Laser, solar veil and tardigrades: a crazy project to conquer the stars


A team of scientists plans to propel tardigrades, ultra-resistant microscopic animals, towards the stars at a speed approaching that of light.

Since being recognized as one of the most resistant animals of creation, the tardigrade, a small arthropod of a few tenths of a millimeter, has been subjected to the worst tortures: cooked at 150°C, frozen at −272, deprived of water and food, irradiated, pressurized, exposed to the vacuum of space and so on. Each time, this extremophile organism triumphed calmly over these trials, thanks in particular to its astonishing ability to immerse itself in a deep lethargy, similar to death, for periods that can exceed 30 years.

But this time, it’s an unprecedented adventure that awaits these tardigrades who have elevated resilience to the rank of fine arts. In an article published by the journal Acta Astronautica, scientists at the University of California-Santa Barbara plan to turn them into astronauts and send them far beyond the solar system, to distant stars. To do this, they are counting on the Starlight Project, developed since 2015 by these same scientists with the financial support of NASA: it consists of directing a laser beam from Earth onto a vessel equipped with a solar sail at a speed of up to in theory 20 to 30% of that of light, without it being necessary to carry the slightest drop of fuel.

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To experiment with this project, they plan to place tardigrades on small platforms, equipped with integrated circuits, as wide as the palm of the hand. Thanks to the laser and its solar sail, this mini spacecraft will then be launched into the cosmos at more than 150,000 million kilometers per hour! “Never before has a macroscopic object been propelled at a speed so close to that of light” writes physicist Philip Lubin, co-author of the article and director of research on the Starlight Project. However, the launch would not go unnoticed: triggering the laser would require a tenth of the energy that the United States consumes at all times. Fortunately, this energy peak would only last a few minutes.

But why embark tardigrades on this journey? Quite simply to remotely study the effects of such speed on living organisms and to extrapolate the survival conditions of a human in this unprecedented environment. “We could start thinking about the design of interstellar transporters in order to improve the problems detected in these small animals” explains to Vice.com Joel Rothman, another co-author of the Acta Astronautica article and specialist in molecular biology.

And he concludes: “I think it is our destiny to continue to explore. We are exploring at smaller and smaller scales, down to subatomic levels, and we are also exploring at larger and larger scales. This impulse towards the unknown is at the heart of who we are as a species. A species which, if its project of escapade towards the stars succeeds, will not have to forget what it owes to its partners, much smaller and much more resistant.

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