Author Topic: 8 Million Year Old Bacteria (Read 1844 times)

gunug · « **on:** August 07, 2007, 10:53:05 AM »

New Scientist has this article about bacteria coming to life after being frozen for 8 Million Years:

QUOTE

An 8-million-year-old bacterium that was extracted from the oldest known ice on Earth is now growing in a laboratory, claim researchers.

If confirmed, this means ancient bacteria and viruses will come back to life as ice melts due to global warming. This is nothing to worry about, say experts, because the process has been going on for billions of years and the bugs are unlikely to cause human disease.

Kay Bidle of Rutgers University in New Jersey, US, and his colleagues extracted DNA and bacteria from ice found between 3 and 5 metres beneath the surface of a glacier in the Beacon and Mullins valleys of Antarctica. The ice gets older as it flows down the valleys and the researchers took five samples that were between 100,000 and 8 million years old.

http://environment.newscientist.com/articl...line-news_rss20

Gregg · « **Reply #1 on:** August 07, 2007, 12:10:48 PM »

There's hope for Ted Williams yet!

Mrious_be · « **Reply #2 on:** August 07, 2007, 01:59:42 PM »

Wow, are those bacteria gonna find themself in a total new world

Wish I could do that even for just a (few) hundred years.

gunug · « **Reply #3 on:** August 09, 2007, 04:24:58 AM »

A friend was a little alarmed by this because we might get diseases that don't exist any more; I suspect that these things are already around us due to freezing and thawing over the years.

Gregg · « **Reply #4 on:** August 09, 2007, 07:19:53 AM »

QUOTE(gunug @ Aug 9 2007, 04:24 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

A friend was a little alarmed by this because we might get diseases that don't exist any more; I suspect that these things are already around us due to freezing and thawing over the years.

Yep. That's what the news report I heard said.

News:

Author Topic: 8 Million Year Old Bacteria (Read 1844 times)