Tardigrades: Adorable Extremophiles

Hank explains why NASA and the European Space Agency are in love with tardigrades and how these extremophiles are helping us study the panspermia hypothesis.

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Credits:
Produced by Hank Green
Chief Editor: Blake de Pastino
Cinematography: Nick Jenkins
Video Editor: Matt Ferguson
Graphics: Amber Bushnell
Written by: Hank Green

TAGS: tardigrade, water bear, moss piglet, extremophile, inhospitable, environment, revive, dormant, dormancy, absolute zero, radiation, pressure, vacuum, outer space, space, NASA, european space agency, space shuttle, endeavor, TARDIS, panspermia, meteorite, science, scientists, scishow, hank green, dose

• Category

  Science & Technology

[CheeseCake]

these little guys are more durable then a fricking old Nokia.

[Invader Hawkpath]

Who else just clicked on this video because they saw the TARDIS?

[Jason Boyd]

Polar bear in space....That's what I thought of

[nk11223]

420!!!!!!!!

[Joshua Lorenzo]

Like I said before one of us could be right or we could both be wrong. The END.

[zotomiporitezaur]

it would be awesome to sent some of this animals on mars...and if they survive...we'll never be alone again :D hopefully...hi me in the future :D is it true?..please answear soon O_O

[TheDublincity]

that creature is UGLY :/

[mrfalafl]

Wow. So a multi-celled organism reached earth via space and then suddenly decomposed into single-celled organisms that then lived and reproduced individually? Yeah that is entirely plausible after all, all multi-celled organisms are made up of single-celled organisms...

Whether or not the earth is a bubble or was affected by the universe is irrelevant. Life had to have evolve on its own SOMEWHERE. Why can't earth be a "starter" planet?

[Joshua Lorenzo]

The contrary is believing that the Earth was in some kind of bubble in which it evolved without any interference from anything in the universe. It has been scientifically proven that the Earth has been extremely affected by the universe never the less some of the theories about how life evolved on Earth do not include interference by the universe. BTW all multi-celled organisms are composed of single cell organisms working together to achieve the same goal which is to live and procreate.

[mrfalafl]

How is believing that single celled organisms de-evolved from multi-celled organisms a less arrogant belief than the contrary, which seems millions of times more plausible?

[Joshua Lorenzo]

We could argue back and forth about this but the reality is that we could both be wrong or one of us could be right and the other wrong. We will never know 100% but we can chose to believe whatever makes us feel more comfortable. Personally I like to believe the less arrogant of the two, the fact that in the history of 4 billion yrs in space we have been affected by space debre a lot and it is possible that we are not the first life forms in the universe.

[joshdm1986]

Oh ok. that starts with finding life that can live in lethal, to us, environments right here on earth. you should look up non carbon based life form found on earth.