A rare microorganism could escape Earth’s most stringent spacecraft clean rooms and infiltrate space — or another planet — by using this spooky trick. It plays dead. Microbiologists at the University ...

I’m looking at a microbe that behaves like a sci‑fi monster: it can shut itself down, slip past some of the cleanest rooms on Earth, and then “wake up” again when conditions improve. NASA’s discovery ...

The tiniest life forms are sometimes the strongest of them all—that is, they’ll survive anywhere and do everything they can to stay alive. Apparently, this even includes faking their own death. In ...