According to new research from the Universities of Oxford and Harvard, tardigrades, which are water-dwelling, eight-legged, segmented micro-animals, will live for at least 10 billion years, which is a lot longer than the human race. They will also outlive the risk of extinction from all astronomical disasters.

Now, a team of Oxford and Harvard researchers has found that tardigrades survive all astrophysical calamities, such as an asteroid, since they will never be strong enough to boil off the world’s oceans.

“It is difficult to eliminate all forms of life from a habitable planet,” said Professor Abraham Loeb, Chair of the Astronomy Department at Harvard University and co-author of the paper discussing the results in the journal Scientific Reports.

The discovery of extremophiles in such locations would be a significant step forward in bracketing the range of conditions for life to exist on planets around other stars.”

“Gamma-ray bursts and supernovae can be deadly due to the lethal doses of radiation and in particular the shock wave associated with the burst. Radiation can cause the depletion of the ozone layer, removing the shield that protects us from cosmic radiation.”

“In this context there is a real case for looking for life on Mars and in other areas of the Solar System in general. If tardigrades are Earth’s most resilient species, who knows what else is out there.”