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NASA Scientist Revive 10,000-Year-Old Microorganisms (bbc.com)
"Scientists have extracted long-dormant microbes from inside the famous giant crystals of the Naica mountain caves in Mexico -- and revived them," reports the BBC. An anonymous reader writes:
"The organisms were likely to have been encased in the striking shafts of gypsum at least 10,000 years ago, and possibly up to 50,000 years ago," according to the BBC, which calls the strange lifeforms "another demonstration of the ability of life to adapt and cope in the most hostile of environments." With no light, extremophile species must "chemosynthesise," deriving all their energy by extracting minerals from rocks. These ancient microbes "are not very closely related to anything in the known genetic databases," according to the new director of NASA's Astrobiology Institute, who helped conduct the research, and believes that the microbes could help suggest what life might look like on other planets. The BBC adds that many other scientists "suspect that if life does exist elsewhere in the Solar System, it is most likely to be underground, chemosynthesising like the microbes of Naica."
Even though these bacteria are still alive, carbon dating should still work as long as the organism is no longer absorbing carbon from its environment.
Good job NASA, now it will grow ad infinitum and kill us all.
BREAKING NEWS - 10,000 year-old germ escapes into the wild with no known cure.
Osteolysis? Tooth decay? Do we really need to play around with mineral-eating bacteria?
I've seen that film.
It doesn't end well.
Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
"How all Trump supporters weren't questioning his leadership qualities then I will never understand."
We were. Just the other option was worse.
Lesser of two evils really sums up US presidential elections.
"They look like little grasshoppers."
Care killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back.
I have no clue as to the numbers or mass of these bacteria that munch on rocks beneath our surface. But just maybe they might displace algae as being the predominant life form on Earth. It has been said in the past that an alien species might see algae as the significant life form on Earth and only be interested with communications with algae. Even termites might have more effect upon our world than humans.
It's not just Hilary supporters who are suffering though is it... he's obviously planning on screwing over everyone besides his rich buddies. I hope you're happy in you delusional bubble where you think you might have in any way even slightly had a net benefit from this tragedy. Take that.... nearly everyone in the US of A
don't revive them . armageddon coming .
"How all Trump supporters weren't questioning his leadership qualities then I will never understand."
We were. But we thought the other option was worse.
We honestly didn't think Trump would actually try to appoint white supremacists, Russian spies and entire board of Goldman Sachs, to key positions. I mean, sure, a bunch of libtards said he'd do that but Trump said he wouldn't and why would we believe that he'd continue doing the same things he's been doing for his entire life when he was promising to Make America Great Again?
Who would have thought he'd eliminate environmental protections, allow pollution by the coal industry, repeal Obamacare without bothering to offer a replacement and try to build an insanely expensive and impractical wall that will do nothing to stop the flow of drugs and illegal immigrants. I mean, yeah, he literally said he was going to do all that and all the libtards told us we should listen, but the whole campaign was about taking him seriously but not literally and who listens to libtards?
And we had no way of knowing that a thin-skinned man who has consistently used SLAPP lawsuits to silence people and drive them into bankruptcy would be a vindictive little shit once he was given power. Nobody could have seen that coming. Well, I mean, yeah, the libtards. Blah blah blah. We're never going to listen to them no matter how many times they're right, so just stop bringing them up okay?
Anyway, Hillary's emails! OMG!! No, Scott Pruitt's emails are fine. Hillary's emails are the problem!
FTFY
Believe it or not, but even in the US there are more than two options. Leave bitching about the lack of choice to the stalinists.
Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
never mentions how that life might have started.
Terrestrial proto-life had Sol and warm seas agitated by tidal motion, but Mars gets 56% less sunlight, and Titan gets just 1% of Earth's solar energy.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
How can 10000 year old atoms be alive? ... Oh wait, atoms are ageless and each element's atoms are all identical ... So why can't we have anti-aging again?
Why should those dinosaurs have all the fun?!
welcome our 10,000 year old microorganism overlords.
:-)
Oh, yeah. Thank you for that.
In the Dark Ages, every bit of light counts!
I mean, really.
I've seen this movie about giant crystals threatening the world. It was actually pretty good, so I'm off to make some popcorn and wait for those things to burst out of the ground.
How come Slashdot never gets Slashdotted?
Because that's how you get Thing monsters :-P
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
I eagerly await patient zero.
How the fuck can you revive something that wasn't even dead in the first place? Fucking clickbait summary yet again, making it sound like Jurrasic Park shit when it's just natural bacterial abilities to restore consciousness when conditions are right.
Bacteria are conscious???
I suggest you look up the word Revive. It's not a synonym for resurrect (though that's one form of revival).
If an atomic/molecular/yet-unguessed-at structure can be held in stasis for 10K-to-50K years, and then (re) animated, what exactly is life?
The two most basic indicators of life are a) replication of itself and b) information gathering via DNA or some other mechanism.
The common result of life is an overall increase in entropy, although it decreases for subsystems.
But what exactly is it? When can we make it in the lab from scratch?
Is life on Earth a one-off? If we look at our survey of planets with life (1 planet Earth) and find life started *twice*, then that certainly means life started in other parts of the universe (N+1). Which would be an amazing discovery.
