unforum

[Red Walrus]

A couple more pictures of Extremophiles

[brettoniasam]

[Cthulhu]

In response to the water bears.

I think the ingredient is going to be something we can't decipher right now, or is something completely made up. I don't think the ingredient will be a living, breathing, CRAWLING organism, rather, an organism or enzyme on a cellular level.

[CloverfieldClues.com]

Ill tell you what...

The back looks like it has giant armor plates!

If that thing was 50' tall, that would be some scary

[Red Walrus]

[Red Walrus]

For all those people who don't believe in the water bear theory take a look at these cloverfield action figures.

[dalphx]

[Red Walrus]

LOL Jamie, Jamie, Jamie........

[dalphx]

Now we know how she got that STD..lol, Put a Happy face on that bear though

I agree with you Red on that Logo and Fist statement, somethin there alright.

[john locke]

okay I think I mentioned this on another thread "February 26, 2005 Analysis of sediments taken from hundreds of metres beneath the ocean floor has shown them to contain living microbes. According to a study produced by a team of researchers supported by the International Ocean Drilling Program, this is the first time that microbes have been found in abundance at such depths.

Scientists have long speculated about how much of the bacterial content of the sediments is biologically active. Techniques used to stain the bacteria and identify them could not previously discriminate between live and dead cells. For this study a new technique that could distinguish between alive and dead cells was used.

The results were surprising. The sediments, some of which had been collected from up to 800 metres from beneath the sea floor and are said to be up to 16 million years old, contained between 10-30% living bacteria. Scientists estimate that between 60-70% of all bacteria are living deep beneath the surface, far from any sunlight.

"We didn't have clear evidence that bacteria there were alive until now," said ecologist and team member Lev Neretin of the Max Planck Institute for Marine Biology in Bremen, Germany. According to calculations, the populations of bacteria multiply at the same rate as their surface cousins and contribute significantly to the balance of greenhouse gases, consuming and producing CO2. They also contribute methane via a metabolic process that does not require oxygen.

"Because they play such a major role in the biochemical processes in the subsurface, clearly they are driving lots of reactions that produce the chemical steady state on Earth," said Dr John Parkes, one of the original co-authors of the paper which appeared in Nature magazine, "possibly we might not have oil and gas formations without them."

How could these bacteria get so deep beneath the ocean floor? "The only reasonable way is for them to be buried there," says Bo Thamdrup, a microbiologist from the University of Southern Denmark, Odense. The extremes of temperature and pressures tolerated by these bacteria add weight to the assertion that microbes may flourish in the extreme conditions of other planets."

"It is well known that bacteria living in deep oceans have special adaptations to help them survive," says Thamdrup. "I'm sure these bacteria have special adaptations too." A full genetic analysis may soon reveal themTardigrades (commonly known as moss piglets or water bears) comprise the phylum Tardigrada. They are small, segmented animals, similar and probably related to the arthropods. Tardigrades were first described by Johann August Ephraim Goeze in 1773 (kleiner Wasserbär = little water bear). The name Tardigrada means "slow walker" and was given by Spallanzani in 1777. Tardigrades are small animals. The biggest adults may reach a body length of 1.5 mm, the smallest below 0.1 mm. Freshly hatched larvae may be smaller than 0.05 mm.

More than 900 species of tardigrades have been described. Tardigrades occur over the whole world, from the high Himalaya (above 6,000 m) to the deep sea (below 4,000 m) and from the polar regions to the equator.

The most convenient place to find tardigrades is on lichens and mosses. Other environments are dunes, beaches, soil and marine or freshwater sediments, where they may occur quite frequently (up to 25,000 animals per litre). Tardigrades often can be found by soaking a piece of moss in spring water.[3]

Water bears are able to survive in extreme environments that would kill almost any other animal. They can survive temperatures close to absolute zero[4], temperatures as high as 151°C (303°F), 1000 times more radiation than any animal, nearly a decade without water, and can also survive in a vacuum like that found in space. Following this I researched tardigrades in space and found this! not an IG site (im 99.9% sure) but nevertheless damned intriguing!

http://tardigradesinspace.blogspot.com/
Why should we send dry aquatic invertebrates into space, an environment that certainly is not normal for these animals? There are many answers to this question. One would be: to see if these animals, as the first ever, are able to cope with the extremely dry conditions of deep vacuum and the harmful solar and galactic radiation up there. In the past, several biologists have suggested that tardigrades may be one of the few animals that have a chance to come back alive after a trip in real space. Finally we will be able to find out if this is true.

At a more mechanistic biological level, exposure of organisms to space conditions will reveal how living cells react to the potentially very stressful impact of space parameters. And organisms that can handle the damaging space parameters will be important sources of knowledge for how to generate the space ecosystems that will be necessary for the more permanent human establishments in space that is envisaged today.

The TARDIS experiment consists of two sets of samples: one set exposed to both space vacuum and solar radiation, and another set exposed to space vacuum only. All tardigrade specimens included in the study are in a dry, anhydrobiotic state. Species included are: Richtersius coronifer, Milnesium tardigradum, Echiniscus testudo, Ramazzottius oberhaeuseri. These are all known to be very tolerant to desiccation.

Once on the ground again, these samples will be analysed for survival and reproductive potential, and for damage on DNA.
On a humour note the fact these are sometimes reffered to as moss piglets made me laugh recalling the muppet show sketches "Pigs in space!!"

[Drone41279]

I think we can therefore speculate that the Attack of the Sea Monkeys will be the most likely final title of the film.

[Rabbit216]

i still think its Voltron

JUST KIDDING lol

[Lambo_Diablo_Svtt]

I think we need to change the phrase to...

"I SAW IT! ITS A BEAR! ITS HUGE!"

[casemyo]

it is very possible that the water bear extremophile could be the monster.. and it would probably scare the *brownies (as cc so eloquently put it) out of me. but the one thing there is that if jj & co want their own equivalent to godzilla i dont know how you market that thing to be a godzilla-esque franchise.

thats if they want a franchise (not a good idea). but hey one of my all time favortie monster movies now is the host which was a kind of similar thing to the water bear

[Lambo_Diablo_Svtt]

These things could be pretty interesting as the monster... i mean, they can stand up to 1000x as much radiation as humans, surive 6000 atmospheres of pressure or a complete vacuum, live for a few minutes in -273 and 151 degrees celcius.... all they'd need is a hard mutated skin, a more frightening and dangerous head *also able to roar* and they'd almost be unstoppable.