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Meet the Scientist Who Injected Himself With 3.5 Million-Year-Old Bacteria (vice.com)

Press2ToContinue writes with this profile of Anatoli Brouchkov, a scientist who isn't afraid to take an extremely hands-on approach to science. Vice reports: "Anatoli Brouchkov is a soft-spoken guy with silver hair, and when he lets out a reserved chuckle, his eyes light up like he was belly laughing. If you met him on the street, you'd never guess that he once injected himself with a 3.5 million-year-old strain of bacteria, just to see what would happen. According to Brouchkov, Bacillus F has a mechanism that has enabled it to survive for so long beneath the ice, and that the same mechanism could be used to extend human life, too—perhaps, one day, forever. In tests, Brouchkov says the bacteria allowed female mice to reproduce at ages far older than typical mice. Fruit flies, he told the Siberian Times, also experienced a 'positive impact' from exposure to the bacteria."

1 of 206 comments (clear)

  1. Get the science right! by Roger+W+Moore · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Actually I very much doubt that since almost all the elements above helium and up to iron were formed in the hearts of stars and so are a lot younger than the Big Bang. For the trace elements above iron in your food we actually have evidence that they were created in a supernova about 6 billion years ago. So other than the hydrogen, which makes up only a tiny proportion of your food by weight, most of the atoms are likely to be considerably younger than 14 billion years and formed in the hearts of stars not in the Big Bang.