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Brian Cox on Cern's baffling light-speed find. How Tiny Worms Could Help Humans Colonize Mars | Mars Exploration & Settlement | Nematodes, Microgravity & Radiation. Humanity's quest to colonize Mars could receive a big boost from some tiny worms, a new study suggests. Scientists tracked the development and reproduction of the microscopic roundworm Caenorhabditis elegans through 12 generations on the International Space Station. Studying these space-hardened worms could help humans deal with the rigors and risks of the long trip to Mars, researchers said. "We have been able to show that worms can grow and reproduce in space for long enough to reach another planet, and that we can remotely monitor their health," study lead author Nathaniel Szewczyk, of the University of Nottingham in the United Kingdom, said in a statement. "As a result, C. elegans is a cost-effective option for discovering and studying the biological effects of deep space missions," Szewczyk added.

"Ultimately, we are now in a position to be able to remotely grow and study an animal on another planet. " Worms on the space station Worms on Mars? Growing Knowledge in Space. Growing Knowledge in Space Plants are critical in supporting life on Earth, and with help from an experiment that flew onboard space shuttle Discovery's STS-131 mission, they also could transform living in space.

NASA's Kennedy Space Center partnered with the University of Florida, Miami University in Ohio and Samuel Roberts Noble Foundation to perform three different experiments in microgravity. The studies concentrated on the effects microgravity has on plant cell walls, root growth patterns and gene regulation within the plant Arabidopsis thaliana. Each of the studies has future applications on Earth and in space exploration.

The use of plants to provide a reliable oxygen, food and water source could save the time and money it takes to resupply the International Space Station (ISS), and provide sustainable sources necessary to make long-duration missions a reality. Each of the three groups was quite impressed with the payload processing personnel at Kennedy. The Scale of the Universe. Mysteries of Deep Space - History of the Universe Timeline. Liquid lakes close to moon's skin. 16 November 2011Last updated at 18:21 By Jennifer Carpenter Science reporter, BBC News Study author Britney Schmidt says life may exist on Europa Scientists have found the best evidence yet for water just beneath the surface of Jupiter's icy moon, Europa.

Analysis of the moon's surface suggests plumes of warmer water well up beneath its icy shell, melting and fracturing the outer layers. The results, published in the journal Nature, predict that small lakes exist only 3km below the crust. Any liquid water could represent a potential habitat for life. From models of magnetic forces, and images of its surface, scientists have long suspected that a giant ocean, roughly 160km (100 miles) deep, lies somewhere between 10-30km beneath the ice crust. Many astrobiologists have dreamed of following in the footsteps of Arthur C Clarke's fictional character David Bowman, who, in the novel Odyssey Two, discovers aquatic life-forms in the deep Europan sea. Shallow seas Continue reading the main story Europa. Have We Found The Universe That Existed Before The Big Bang? Dark alien planet discovered by NASA.

An alien world blacker than coal, the darkest planet known, has been discovered in the galaxy. The world in question is a giant the size of Jupiter known as TrES-2b. NASA's Kepler spacecraft detected it lurking around the yellow sun-like star GSC 03549-02811 some 750 lightyears away in the direction of the constellation Draco. The researchers found this gas giant reflects less than 1 percent of the sunlight falling on it, making it darker than any planet or moon seen up to now. [The Strangest Alien Planets] "It's just ridiculous how dark this planet is, how alien it is compared to anything we have in our solar system," study lead-author David Kipping, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, told SPACE.com.

"It's darker than the blackest lump of coal, than dark acrylic paint you might paint with. It's bizarre how this huge planet became so absorbent of all the light that hits it. " "It's a mystery as to what's causing it to be so dark," Kipping said.