transplated here?), or even a spacecraft (Are we inadvetently spreading our own life?). I predict that by the time we get around to really colonizing mars, our own microorganisms will probably have beat us to the punch...

 

[thetrooper]

@ Che: what about rough chemical and physical environments; alkaline, acid, heat etc?

 

[skadistic]

I'm as guilty as any here

Back on topic: this is a pretty amazing discovery though, and the implications could be stagerring. If nematodes can survive impacts like that, it isn't too much of a stretch to imagine bacteria (being much smaller and much hardier) surviving on a meteor (did life originiate elsewhere and get transplated here?), or even a spacecraft (Are we inadvetently spreading our own life?). I predict that by the time we get around to really colonizing mars, our own microorganisms will probably have beat us to the punch...

Would it be more likely that life came from a comet? Being made of water ice of pure oxygen ice maybe would that not be a better vehical for distrobution.

 

[The Condor]

I'm as guilty as any here

Back on topic: this is a pretty amazing discovery though, and the implications could be stagerring. If nematodes can survive impacts like that, it isn't too much of a stretch to imagine bacteria (being much smaller and much hardier) surviving on a meteor (did life originiate elsewhere and get transplated here?), or even a spacecraft (Are we inadvetently spreading our own life?). I predict that by the time we get around to really colonizing mars, our own microorganisms will probably have beat us to the punch...

Sorry for getting off-topic you guys but I think what you and skadistic are trying to say is:

pan·sper·mi·a

pan·sper·mi·a [pan spúrmee ə]
n
theory of origin of life: a theory of biogenetics that states that the universe is full of spores that germinate when they find a favorable environment.

Basically, it means that life came from another planet on maybe a meteor or something and thrived on its new home (earth) eventually creating us.

 

[Till]

In case you were wondering, nematodes are primitive roundwords that live in water films. They make up about 20% of the earth's organisms, and can be found inside virtually every multicellular organism. And they can survive falls from orbit, apparently...

Every organism? Even humans? That's .. unhygienic No offense to resident nematodes, of course. I just prefer if they knock before they enter.