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3000-year-old Microbes

Posted by michael on from the stuff-you-found-at-the-back-of-your-refrigerator dept.

marga writes "Science Daily is running a story about a group of researchers the have been drilling into the Antarctic ice and discovered 3000-year-old microbes that could come back to life if put in contact with liquid water. And not only that, they claim that they have uncovered a whole new ecological system lying beneath the Lake Vida."

3 of 34 comments (clear)

  1. Europa by danratherfan · · Score: 4, Interesting

    It makes the prospects for life on Europa just that much more promising. We're finding life can exist in such extreme conditions. It's time we sent a probe to drill beneath the ice there.

  2. Re:"contaminate" by Christopher+Doopov · · Score: 3, Interesting

    does anybody else wory about that this 3000 year old stable ecological system could now have been "contaminated" by alien DNA?

    I certainly worry more about our own, Earth DNA. There is still no evidence of extraterrestrial life existence, which may just mean that no alien life form has reached our planet yet. That is why I do not worry about it. But I do worry about our domestic life forms, which -- unlike alien life forms -- are known to be sometimes lethal to other life forms of Earth.

    Or that it at least had to be polluted?

    What do you mean by "polluted"?

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    ~Christopher Doopov

  3. Bah! That's nothing. by Royster · · Score: 5, Interesting

    There were some yeast spores dating back 25-40 million years which were claimed to have been revived. Google's cached copy of the Time Magazine article from 1995

    They used it to brew beer!

    Now there's Procress Through Science!

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    I have discovered a truly marvelous sig, unfortunately the sig limit is too small to contain i