"Why Tough, Tiny Tardigrades May Be the 1st Interstellar" Topic

…Travelers.

"People are gearing up to spread life from our solar system out into the cosmos. But the first life-forms to make that journey won't be human beings, or even critters most folks would recognize. Instead, scientists plan to send tiny, chubby, pinch-faced tardigrades on the first living journey out past the Oort cloud (the ring of icy debris around our solar system) and into interstellar space.

Why tardigrades? Well, if you've heard anything about these eight-legged, dirt-dwelling "water bears" before, it was probably because they're ridiculously resilient against ravages of the universe — ravages both foreign and domestic to our planet. Boiling doesn't kill them. Neither does extreme pressure nor extreme cold. A study published online July 14 in the journal Scientific Reports suggests that even Earth-pummeling asteroids, nearby supernova blasts and powerful interstellar bursts of gamma radiation would fail to wipe the s out.

That hardiness, along with their small size — reaching only about a millimeter (0.04 inches) long — makes tardigrades ideal candidates to make a first cruise outside the solar system. These moss piglets, as they're sometimes adoringly called, join C. elegans, a kind of mulch-dwelling nematode, as finalists to surf laser beams at relativistic speeds (or those approaching the speed of light) astride wafer-size spacecraft toward the far edge of the solar system, Space.com reports. The outer-space trip on laser-fueled wafers was borne out of NASA's Starlight program, whose aim is to use photons to push tiny objects at extreme fractions of the speed of light toward neighboring stars…."
Main page
link

Amicalement
Armand

Oh great! Let us have our first introduction to an alien race be biological warfare.

"Oh great! Let us have our first introduction to an alien race be biological warfare."

Load the Tardi-Torpedoes! Fire!

I met my first waterbear back in the late 1970s. They're the coolest.

Dan
PS. I wonder what scale this one is …

Great ! They are ugly and you can't kill'm ! And what happens if they evolve to the size of a real bear, e.g. Polar, Griz or Black, etc. !?

Okay, but why?
What is the possible utility of launching microscopic organisms on a journey to the Oort Cloud, or beyond that into interstellar space?
Can they operate the spacecraft? Can they repair it? Can they collect, understand, analyze and transmit data and findings back to us?
No on all counts,
So why send them at all?
So we can say we've sent indestructible microbes into space???
Whoop-ity-flip-ti-do.
Of course, since they are indestructible, we'll probably wind up sending them without knowing it. But that's hardly a great achievement in space exploration or science.

Bit of a pointless article.

These guys are way ahead of the curve…

YouTube link

Can they operate the spacecraft? Can they repair it?

Not yet … But …

(smile)

Amicalement
Armand

They are being trained for bigger and better things. :)

Dan

Ha-Ha-Ha….

Amicalmeent
Armand