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Microbes Alive After Being Frozen for 32,000 Years

Posted by samzenpus on from the stasis dept.

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."

14 of 527 comments (clear)

  1. We're all dead!! by StikyPad · · Score: 5, Funny

    Hasn't anyone ever read Andromeda?? Don't thaw them out!!

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    1. Re:We're all dead!! by Mr.+Capris · · Score: 5, Funny

      Don't worry, by the third mutation or so it stops killing you and only erodes rubber...although it could go back any time now...

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    2. Re:We're all dead!! by hexium · · Score: 5, Funny

      Opening Slashdot today, I quickly scanned over the articles and saw "Microsoft Alive After Being Frozen for 32,000 Years".

  2. Mmm... microbe babes! by FunWithHeadlines · · Score: 5, Funny
    "bacteria that after being frozen 32,000 years in the Arctic was ready to swim, eat and multiply instantly upon being thawed.

    Wouldn't you be ready to eat and, uh, multiply if you had been without for 32,000 years?

  3. What? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    The number of years isn't rounded to 32,768? And you call this a geek site?

  4. I, for one,... by bcrowell · · Score: 5, Interesting
    welcome our new Martian bacterial overlords!

    But seriously, discovering unicellular life on Mars would be the greatest scientific discovery of the last 200 years, and if it's there, we could do it very cheaply with an uncrewed sample return mission, using present-day technology. It's too bad that the average taxpayer thinks germs from another planet just don't sound very interesting.

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    1. Re:I, for one,... by rhizome · · Score: 5, Insightful

      >But seriously, discovering unicellular life on Mars would be the
      >greatest scientific discovery of the last 200 years

      I think it's impact would be much greater on the theological world than the scientific.

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    2. Re:I, for one,... by TWX · · Score: 5, Insightful

      "...I wouldn't find it all that shocking if life were found there (although it would certainly raise some interesting questions)."

      You're probably not a religious fundamentalist either. Remember, the vast majority of the religions on the planet make Earth out to be something special in "all of God's work", and challenging that with something like, "Life has come to be elsewhere without spawning from Earth" would be a real problem for many religions, assuming that the message about life spawning managed to reach the people in these congregations.

      If religious leaders condemn it they could advocate open violence against anyone spreading the knowledge or believing it. Since there are a LOT of people who fall into the Fundamentalist category or are influenced by them this could have really nasty ramifications.

      Most people can't handle a major change in their world view.

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  5. strange meaning for "new" by muqo · · Score: 5, Insightful

    LiveScience is reporting on a new type of bacteria that after being frozen 32,000 .... yeah, new... only 32 Kyears...

  6. tardigrada by tardigrades · · Score: 5, Interesting

    tardigrades are way cooler http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tardigrada

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  7. Uh oh... by nebaz · · Score: 5, Funny

    It's Encino Paramecium

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  8. Re:Fark headline? by Rude+Turnip · · Score: 5, Funny

    I think the notorious "What could possibly go wrong?" tagline might be more appropriate :)

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  9. First thing the microbes did upon waking up... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    take a really long piss.

  10. Re:I spit on your 32K years. Try 25M! by FleaPlus · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Ooh, never mind, found it. Yay for google scholar:

    http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd= Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=7538699&dopt=Citation

    Revival and identification of bacterial spores in 25- to 40-million-year-old Dominican amber.

    Cano RJ, Borucki MK.

    A bacterial spore was revived, cultured, and identified from the abdominal contents of extinct bees preserved for 25 to 40 million years in buried Dominican amber. Rigorous surface decontamination of the amber and aseptic procedures were used during the recovery of the bacterium. Several lines of evidence indicated that the isolated bacterium was of ancient origin and not an extant contaminant. The characteristic enzymatic, biochemical, and 16S ribosomal DNA profiles indicated that the ancient bacterium is most closely related to extant Bacillus sphaericus.