8 Million Year Old Bacteria Thaws, Lives

Jamie found a New Scientist story about 8 million year old bacteria that scientists thawed out, and now it's alive. Also somehow they are sure that this is safe. The interesting bit is that since these samples came from ancient ice, it seems that the world will naturally be filled with these guys soon.

Comments

Re:Typical misleading summary...

[MightyMartian]

The preponderance of evidence in the 1400's said that the world was flat and that sea monsters ate you if you took your boat too close to the edge.

Man, but I wish this particularly claim would die. It's false. Maybe some ignorant hicks in the backwoods of Austria believed that, but damn near every person with any degree of education since Classical times has known the Earth is a sphere. Eratosthenes made an estimate, that while out, is still pretty accurate for the time, and Posidonius got an estimate that was damn near spot on. Oh, and these guys lived a couple of centuries before Christ was alleged to have been born.