We have a large sheet of all there is to know. There is a small area in the middle that is mapped, that's what we know, it is surrounded by blank space, that's what we don't know. As we explore further, the small area expands, but by doing so, its border also expands, meaning that the more we know, the more unknown we are exposed to.
We expanded the area a little on the tardigrade side, so as expected, it revealed more areas to explore than what we discovered. As a general rule, science more often expands our borders than fills up holes, meaning that the more we know, the more we realize the extent of what we don't know.
> Every fall, I explain to a fresh batch of Ph.D. students what a Ph.D. is.
> It's hard to describe it in words.
> So, I use pictures.
The second problem is that gives the false feeling that science works like a religion, where everybody has the same ideas and moves in the same direction as in a priesthood following divine rules. Couldn't be more wrong and damaging.
Saying "scientists" does not add relevant info. "We finally figured out why..." or using the passive voice would be the same, but less insulting. "A team in the university/company X" would be even better. Is the right way to show a minimum respect by all the hard work of this people.
Journalists don't do this by inertia because science was never in their pool of potential customers paying for advertisement, so they traditionally "don't deserve" the right to be treated as individuals.
And when they pay, here comes the overcompensation. The equally annoying opposite effect, where entire articles are centered around worshiping the person. Building a polished public image of TV celebrity. All his bullshit about their epic journeys and how they managed to help everybody despite everybody putting obstacles in the path. If you are lucky, you can find a couple of lines about the real discovery, placed between a photo of somebody eating ramen and another doing surf.
"Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no."
[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline...
Well I have a newfound fear of humans creating a bacteria as hard to kill as a tardigrade…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudomonas_aeruginosa
Eventually we'll get to a point where nothing will work against these
Thankfully, there are major tradeoffs associated with those traits, which makes them not particularly virulent to healthy people.
There’s lots of problems humans can create that “nature” couldn’t precisely because we drastically compress time scales that make adaptation exceedingly difficult.
Article: https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/09/scientists-glean-new...
Going from "Tartigrade-specific intrinsically" to a single T in the acronym is rather interesting...
Funny, I always thought the electron microscope images of tardigrades looked like the monsters in HAZMAT suits from Monsters Inc.
https://www.intelligentliving.co/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/...
When desiccation begins and TDP is activated, it engages a process known as vitrification. Boothby said, “The glass is coating the molecules inside of the tardigrade cells, keeping them intact.”
Not that cryonics are necessarily in a better position about that, so I guess for comparison between those methods the point stands regardless.
It's just another tool to understand how virusses work. Always has been.
ain't nothing like flipping 6-year-old news articles, right lads?
