Does anyone else think this is going to be an excellent subject for a horror movie? (Giant, irradiated mutant worms ravage Texas.)
Live Worms Found in Shuttle Debris
Thu May 1, 2:58 AM ET Add Science - AP to My Yahoo!
By MIKE SCHNEIDER, Associated Press Writer
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - Hundreds of worms from a science experiment aboard the space shuttle Columbia have been found alive in the wreckage, NASA (news - web sites) said Wednesday.
The worms, known as C. elegans, were found in debris in Texas several weeks ago. Technicians sorting through the debris at Kennedy Space Center (news - web sites) in Florida didn't open the containers of worms and dead moss cells until this week.
All seven astronauts were killed when the shuttle disintegrated over Texas on Feb. 1. Columbia contained almost 60 scientific investigations.
"To my knowledge, these are the only live experiments that have been located and identified," said Bruce Buckingham, a NASA spokesman at the Kennedy Space Center.
The worms and moss were in the same nine-pound locker located in the mid-deck of the space shuttle. The worms were placed in six canisters, each holding eight petri dishes.
The worms, which are about the size of the tip of a pencil, were part of an experiment testing a new synthetic nutrient solution. The worms, which have a life cycle of between seven and 10 days, were four or five generations removed from the original worms placed on Columbia in January.
The C. elegans are primitive organisms that share many biological characteristics of humans. In 1999, C. elegans became the first multicellular organism to have the sequencing of its genome completed.
Full text:
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp.../shuttle_worms
Edited to add link to article and remove full text. E/O 
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