In the grand scheme, we’re as irrelevant as a tiny moss piglet
THE world is feeling pretty miserable at the moment right?
There is a sense of impending doom. It is like we are surrounded by dementors (one for the Harry Potter fans there).
However perhaps there is a cure to this, and I want to draw you attention to the frankly adorably named animal the “water bear”.
If you haven’t heard the news there is now life living in outer space – seriously!
Also (and more correctly) known as tardigrades they are time critters that are under a millimetre long.
But don’t let their size fool you. These little buggers are tough.
Able to survive temperatures of up to 150C and pretty much as cold as it can possibly go. They are practically indestructible. If there was a tiny animal movie made, they would be John McClane in Die Hard.
Just when you think they couldn’t be more awesome they are also known as moss piglets.
Why am I talking to you about these legendary little beasts?
Well back in April an Israeli spacecraft crash-landed on the moon.
On board there were some of these water bears (will never get bored of saying that) which had been dehydrated into suspended animation and encased in artificial amber.
The crazy thing is that despite the lack of atmosphere, massive crash landing and no water, experts believe the moss piglets are probably still alive!
So how the heck have they done this?
Well, when tardigrades are dehydrated they retract their legs and heads and shrivel up into a ball which is very similar to when they are dead. I can sympathise with this because it is exactly the response I elicit when I am hungover.
Once they have done this they lose all their water (another trademark of the hungover Hayward) their metabolism slows to 0.01% of the normal rate.
When they are given water they will become reanimated and essentially come back to life. A little bit like Han Solo coming out of carbonite.
This is where me and the moss piglet differ.
When I am desperately attempting to come out of my dehydrated, hungover stasis only bacon can bring me back to life.
As an interesting side note the reason the Die Hard Moss Bear Piglets were flying around it outer space was part of the Arch Mission Foundation which is a non-profit organization whose goal is to create multiple redundant repositories of human knowledge around the Solar System.
Anyway, the really convoluted and drawn out reason for talking about these things is because it will make you look up.
Ever since we stopped sending humans further and further into space some of the excitement of exploration has worn off.
Yeah it is obviously very cool when a rover explores the surface of Mars but it just doesn’t have that spirit of boldly going where no one has gone before.
Humans are like a shark, we have to keep moving forward or we die. Well not quite that. More we have to keep moving forward or we eat ourselves.
I really think that is a small part of what is driving all the identity politics, nastiness and misery.
We have no frontiers left to conquer. All that is left to do is to conqueror each other. Instead of celebrating our shared humanity in the face of our total insignificance in the universe we get puffed up on our own importance. We only see our differences.
This has happened before (warning I am an ancient history geek).
You saw with the Roman Empire, that once they had defeated all their Mediterranean neighbours they pretty swiftly turned in on themselves.
The second they were the biggest thing on the block with nothing to do except exist the only goal left was power.
We must not fall into this trap. We must continue to realise that, in the grand scheme of things, we are all as irrelevant as a tiny little moss piglet.
Just be kind, don’t judge and aim very, very high.
When I am desperately attempting to come out of my dehydrated, hungover stasis only bacon can bring me back to life