Posted 05.16.2011 at 3:00 pm
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An Adult Bobtail Squid
Hans Hillewaert/Wikimedia Commons
We’ve already bid our fond farewell to the space shuttle Endeavour, but as it blasted into the great blue yonder for the last time Monday, the astronauts were accompanied by a different sort of companion: the first cephalopod ever to enter space. The baby bobtail squid was only invited along because NASA wants to study the effect of space on the microbes in its organs.
The bobtail squid uses the bioluminescent Vibrio fischeri microbes to cast light downward and dispel its shadow. Bacteria that have ridden on shuttles in the past have become more vicious after their trip. But microbes such as Salmonella, which made the journey in 2007 and was subsequently three times more likely to kill a host mouse, are already harmful. NASA wants to see what will happen in the case of the squid’s mutually beneficial relationship with its microorganisms. Will they end up turning on their host?
Unfortunately, one way or the other, the squid is not going to make it back alive. Newly-hatched squid that had not yet encountered Vibrio fischeri will be colonized with the bacteria on board Endeavour 14 hours after launch. 28 hours later, it will be killed and fixed solid so researchers can examine it back here on Earth.
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Starting out as a Hollywood sci-fi horror movie... The bacteria turn on to their host and make it an alien monstrosity that refuses to be killed and be examined by the scientists
Welcome your new overlords.
The bacteria cause a rapid evolution & mutation of the squid making it Cthulhu.
Looks an awfully lot like the brain slugs from futurama...
I never knew that Endeavour took along a squid with them at the time of launch until now. I was too busy enjoying the live launch coverage.
Life imitates art -- Stephen Baxter's Manifold: Time.
They take squids into space as they are so well suited to the environment.
obviously these people have not been playing Crysis2. otherwise they would've instead brought a shrimp to space and not a ceph.
Looks to me like the space squids that made the cosmos from Courage the Cowardly Dog.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQW2_FAVqls
WE ARE THE DALEKS!
Well if you are the Daleks then I am a mad man who travels through space in a blue box, I have conquered you time and time again without using a single weapon i am the Doctor.
I wonder how much it cost to send this sushi to the astronauts?
this looks like the movie species 2. what if when they bring it back to earth it becomes another alien species?