Incredible, we came to tattoo the Tardigradi. Yes, their own, the “bears of water”, those immortal micro-toilers that can survive everything: radiation, spatial emptiness, temperatures of less 272 degrees or 150 above zero, and which are harder to die of a mint and any influencer with the navel in the air. In essence, Westlake University had this brilliant idea: nanottumer the Tardigradi. It goes without saying not with the ink or the tattoo artist machine, rather with an electronic lithography assisted by ice.
Translated: they freeze them at least 130 degrees, create a very thin layer of smooth ice like the brain of a denialist, and there they shoot a bundle of electrons that affects tiny structures. Result? Perfectly stable tattoos. They can extend, twist, wet, dry out, centrifuge the Tardigrades: they continue to care as if nothing had happened. They also resisted the solvents: those who would dissolve half of the customers of a spa. All this while the Tardigradi were in cryptobosis, the state in which they stop living and survive everything (certain type or certain exs who after years manage to re -emerge out of nowhere with a message at three in the morning).
The goal, of course, was not to decorate the Tardigradi to have Like Instagram: the purpose is to create living robots, semi-artificial organisms capable of detecting toxins, diagnosing diseases, surviving in extreme environments, exploring space or working where even a mobile phone would explode. Projects? Biological sensors that work in our place or tattooed bacteria that go on mission to Mars (or perhaps even a day also biological selfies from the bottom of the oceans).
But there are also future medical uses: biotuAggi could transform the Tardigradi into living biosensors to detect toxic substances or indicators of pathologies, or diagnose infections, or could be genetically modified and injected into specific organs of the human body to release drugs in a targeted way.
Better than many humans tattooed with random motivational phrases: now we have tattooed Tardigrades who are really useful. The research, of course, ended up on the cover of Nano Letters (and no, no Tardigrado complained or asked for moral compensation or opened a Tiktok account to protest).
Waiting for the future, remember: you make yourself tattoo a Phoenix to feel eternal, a Tardigrado (whose dimensions vary from 0.05 to 1.2mm), make nanometric structures tattoo, take a centrifuge at 4000 rpm, you can bomb it with an atomic and survive. We do not, but thanks to the tattooed Tardigrades we could live more. As I say we always hope they do soon, we have every year counted.