The Science of Star Wars: The Scientific Facts Behind the Force, Space Travel, and More!

by Mark Brake

On Earth, we have our own creature that can survive the vacuum of space. They’re called tardigrades, or water bears. Tardigrades are essentially indestructible. They don’t look particularly impressive, with sofa-like bodies and four pairs of stubby, poorly articulated legs. They’re certainly not of exogorth dimensions, or even as massive as a mynock. Tardigrades range in size from 0.012 to 0.020 inches, though the largest species may reach a heady 0.047 inches. Scientists have found tardigrades on top of Mount Everest, in hot springs, under layers of solid ice, and in ocean sediments. They’re able to survive the most extreme environments that would kill almost every other animal. They’ve survived temperatures as hot as 151oC, and as cold as -272oC. They can go without water for ten years. They can stand one thousand times more radiation than other animals. And they’ve even been known to survive the vacuum of space. For ten days in 2007, tardigrades were taken aboard the FOTON-M3 mission into low Earth orbit, where they were exposed to the hard vacuum of outer space. Did that faze them? Not in the slightest. On their return to Earth, and after rehydration, most of the tardigrades recovered within thirty minutes.