Microbes Alive After Being Frozen for 32,000 Years

An anonymous reader writes "LiveScience is reporting on a new type of bacteria that after being frozen 32,000 years in the Arctic was ready to swim, eat and multiply instantly upon being thawed. Researchers are excited because they're the sort of microbes that might thrive in the ice sea announced on Mars yesterday. The instant revival abilities mean a future mission, if it found anything on Mars, could conceivably culture it and bring it back alive. Maybe NASA could market them as Martian Sea Monkeys."

Comments

Re:Honest Question

[pronobozo]

Doesn't say in the article how they knew but I do know that in some instances, they track the layers in ice/snow from each years snow fall.

They can find out a lot of information because water and pollutants can travel all around the world and deposit in them.

I've also read about microbes being able to do the same thing.

As for this instance... well... google it.

How to date ice, and bring it home to your mother

[yuckysocks]

The basic way to date ice samples is pretty similar to "endochronology"
(which is looking at tree rings to determine their age). Ice cores
have similar striations which can be counted to determine the age of the
surrounding ice.

And I couldn't find a link, but I thought at one point
scientists were looking at the air composition inside the ice and comparing
it to historical atmospheric ratios of gasses to date things.

Panspermia and previously thawed 2800 yo bacteria

[Linuxathome]

Thawing out old bacteria is not a new discovery--what's interesting here is that it is older bacteria.

The more interesting question about possible unicellular organisms in Mars is whether they share a common ancestor with Earth's unicellular organisms or did they develop independently of each other. If there is a link/common ancestor, then the currently weak theory of panspermia (life exists and is distributed throughout the universe in the form of germs or spores) would have a big boost in support. Also see this article about possible space bugs written over 2 years ago.

Re:I spit on your 32K years. Try 25M!

[afidel]

Uh, check your facts budy. Here's a link since you obviously can't use google.