Scientists Want to Send Tardigrades to Distant Stars With Massive Lasers

[Nevilledog]

Link to tweet

https://www.vice.com/en/article/v7d7q3/scientists-want-to-send-tardigrades-to-distant-stars-with-massive-lasers

Interstellar travel is time-consuming. A group of astronomers and physicists are playing with making it faster, starting with massive lasers and one of Earth’s most resilient organisms: the tardigrade.

These microscopic aquatic animals, sometimes called “water bears”, are nearly indestructible, capable of withstanding drought, freezing temperatures, accidents, high levels of radiation, harsh pressure and gravity conditions and suspended animation—the slowing of biological functioning for long periods of time. This makes them the perfect candidate for experiments in ramping up the speed of space travel, write researchers in a new paper published in the peer-reviewed journal Acta Astronautica.

Travelling 18-billion kilometers to the end of our solar system currently takes decades using traditional means of chemical propulsion—the burning of fuel. But, with funding from NASA, researchers at the University of California - Santa Barbara have proposed a new means of space propulsion using lasers (“directed-energy” or DE arrays) on Earth that push light sails attached to spacecraft using photons to travel at a rate that’s 20 to 30 percent of the speed of light, achieving relativistic flight. Launched in 2015 via an initiative called Project Starlight, the effort aims to cut travel time to interstellar space from decades to days, all without the use of an onboard propellant.

Now, a team of researchers including Philip Lubin, professor of physics at UC Santa Barbara and lead researcher on Project Starlight, have teamed up to propose a path forward for testing relativistic flight. They propose putting tardigrades, alongside closely-related resilient invertebrates like C. Elegans, on wafer-scale platforms around the size of a human hand, which would be deployed into space at roughly 100 million miles per hour. According to the paper, the power for the laser array could consume 1/10 of the entire U.S. energy grid, but this power would only be needed for a few minutes during launch.

*snip*

[Achilleaze]

1. Expect a sternly worded letter from the SPCTT*

* Society for the Protection of Cruelty To Tardigrades

[Demovictory9]

31. poor lil things

[Emile]

2. Looks like a Polar Bear embryo.

[Beetwasher.]

3. Star Trek Discovery's Spore Drive

Already has this covered.

[Effete Snob]

4. Great, so they can evolve into a highly advanced species that comes back to kill us all

[Irish_Dem]

6. I am 100% sure there is a movie in this story.

Hadn't worked out the details.

I like yours.

[sarisataka]

19. Watch Harbinger Down nt

[Irish_Dem]

20. Thanks for the rec, I am going to watch it this afternoon.

[Irish_Dem]

25. Holy crap, a sci fi movie with Tardigrades. Scientists should have watched this movie.

[sarisataka]

26. I have loved those little

Indestructible creatures since I stumbled on the movie.

Lance Hendriksen movies are one of my guilty pleasures

[Irish_Dem]

27. Once they go rogue, not so adorable. :(

But yes they are cute, intriguing little guys for sure.

What a movie, yes, a guilty pleasure.

[sarisataka]

29. True, if they ever mutated

We'd be gone in a week

[Irish_Dem]

32. Between Covid and global warming, maybe they will be the only things left on the planet.

[JHB]

5. Acta Astronautica Is an open-access journal, so the article is freely available.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.actaastro.2021.10.009

[TygrBright]

7. So... it's okay to bio-pollute space with earth organisms, but

..they're gonna be REALLY CAREFUL about not letting any extraterrestrial organisms pollute us.

One-way ride for the waterbears.

Expect a SF novel soon about a far-distant future in which the heavily evolved descendants of these critters returns to reclaim earth for themselves...

interestedly,
Bright

[VGNonly]

8. Water Bears

[link:

|

[keithbvadu2]

9. Hey! The lights just dimmed.

[Doodley]

10. What do you call a Republican tardigrade?

A retardigrade!

[NotASurfer]

11. Sounds like Dr Evil's going interstellar

First sharks with lasers, now tardigrades with MASSIVE lasers...

[muriel_volestrangler]

12. They say if it does reach a planet, the collision will sterilize it

and there's no way of decelerating it anyway, so even if they point it at a star system and it doesn't hit the star or a planet, it'll just flash through it in a few hours.

Independent of the actual scope of the regulation for biological forward contamination, the suggested mission profile will live up to the standards. An object with a mass of less than ten grams accelerating with potentially hundreds of GW of power, will, even if it were aimed at a planetary protection target (for example Mars), enter its atmosphere or impact the solar system body with enough kinetic energy to cause total sterilization of the biological samples on board. The velocity of the craft would thus serve as an in-built mechanism for sterilization. The mission profile does not include deceleration, so this mechanism is valid for the entirety of the mission.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0094576521005518?via%3Dihub

So this is just about having a lifeform on the spacecraft while it's travelling v.v.v. fast in interstellar vacuum. I dunno, seems a bit pointless to me.

[Disaffected]

17. There is method to the madness:

"They propose performing remote experiments on the organisms while on board, studying how tardigrades and other Earthlings handle life in the harsh conditions inherent to distant space realms. Lubin and his team could then extrapolate these findings to assess potential effects of interstellar travel on humans."

How they propose to keep the tardigrades from turning into a thin smear from the massive acceleration they would experience is not however explained.

