We've been sending creatures up into space for a long time. And tardigrades, among other microorganisms, are special in that they can withstand these extremes of temperature. So they decided, well, let's see if they can withstand the real vacuum.
And the perfect vacuum is in space. As we send tardigrades into space, the question has to arise-- maybe tardigrades came from space, if they can withstand it. [THEME MUSIC] I consider myself a naturalist.
I've been called a naturalist in a classical sense, which, for example-- and I'm not comparing myself-- but Charles Darwin was a naturalist. He made a contribution to science. So basically, I'm just an ordinary person, and I like nature, like most people do.
And being in nature sort of wants to make me study it a little bit more. I wanted to make a contribution to science-- modestly. I didn't think I'd do anything great, but something.
Maybe something that somebody hadn't done. And in just looking for various things to do, the word tardigrade came up. Didn't even really know what a tardigrade was till I looked into it.
So tardigrades are little microscopic creatures. They're about a millimeter or less in size. They're very tiny.
Basically, it's a little caterpillar-like creature. Looks like a caterpillar with eight legs. And it has claws which look like bear claws.
That's why it's called a water bear. They have a mouth. They have a digestive tract.
They have muscles. They have a nervous system, so they're similar to us in that way. They're like insects in that they have that hard-shell skin.
They reproduce with eggs, and then they molt their skin and they use their whole body to facilitate digestion. We don't really know how they evolved. We can't even guess.
We don't know what other species they're related to, because they're so different. And of course, their ability to withstand-- as far as heat, they can survive 120 degrees Celsius, which is 240 degrees Fahrenheit. 200 or 300 degrees below 0, vacuum of space, 1,000 atmospheres of pressure, x-rays, ultraviolet radiation.
So tardigrades can survive all of these extremes. Now, if you're looking for tardigrades and you want to find a good habitat, trees like this, which have deep furrows in the bark, are best. So tardigrades have gone into space, where there's a perfect vacuum, and also there's a lot of solar radiation and ultraviolet and x-ray radiation in space.
And it's very intense. It's something more than we can create here on earth. So that was a great way to test them, and they came back and survived.
[JAZZY ELECTRONICA MUSIC] Did tardigrades come from space? Anything is possible. We might have come from another galaxy.
The problem is distances across space are so large, and even if you're traveling as fast as anything can travel, which is the speed of light, it would take hundreds, if not thousands, of years to go from one galaxy or one planet to another. So in that timeframe, anything can happen. You can't colonize planets that way.
Not now-- not as far as we know. So the answer right now is, anything is possible. I don't have a personal theory about it.
Do I believe in extraterrestrial life-- that life exist outside this planet? Yeah, I do believe that. Just because I believe in odds and possibilities.
And because the universe is infinite. If you can just grasp that, which is hard enough to do. There might be other forms of life right under our noses, such as tardigrades, which are right here, which did come from other planets.
We don't know that, though. When I did a little research on it, I found out there wasn't really that much known about tardigrades. In fact, I read one scientific paper and found that New Jersey, the state I was living at the time, had zero tardigrades showing on the map.
So I said, well, let's see if I can a tardigrade. I visited all 21 counties in New Jersey and found that tardigrades are ubiquitous, which means they're everywhere. So I wrote a scientific paper, found various species, took photographs, identified the trees-- their habitat.
And that paper will be published soon. It's being reviewed now by one of the prominent tardigradologists. And perhaps have even found a new species of tardigrade, so that's under review now.
I've sent my slides off for analysis. Now, wait a second. This could also be a good tardigrade habitat.
This is just ordinary moss. You just take a piece of moss out and place it into a coin envelope or a paper bag. And what you'll find is, even though it's dry right now, once you rehydrate it, tardigrades will appear.
So we're going to place this moss into the envelope. How do tardigrades go into what's called cryptobiosis or suspended animation? I mean, that's pretty fascinating.
They just curl up into a little ball. They create a very hard shell, and somehow, some way, within, there's a seed of moisture, a molecule of water, that preserves them inside this encrustment. The lifespan of a tardigrade, if it was just moving around in the water and you were observing it, might be the only 6 months.
But because it dries out, rehydrates, dries out, rehydrates, dries out, rehydrates-- this could be done over a period of many, many years. This is how they preserve themselves. Sometimes, they can be 100 years old that way.
[JAZZY ELECTRONICA MUSIC] [SPEAKING WITH SCOTTISH ACCENT] Now there's a wee little tardigrade for you. So what we want to do is actually get to look at him close-up. We'll change this objective to a tighter, more powerful lens.
OK. Now let's see close-up how he looks. [JAZZY ELECTRONICA MUSIC] So when you're looking through the microscope and you're seeing this little tardigrade moving around in his environment, he's in the moment.
He's in the now. He's not thinking about the future. He's not thinking about the past.
All he's doing is living and enjoying the present moment. So if we can be more like that-- I'm not saying, let's be like tardigrades. But what I am saying is, if we can learn acceptance, I think everybody will be a lot happier.
And I know I've been a lot happier since I've accepted and embraced life as it is.
