The $214,206 Threadlike Worm Mesenchytraeus Solifugas

NASA has provided a 3-year grant to Daniel Shane of Rutgers-Camden to study ice worms. He finds a glacier, waits for the sun to go down, and then scoops ice worms into a cooler which he closes with duct tape and zaps off to Camden. An assistant, Brittany Morrison, helps him with the work. Brittany is particularly interested in the energy molecule that the black ice worms have.

Things are different with ice worms. Regular worms don’t like cold weather. Ice worms like the temperature to be exactly at freezing. They squirm and squirm and squirm.

NASA saw Dan’s work and became very interested. One NASA scientist said, “Europa!” You can find what you need to know about Europa at: http://www2.jpl.nasa.gov/galileo/europa/.

When the scientist said, “Europa!” everybody caught on. The Director said, “Send that man Daniel Shane and his graduate assistant a ton of money right away!”

And that’s what they did.

The reason that NASA has a need for threadlike worm Mesenchytraeus Solifugas information is that people at NASA are saying things:

“Dr. Ronald Greeley, an Arizona State University geologist and Galileo imaging team member, said (that) the ice rafts reveal that Europa had, and may still have, a very thin ice crust covering either liquid water or slush.

"’We're intrigued by these blocks of ice, similar to those seen on Earth's polar seas during springtime thaws," Greeley said. "The size and geometry of these features lead us to believe there was a thin icy layer covering water or slushy ice, and that some motion caused these crustal plates to break up.

"’These rafts appear to be floating and may, in fact, be comparable to icebergs here on Earth," said another Galileo imaging team member, Dr. Michael Carr, a geologist with the U.S. Geological Survey. "The puzzle is what causes the rafts to rotate. The implication is that they are being churned by convection.’" (see http://www2.jpl.nasa.gov/galileo/status970409.html)

In a secret NASA memo provided to me by my White House correspondent, Jose Caliente, NASA wants a bucket of those worms that can live on ice. If NASA does not find life on Europa, they want to dumb a bucket of those worms there and watch them evolve into the Box Turtle.

I’m going to tell you the truth now, so BUCK UP!

When I was teaching engineering at Iowa State University (which nearly got clobbered by a tornado the other day—nothing unusual) a friend of mine, Dr. Wayne Rowley, who was and may still be a professor in the Entomology Department, asked if I would help him with a project.

This is what the project was: sticking the tip of a tiny iron-constantan thermocouple into the thorax of a house fly or a mosquito and measuring the temperature increase of the insect as it flew and flew and flew.

Dr. Rowley had a clever little device that he pinned the insect to. A fly or mosquito could fly in circles until its energy molecules went dry. All of that energy expenditure heated the cute little creatures up. Here are the results:

House Fly (Musca domestica Linnaeus)—Temperature Increase 4F degrees

Northern House Mosquito (Culex pipiens Linnaeus)—Temperature Increase 1.5F degrees

At the end of the test, Dr. Rowley would squish the critters so that he could measure how much of the energy molecule remained after the flight. He soon figured out how much energy it takes to fly and fly and fly.

I’m sure that Brittany will be squeezing the energy molecules out of those Mesenchytraeus Solifugas to see how much energy it takes to squirm, squirm, squirm.

I say, “Good Luck!” to Daniel Shane of Rutgers-Camden as he buckets those thin black ice worms at night off those glaciers (he says there are zillions of iceworms; they are easy to catch).

I say, “Good Luck!” to Graduate Assistant Brittany Morrison as she squishes the threadlike ice worm Mesenchytraeus Solifugas.

Good Luck to NASA too!