Welcome our Water Bear overlords.

...who argued that life on Earth could have originated from up there, rather than down here. "Son, your great great great E234 Grandpa was a water bear. So when you next look up to the stars, think of how far he came so you could be here today..." ;-)

who came up with this idea. Were a couple of boffins sitting in the pub (after several drinks) and one says, "Let's launch some water bears into space, expose them to hard radiation and vacuum for a while, and see what happens."? As much as I enjoy science, I cannot fathom how they think of some of their experiments.

Naked, exposed to hard UV in space, dehydrated, suffered genetic damage, but lived and laid eggs. Their parents, that is.

Is a mutated tardigrade a tradigarde?

I amuse myself far too easily.

Next week: The Origin of BOFH's.

"Joensson suspects even the survivors suffered DNA damage from radiation, but were able to genetic material."

Exactly how do you genetic material? Can you even verb genetic?

@Kanhef -- I rather suspect the scientists who came up with this idea were studying water bears and the conversation went something like:

"Man these things can survive anything!"

"Nah, bet they can't survive the vacuum of space."

"How much?"

IANAS, but even I've heard of the resilience of these little buggers. It's not surprising at all that a scientist familiar with their strengths would want to see how much they can survive.

Maybe we could survive just fine. Throw McCain and Palin out the airlock and let's see how they do.

we come from the stars

Did the author of this piece rush to meet a deadline and in doing so neglect checking for grammar and completeness? WTF is the following supposed to mean: "Joensson suspects even the survivors suffered DNA damage from radiation, but were able to genetic material"?

Were able to what genetic material - rematerialise, devour, mutate, fornicate with?

This is pretty much the point of the experiment by all indications, so why not read the article again before publishing to make sure that the sentence makes sense?

wow, just wow... I reckon it would be one simple step further to theorise (or even find) that a bug like the water bear could have a slightly harder/thicker shell to shield itself against the nasty types of solar radiation described, and then voila: quite solid evidence in the effort to prove that life originated extra-terrestrially.

People Eating Tasty Animals?

"Joensson suspects even the survivors suffered DNA damage from radiation, but were able to (?) genetic material."

The missing word is 'repair' and I claim my prize :)

I keep thinking of Sea-Bears from Spongebob Squarepants...so long as you draw a perfect circle in the sand you'll be safe....

This has been known about for years. Maybe this report got delayed in a time warp created by the Large Hardon Collider.

just how DO you kill the little buggers?

yes exactly. (perhaps regenerate?)

how many other species have been tested?

WWWhales in Space? Snakes on a space-plane???

Look at all insects, the hard carapace, able to survive extremes of cold, heat, vacuum and radiation.

Exactly like tiny spaceships.

The reason they are finding new species all the time is that THEY ARE STILL ARRIVING.

Be be fooled people, the invasion Phase 1 is nearing completion. Phase 2 will begin at 00:00:01 21st December 2012.

Scared? You'd better be.

"How that was accomplished "remains a mystery,""

I'll Say...

I find things like this most interesting. Who decided that these poor creatures needed to be put through this kind of testing, as opposed to, oh, cockroaches come to mind.

Also, some sentences in this article jsut didn't make sense, and I am not sure if that is Austins fault or the fault of the Swedish dudes Euronglish. Things like "..., but were able to genetic material".

And finally, we have now subjected these little critters to extreme conditions, space radiation and who knows what else, and now they are breeding. Is this a good thing? Really?

Anabiosis in Tardigrada has been know for quite a while and the creature has been to open space before. Either this is a new experiment or your reporter has "discovered America".

It is an extremely interesting being. The creatures can fill their cells with trehalose, a saccharide, which conserves them like a mummy. It is known to have survived a bath in liquid helium, boiling water, anaerobic conditions, extreme radiation etc.

An alien, because God knows where they have come from.

None escaped, if some unlucky martian happens to pass by and the little water bear ends up on his person, the martian might discover a water bear nibbling on his exterior, and once again humankind will have infected other civilisations with things they never had before :)

...mutated Water Bears?

From my experience of Swedes (the people, not the root vegetable) they have lots of time on their hands to mull over the complexitites of such earth shattering experiments as they seem to spend lots of time chatting, drinking coffee, eating cake and getting very, very drunk (particularly on the weekend after payday!!)

Paris as I wonder what experiments she like to do in zero gravity...

There's no woods in outer space. How do they sh.....?

I had a mental image of NASA shoving some cuddly aqua-coloured teddybear like creatures out of the airlock.

But little flea-things? Fuck em.

I think it might have been more along the lines of sitting at the pub "What creature might survive that?" "Well waterbears can survive just about every extreme the surface of the Earth can throw at them, so..."

Let's hope it wasn't trial and error. Launch puppy 2!

"One problem with radiation therapy in treating cancer today is that healthy cells are also harmed," said a Dimwitted Horse. "If we can document and show that there are special molecules involved in DNA repair in multicellular composites like Scientologists, we might be able to further the development of radiation therapy." ®

Presumably the point was to prove that life could have potentially survived and interstellar journey on a comet or other space debris.

I was interested to hear that they’ve done this as an experiment, as I seem to remember one of my university lecturers talking about water bears and how he thought they could potentially survive in space, and that was several years ago now. Looks like he was right, although I don't believe it was his theory as such; I think it's one that has been 'floating around' for a while now (if you'll excuse the pun). :)

Thankfully this experiment has now ended world hunger and disease. Crime and poverty have already ended in my part of the world the moment those waterbears were brought back into the ISS. I am hoping this experiment will lead to improved manufacture of nano technology and a clean renewable fuel source to power all factories and cars by the end of the month.

Tomorrow: Kittens.

how many species died in the cold vacuum of space before they found out about water bears?!?

Hardiest multi-cellular creatures, but they are not a patch on some single cell ones.

mutated into huge Godzilla-like creatures after this exposure to high intensity UV and all those cosmic rays (man!)?

I feel we should be told.