Also, does every post need to be related with Donald Trump? Can you take your abusive relationship somewhere else?
an airborne transmitted combination of the flu and Ebola until proven otherwise.
I'll start out buy not being forced to spend $6,000 a year on insurance that I don't need and don't want.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
Wow. You sound like a miserable ass to be around. I am benefiting directly today from all the lefties losing their minds over their loss. It has already helped me immensely.
Perfect description of Obama.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
Reviving a 10,000 year old microorganism? I see nothing that could possibly go wrong with this.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
That's awesome! I'm pretty sure an episode of X Files started that way. I forget exactly how that one turned out, I think the microbes end up being very nice to everyone and at the end they buy Scully and Mulder milkshakes!
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3498622/
Doesn't end well...
Sure you will, buddy. Just keep holding your breath. I'm sure it'll come any day now.
I also love the implication that without the ACA, your insurance will become cheaper. Again, just hold your breath until it comes. Any day now...
If you are retarded and don't know the definition of "vindictive", sure. Those of us who speak English natively see things accurately. Sad for you.
Life
As you would expect, it doesn't end well.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
*facepalm*
(brought to you by pretty much every other country. Except Russia: they seem strangely happy for some reason)
Perfect description of Obama.
Man, I have seen idiocy before, but this takes the cake. The problem with Obama was that he was not vindictive at all - on the contrary, he went much too far in trying to mend fences with the Republicans. After the catastrophe of the Bush administration, what the country needed was a cleansing. The guilty parties (most of the Bush administration, and at least half of the Republicans in Congress) should have been investigated - and many of them should have ended up in jail for lying through their teeth, wasting trillions of dollars, dragging the country into two wars and costing the lives of thousands of Americans, putting loyalty above aptitude, doubling the deficit, and so many other sins. Republicans needed to be slapped hard - it would have saved America lots of pain and suffering since.
Instead, Obama chose not to prosecute any of the Republican malefactors. He was willing to let bygones be bygones, he tried to build consensus, to have a dialogue. He even adopted Republican policies - even Obamacare was based on Mitt Romney's weaker design, to make it palatable to Republicans.
And, after all this effort you call *him* vindictive? I mean, as an obvious Trump supporter, you probably have only a tenuous connection to reality, but really, are you so far gone you can't even understand the meaning of "truth" anymore?
Sure, maybe you are the 1 in 300 million people who will never get sick, you'll never have an accident. But when you do get sick or old, or can't pay your bill because you had a car wreck 6 months ago and can't work, well then the rest of us will pay your bill. Because the hospital won't charge those who can't pay. You'd probably prefer someone die if they can't pay their bill. You might be that special person who never needs to go to the doctor, and you'll die without needing any medical care. Congradulations!
It saves money for us overall if there aren't millions of people who don't have health insurance. There are some other things that work like this, such as vaccines. Similarly, we pay taxes for firemen, even though, damnit, my house is never going to burn down.
Compared to mactards, yes.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
56% less than what? If it's the terrestrial average I don't see the point. Scotland gets considerably less than that and there's life there. Not sentient life, but life nonetheless.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
The issue isn't whether or not life exists in Scotland, but whether or not terrestrial biogenesis could have originate in such an environment.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
> I'll start out buy not being forced to spend $6,000 a year on insurance that I don't need and don't want.
It's obvious you don't understand the meaning of the word "insurance".
Captcha: "together". Even the AI here understands it. You're dumber than a robot. Congrats.
"elections have consequences" -- Obama, very much NOT building consensus
If this organism gets loose will I have to find a substitute for my gypsum walls in my house?
The fuckwad you replied to is saying he doesn't bother with insurance. This is because when he gets into an accident and breaks some bones, people like you will pay for it. (I don't live in the US anymore.)
Trump supporters, almost by definition at this point, have no understanding of truth.
It's not that most Trump supporters actually liked Trump. There were almost no signs out for him in my conservative neighborhood. But in a contest between a demonstrably evil candidate, and a chaotic one, the nation decided to roll the dice and go with chaos. Because at least an agent of chaos can do good as well as evil.
You act as if Hillary's only flaw was her illegal email server. Ignoring, of course, the reason that she had that illegal server. So that she could (and did) solicit "donations" to her foundation from foreign countries while Secretary of State. Including taking "donations" from Russia that just so happened to coincide with the sale of US uranium to them. There's also her stated policy positions on Russia (no-fly zone in Syria) that would have sparked off WWIII. There's also her widely known temper (going back to her husband's presidency), and her serious lack of judgement during stressful situations (such as marching into the white house to yell at Obama). SHE was the one I didn't want near the nuclear football.
Wanna be our test subject to see what kind of disease they produce in the animal body?
Only if they are Mexican?
It is a pretty dramatic assumption to think sunlight was involved in the original biogenesis. It takes pretty complicated biology to do photosynthesis.
Can you please provide some proof to your claims? Every such argument that I've tried to chase down has turned out to be a will-o-wisp.
However, many models for terrestrial abiogenesis have it occurring in hydrothermal circulating systems and only using chemotrophic processes, not photosynthetic processes. Photosynthesis seems to be hundreds of millions of years, or maybe a billion years later.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"