Skip to content
Surprising Science —

Have Jellyfish Found the Fountain of Youth?

Sign up for Big Think on Substack
The most surprising and impactful new stories delivered to your inbox every week, for free.

Has the Fountain of Youth been found, in the form of jellyfish? Shin Kubota, a Japanese scientist, discovered that a microscopic species of jellyfish, Turritopsis dohrnii, can grow young, again and again, rejuvenating itself.

“It can live forever, I think,”Kubota told CBS News. Turritopsis dohrnii can age in reverse, like the peculiar protagonist in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.” “I want to become young, in the future,” Kubota, a stroke survivor, said. 

But what can these spineless animals offer us homo sapiens? We’re not able to engineer their abilities in humans, yet. The genetic engineering would be quite complicated, or unlikely. 

While the CBS video report was released yesterday, The New York Times profiled Kubota and his search for immortal life in 2012. 

Image credit: charnsitr/Shutterstock

Sign up for Big Think on Substack
The most surprising and impactful new stories delivered to your inbox every week, for free.
Related
A bearded man wearing glasses and a plaid shirt speaks with a microphone clipped to his collar in front of a purple background with white dots.
The Well
How Rainn Wilson discovered sacredness
The hospital where Rainn Wilson’s wife and son nearly died became his own personal holy site. There, he discovered that the sacred can exist in places we least expect it. During his talk at A Night of Awe and Wonder, he explained how the awe we feel in moments of courage and love is moral beauty — and following it might be the start of our spiritual revolution.
▸
13 min
—
with
Rainn Wilson
Up Next
Words of Wisdom
Tesla on Inspiration
“My brain is only a receiver, in the Universe there is a core from which we obtain knowledge, strength and inspiration. I have not penetrated into the secrets of this […]