MemeMachineGo!

Jon Carroll writes about the survivors of the Columbia explosion:

The good news: There were survivors of the crash of the space shuttle Columbia after all. The bad news: Said survivors were not humans but worms. The good news: The worms were Caenorhabditis elegans, one of the most beloved worms in all of Nematodeville.

Hundreds of C. elegans were on board the shuttle as part of an experiment to test a synthetic nutrient solution. Because the worms were found alive in the wreckage, it is probably fair to say that the experiment went pretty well.

Technically, the rescued worms were not the worms that survived the shuttle disaster. These worms are the great-great-grandworms of those original worms. They were found in their original container (along with some dead moss), so presumably, they were breeding before and after and perhaps during the disaster.

Imagine, your world is going to hell around you, you're falling out of the sky from 10 miles up, there's a fireball and explosions and flying debris, and you're the size of the tip of a pencil and you're thinking, "Better get on with the breeding."

(Via Sore Eyes)