[muriel_volestrangler]

18. They think they can survive it - though the acceleration is really huge

While microgravity is characteristic of the deep space environment, spacecraft launch and directed-energy propulsion will expose biological systems to hypergravity. Microgravity research on Earth requires setups such as drop tubes and parabolic flights, whereas hypergravity experiments require only a centrifuge, which can simulate gravitational accelerations within the range of our spacecraft (10^4 to 10^6 g). Tardigrade species are adversely affected by hypergravity but are more resistant than larger organisms, such as the fruit fly, D. melanogaster, while species like C. elegans fare quite well under hyperacceleration [18], [19], [20]. However, tardigrades can be launched in a cryptobiotic state, with the hope that this will mitigate deleterious acceleration-dependent effects of hypergravity on their survival rate [20].

[Disaffected]

30. OK, thanks.

I kinda suspected they might be frozen (or partially frozen) since they can apparently survive that.

Anyhow, it would be an easy experiment to perform - as the article states, using only a centrifuge.

All-in-all very interesting but I predict it will not happen, at least in the foreseeable future. To many technological hurdles to overcome and, there is also a geo-political aspect as well - the required laser(s) could be easily turned into a formidable anti-satellite weapon.

[lagomorph777]

42. The whole project seems pretty nuts.

These tiny spacecraft are expected to be able to transmit data light-years away?

Look up just a beginner's explanation of antenna physics. The idea is ludicrous.

[Disaffected]

44. The communication part of it is not all that implausible.

In Project Starshot they propose using laser communication and repurposing the "sail" for use as a parabolic dish. Additionally, the spacecraft would be numerous, trailing behind each other, and could therefore relay data back & forth.

Not easy but feasible. There are much harder tech issues to overcome.

[Hortensis]

13. Relativistic flight boldly going where no man has gone before, in days.

Wow. Thanks, Nevilledog. I don't remember anything about this, all new horizons.

That 10% of the U.S. energy grid thing, though... Might be easier to apologize after than to get permission.

[Coventina]

14. This is cruelty to animals. I don't care how tiny or "insignificant".

Once you excuse cruelty to one species, it becomes negotiable for others.

[NickB79]

15. They're below cockroaches on the evolutionary tree

Now I'm curious where you stand on killing or experimenting on those.

[Coventina]

22. I'm against it, for the most part, with some exceptions.

I describe myself as Buddhist, although I do not always exemplify the 8 fold path. I'm on the journey, but I acknowledge that I stumble.

Some harm is needed for a greater good - but that greater good has to be determined by strict ethical standards.
It can't be scientific curiosity, or to simply make our lives more comfortable.

Harmful parasites are allowed to be killed under Buddhist practice, within certain guidelines. (I don't have the time and energy to outline them all).

Sending creatures out into space without a means to care for them and without their consent is does not fall under those parameters.

[Dial H For Hero]

33. Every human that has ever gone to space his carried over 1 million mites with them.

I’m confident that thousands of them were left on the moon simply due to the air being flushed out when they went on walks.

As for getting consent from tardigrade’s…I’ll leave that task to those with more imagination than I.

[Coventina]

34. What you describe about prior astronaut missions is completely different

from what is being proposed.

[Dial H For Hero]

35. But you did speak of the need for (somehow) getting consent from microorganisms before launching

them into space. Literally billions of such animals have died as the inevitable result of human activity in space.

Is that immoral?

[Coventina]

36. I understand. In Buddhism, intent matters.

Launching creatures into space intentionally, on an experimental basis, is a whole world apart from the side effect of our symbiotic relationship with the web of life around us (and in us).

Intention also matters in our ethics and law as well. That's why we have degrees of murder.

Just on a side note: I do have problems with the money and attention spent on space. I agree it's a fascinating subject, but it pales in consideration of how we are trashing the planet we currently inhabit. I'd like more focus on that, please.

[Hekate]

37. Um, they are microscopic, the largest ones about a millimeter long. Protecting those likely...

… goes beyond Buddhism and into Jainism.

[Coventina]

38. No, many Buddhists include the microscopic as well.

Using antibacterial soaps is a whole ritual, involving guiding the dying organisms into the next life.

[Quixote1818]

21. Here is what they will evolve into in a few thousand years on those planets

[Torchlight]

23. Fascianting.

I had no idea the mechanism for getting them out there even existed. My faith in and wonder of science is rarely disappointed.

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

24. It's great that a tardigrade can be accelerated to .3C by lasers, wheee!

Should a few happen to encounger an earth-like planet, how do they brake before hitting an atmosphere?

I guess they have a few decades to figure that one out.

Bon vonage, tardigrades.

[pecosbob]

28. I recall launching pill-bugs in the payload section of a dry-propellant rocket as a lad

Did not end well for them I'm afraid.

* I think the rocket was called Big Bertha.

[Shellback Squid]

39. tardigrades are so small how are they going to hold massive lasers?

even with eight legs

[Shellback Squid]

40. why would we send defenseless tardigrades to stars that have massive lasers?

you would only need a small laser

[ForgedCrank]

41. That's really cool and all,

but how do they plan on slowing them down before they come into contact with a target planet and instantly vaporize?
They would be nothing more than a plasma flash when they hit an atmosphere somewhere.

[sakabatou]

43. Are they temperamental tardigrades?