0
0
What would happen if you merged Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s DNA with a tardigrade, nobody ever asked.
But I did.
I was inspired by a science blog about researchers who are mixing human and tardigrade cells, the idea of which, on paper anyway, is to see if we can make tougher people for spaceflight. Tardigrades — that cuddly looking creature above — are microscopic organisms that are famously robust. You can throw them into the vacuum of space or bury them in Antarctic ice and they will do just fine.
Do scientists really think they can merge tardigrades with humans? Probably not. But they got some grant money, and it was a slow day in the lab, or something.
Anyway, that got me thinking. What would a merged tardigrade and human look like? So I thought of the ugliest person I could conceive of in the spur of the moment and downloaded a headshot. Then I downloaded a tardigrade image (the one above). And I went online to a free AI image generator and told it to merge the two.
Here’s the result:
I was hoping for a tardigrade with a Mitch face, not a tardigrade swallowing Mitch. But every time I asked for that it generated a turtle.
But, seriously, there is interesting and, perhaps, useful science here. If we could figure out how tardigrades survive, maybe there are things we can learn on how to make spaceflight less dangerous.
Or not.
