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The First Animal to Survive in Space
Tardigrades or "Water bears" are the only creatures that can survive the extreme conditions in the vacuum of outer space (7:54)
Courtesy of: Motherboard
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Courtesy of: Motherboard
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Space is far from "a perfect vacuum". (Something repeated here multiple times.) In fact, intrasolar space consists of plasma or very thin atmosphere--not a vacuum.
Posted by Mike from Shreveport on January 26,2013 | 02:33 AM
I give the guy credit for teaching himself about tardigrades, and the factoids about their extreme tolerance are interesting. As the narrator freely points out, he is not a scientist, so I can't fault him for not understanding some of biology's potentially arcane but well-established facts. I do fault Smithsonian.com for not flagging the narrator's more obvious misunderstandings. That makes these seem like they could be acceptable scientific inferences. The fact that tardigrades can go into space and back does NOT mean they could have come from space in the first place. Genetic data is completely unambiguous that tardigrades share the evolutionary history of earth's biota and invertebrates. While we may not be sure what their closest relatives are, that also is true for many other phyla. We ARE 100% sure, however, that they a part of the animal tree of life. There is no chance that one can originate somewhere else in space and share the same structures of life - DNA, cells, mitochondria, membranes, etc. - as that which originated on earth.
Posted by Charles Darwin on September 10,2012 | 01:54 PM