‘Immortal’ Tardigrades: Most Resilient Animals in the Universe Survive Most Extreme Conditions Yet @TomoNewsUS

Uploaded December 2021 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago

SINGAPORE — Microscopic tardigrades have previously been shot out of guns, exposed to intense ultraviolet radiation and bathed in boiling-hot water, as well as accidentally crash-landing on the moon, in the course of scientists testing the limits of their ‘tun’ state, where their metabolism drops to almost zero and they are able to survive extreme conditions.

Now they’ve been used in an attempt show that a multicellular organism can become “quantum entangled,” which, according to Live Science, is when separate particles become ‘bound’ to one another so a change to one's spin or momentum instantaneously changes the other’s, even when large distances separate them.

For a research paper uploaded to preprint repository arXiv, scientists froze three tardigrades to a fraction of a degree above absolute zero, sending them into a tun state, and then placed between two capacitor plates of a superconductor circuit that formed a quantum bit, or ‘qubit.’ When they made contact with this, its resonant frequency shifted.

This tardigrade-qubit-hybrid was then coupled to a second circuit, the two qubits became entangled, and subsequently the frequency of all three parts changed in tandem.

However, the study’s ‘entanglement’ conclusions have been widely challenged, with Phys.org summarising that: “placing a tardigrade on top of a qubit could result in altering the frequency of the qubit, but that is not the same thing as the two being entangled,’ before adding: “Also, the tardigrade was not able to act as a single quantum object.”

Showing tardigrades can resume regular existence after experiencing conditions near absolute zero and pressures as low as 0.000006 millibars for up to 17 days, then, may be the experiment’s most notable outcome, with the arXiv preprint noting that one of the three tardigrades was successfully revived after the experiment’s completion.

SOURCES: Live Science, Arxiv, Phys.org, CNET
livescience.com/tardigrade-quantum-entangled-experiment
arxiv.org/pdf/2112.07978.pdf
phys.org/news/2021-12-peers-dispute-tardigrades-entangled-qubits.html
cnet.com/news/no-tardigrades-have-not-been-quantum-entangled-with-a-qubit

$‘Immortal’ Tardigrades: Most Resilient Animals in the Universe Survive Most Extreme Conditions Yet SINGAPORE — Microscopic tardigrades have previously been shot out of guns, exposed to intense ultraviolet radiation and bathed in boiling-hot water, as well as accidentally crash-landing on the moon, in the course of scientists testing the limits of their ‘tun’ state, where their metabolism drops to almost zero and they are able to survive extreme conditions. Now they’ve been used in an attempt show that a multicellular organism can become “quantum entangled,” which, according to Live Science, is when separate particles become ‘bound’ to one another so a change to ones spin or momentum instantaneously changes the other’s, even when large distances separate them. For a research paper uploaded to preprint repository arXiv, scientists froze three tardigrades to a fraction of a degree above absolute zero, sending them into a tun state, and then placed between two capacitor plates of a superconductor circuit that formed a quantum bit, or ‘qubit.’ When they made contact with this, its resonant frequency shifted. This tardigrade-qubit-hybrid was then coupled to a second circuit, the two qubits became entangled, and subsequently the frequency of all three parts changed in tandem. However, the study’s ‘entanglement’ conclusions have been widely challenged, with Phys.org summarising that: “placing a tardigrade on top of a qubit could result in altering the frequency of the qubit, but that is not the same thing as the two being entangled,’ before adding: “Also, the tardigrade was not able to act as a single quantum object.” Showing tardigrades can resume regular existence after experiencing conditions near absolute zero and pressures as low as 0.000006 millibars for up to 17 days, then, may be the experiment’s most notable outcome, with the arXiv preprint noting that one of the three tardigrades was successfully revived after the experiment’s completion. SOURCES: Live Science, Arxiv, Phys.org, CNET https://www.livescience.com/tardigrade-quantum-entangled-experiment https://arxiv.org/pdf/2112.07978.pdf https://phys.org/news/2021-12-peers-dispute-tardigrades-entangled-qubits.html https://www.cnet.com/news/no-tardigrades-have-not-been-quantum-entangled-with-a-qubit/$

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