HUNDREDS of worms survived the Columbia space shuttle disaster. The worms were on board the doomed spacecraft as part of an experiment to test a new synthetic nutrient solution.
The worms were found alive and wriggling when technicians sorting through the debris opened up their containers last month. The science locker contained 48 Petri dishes of Caenorhabditis elegans worms sealed in six separate canisters. The shuttle exploded three months ago, and researchers estimate the recovered worms are fourth or fifth-generation descendants of their original space-bound ancestors.
Scientists were stunned to get anything of their experiments back. “We expected a …
